AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Donna, Idohave a good reason.”
“Oh yeah? And what’s that?”
“I wanna look cool for my wife,” he replied with a grin, gathering her into his arms and kissing her.
I groaned and looked at Will, who made a gagging face, then winced when Aria punched him in the arm. “They’re sweet, you wouldn’t understand.”
“I can be sweet,” Will defended himself.
“Yeah, sweet as collard greens, maybe,” she retorted.
I looked to my left to see Shelby smiling at my parents as my mom leaned companionably into my dad. That was another thing we had in common. Both of us had parents who were sickeningly in love, unlike a lot of our peers, whose parents were either divorced or should be. Roxy hadn’t even known who her dad was since her mom had apparently never told him he had a kid. It struck me then that maybe her reasons for preferring the long-distance version of our relationship made a little more sense when I factored that in.
“Well, I can’t promise that I’ll think you look cool,” my mom said, “but I can promise I’ll congratulate you if you live through it.”
“I’ll take what I can get,” he replied with a wink.
We headed for the entrance then, and I hung back with Shelby while my dad went through all of the introductory stuff that first-time jumpers had to go over. I reached down, taking her hand in mine, as we stood toward the back of the group. It was a little thing, but it felt really big. We didn’t say anything to interrupt the advice my dad was getting to prep him for his first jump, but somehow it felt like a lot of stuff was being said without any words.
After registration and orientation were complete, it was time to suit up. My mom was busy trying to convince my dad to back out—her fear over this whole thing would never cease to make me laugh, considering my job—and Will and Aria were bickering about some movie that she loved and he thought was stupid. He had dark circles under his eyes from lack of sleep, but it otherwise seemed like whatever had been keeping him up last night had loosened some. So that was good. A free fall from thousands of feet in the air would probably go a long way toward clearing it up the rest of the way.
That was the thing about skydiving. Nothing offered a clear perspective like hurtling toward the earth at 120 miles per hour. Part of the reason I was so addicted to jumping was because I had no better way of getting clarity about a rough situation. Today, however, it struck me that I didn’t need clarity. For once, nothing felt out of place or missing or off. It was all good.
“Oh, hey,” she said when the instructors pulled my dad aside to have him sign some paperwork, “did I tell you I have an appointment with Dr. Evans on Monday?”
My eyes darted to hers. “No, why? Are you okay?”
“I think so. It’s just that I’ve kind of had a rough time lately, so I made an appointment for a check-up just in case. It felt proactive.”
I licked my lips, nerves that had nothing to do with my impending free fall making my mouth dry. “That’s smart. Uh, what do you mean by a rough time?”
“It’s no biggie, really, I was just more tired than usual. But since the appointment is in Beaufort and it’s around lunchtime, I thought maybe you could take a long lunch and meet me?”
The base was only ten minutes from her cardiologist’s office, so I was nodding before I even took the time to think about whether I had anything major going on at work that day. Even if I did, I’d figure out a way to get out of it so I could meet her for lunch. “Yes, definitely. Maybe we can meet up before or after at that sandwich place you like.”
She frowned and opened her mouth to speak, but the instructors came back over and addressed the group with safety guidelines. It was all stuff I knew like the back of my hand, but it still felt disrespectful not to shut up and listen to them.
When they were finished briefing us, I leaned down and pressed a warm kiss to Shelby’s lips, lingering there for a beat. When I pulled back, she was looking up at me with a strange expression. I frowned. “What’s wrong?”
She hesitated, then shook her head. “I don’t know. It’s weird. I think your mom is making me nervous.”
“What do you mean?”
“I know you do this all the time, but she’s making me paranoid or something. This is safe, right?”
I chuckled. “Yes. Definitely. In fact, I’m pretty sure I have a better chance of winning the lottery than dying in a skydiving accident. Statistically speaking, of course.”
“Mmm, I’m not sure if I trust your numbers. You were never that great at math.”
Poking her side, I grinned when she let out an impossibly cute giggle. Then I hooked an arm around her back and pulled her to me, reveling in the ease with which I was able to do that. This was going to take a lot of getting used to. I couldn’t keep my hands off her, and yet, every time I touched her, I got a little thrill like I shouldn’t be doing it. Like at any moment I’d wake up and we’d still be friends, I’d still be in that awful friend zone, and this whole thing was just a really freaking good dream.
“Just promise me you won’t die.”
I swallowed hard, looking her straight in the eyes. “I promise I won’t die.”
She’d said it as a joke. Obviously, I knew that. But at the same time, it wasn’t all that funny to me. Especially not after she told me she’d made an appointment with her specialist for a checkup on Monday.
Plus, there were long-term fears. The day I’d sat with her on that bench at school and she’d unloaded on me about her diagnosis, the one point that she couldn’t stop coming back to was that no one even knew her cousin had HCM until after she was already gone. It was so sudden. So irreversible. There was nothing anyone could do and there was no warning at all.
