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“He takes some time to pack up his gear and think about what he’s done.”
I wasn’t waiting that long. I unbuckled and hopped out. “I’ll get him.”
Mateo pushed his glasses up with a little smirk. “Thought you might.”
Seb was my person. More than anything, I wanted to be that for him, too.
29
SEB
“Wanna hold my boob?”
Her shadow slid across my face inch by inch as she came closer. I laughed, not opening my eyes. “I always want to hold your boob, Lila. I’d have to be buried six feet under not to want that, and even then I’d probably be willing to make a deal with the devil for one more time.”
“Hm.” Her shadow had fully swallowed me now. “I suppose it’s a moot point since you’re still alive.”
I cracked open one eyelid enough to get a blurry look at her. She didn’t even look like a person. Just nebulous blotches of color. Shades of red-gold, creamy vanilla, blues and greens and pinks.
“Are you mad?” I asked.
“Mad?” She actually sounded surprised by the question. “Why would I be mad?”
“I don’t know. Maybe because wingsuit BASE jumping comes with a one in six hundred chance of death. Those aren’t great odds. Jay says I’m deranged.”
“Well, it is a little deranged. Being human feels unbearable at times. It makes us do deranged things.”
Suddenly I was in the sun again. She joined me on the ground, laying her head next to mine, our feet pointed in opposite directions.
“Animals are so much simpler,” she went on. “They never reflect on their own animalistic behavior. It’s not that they don’t have emotions, because they do. They just don’t ponder the meaning of it all or assign virtues to those emotions. There’s no question of good or evil. Did you know chimpanzees go to war? Like, you can have two communities that have gotten along for years, sometimes interbreeding or hunting together, and then suddenly—to us, anyway, but they probably have their reasons—they hate each other.”
She was probably going somewhere with this, but maybe not. With Lila, it was hard to say. Sometimes she just liked to talk about animals.
“Anyway, if Jay is mad at you for participating in an activity where there’s a one in six hundred chance of death, it’s because he loves you and doesn’t want you to die.”
“You’re not mad at me,” I pointed out. If she wanted an opportunity to tell me she loved me anyway, there it was.
She was quiet for a moment. Then she said, “Once I photographed a herd of gazelles at a watering hole. There were a couple of babies. Cutest little things ever. But that watering hole had a crocodile in it. Most of them do. Every watering hole is a risk, of course. There might be a croc or a lion, and sometimes those predators are hungry, and sometimes they’re not. It can be hard documenting that kind of thing. Witnessing it. But the babies need water and the crocs need to eat, and sometimes my job means seeing that. There’s no such thing as a pain-free career or a pain-free life. Do you understand what I’m saying?”
“Not really,” I said. It didn’t sound anything like I love you. “Am I the baby gazelle or the hungry crocodile in this analogy?”
“You can be either. It’s not about you. It’s about me, the person who has to watch something she loves either get torn to bits or starve to death. I’m telling you why I’m not mad. I want you to know I’m never going to be the one screaming at you to stay out of the water just because I’m scared of the crocodile.”
Funny. That almost sounded like I love you. It also sounded a lot like what Rhett had said, but with more graphic bloodshed. They were both right. Cutting a person from your life because you were scared of losing them was self-defeating and stupid. Logically, I understood that. But when it came to Lila, I was always scared of the crocodile, and I didn’t know how to stop that terror from consuming me.
“Is Mateo with you?” I asked.
“He’s parked in the usual spot. We can go whenever you’re ready.”
I didn’t want to go. I wanted to stay right here with the sun on my face and Lila’s hair tickling my cheek. The air was brisk, but somehow I felt warm. Worries were so far away. That was partly because the flight had reset my nervous system, but it was also Lila. I had forgotten how it felt to just be with her. Like a midsummer day of childhood, that magical crack of time when winter was both solidly in the past and too far in the future to contemplate.
“Tell me how it feels,” she said. “When you jump.”
I considered my answer for a moment. “It’s…peaceful.” She craned her neck to look at me, so I craned mine too so I could see her expression. “Why does that surprise you?”
“I assumed you were in it for the rush. Isn’t that why most people do it? A shock of adrenaline to make you feel alive.”
I looked forward again and stared at the sky. “No. I always feel alive. Too alive. But when I fly, I don’t think about how it should be someone else here instead of me. And when I land, it’s not adrenaline. It’s relief. I’m glad to be alive. So maybe that’s why I do it. I want to want to be alive. I guess I’m trying to scare the gratitude into me.”
