AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Oh, I like that wish,” Doris agreed.
Alice nodded and sat back against her lounge chair. “Be a hero, Marge. Make this your wish.”
“The plane jumping is the wish. Sorry, ladies. This was just my gift to thank you for supporting me in something I know you have no interest in doing. Call it a tradeoff.”
Alice grumbled. “There is no tradeoff for chucking me out of a plane, Marge. Well, maybe you waxing those ghastly legs of yours would be a small step toward balancing the scales. Forever. If you wax them forever and never allow this horrifying forest to sprout up once again, we’ll get closer to even.” She pulled a face and waved a hand over my unkempt legs I still refused to trim.
“No deal.” I crossed my arms. “I like ‘em this way.”
Alice covered her eyes and looked away. “Well then, we’ll never be even. No matter what crazy wishes the rest of us come up with, none of them willeverbe even with you making us plummet to our deaths.”
“We’re not gonna die. It’s very safe.”
They all looked at me, eyebrows raised. I slunk a little lower in my chair. “Well, no one is putting a gun to your heads. You can sit this wish out.”
“No. Nope. No way.” Sylvie shook her head hard, her sunhat almost flying off with the force. “As much as I absolutely, positively, in no way, shape, or form want to jump out of a plane, it’s our duty as Widows to jump with you. The whole point of this is to push ourselves out of our comfort zones and support each other’s wishes. You jump, we jump. That’s the rule.”
The comradery these women showed me made me smile, lighting me up from the inside out. Part of me felt bad for forcing them to do something they were so adamantly against, but the other part of me knew they’d be thanking me after we landed safely on the ground. It would be an experience none of us would ever forget.
“Thank you for doing this with me, ladies.” I paused and took a long swig of my tropical cocktail. “It’s going to be amazing. You won’t regret it.”
“You’re right,” Alice answered. “We won’t regret it.”
When I began to smile at her finally coming around to my idea, she finished her thought.
“We won’t regret it because you can’t regret anything after you’redead.”
Doris whimpered. “I don’t want to die.”
“We’re not going to die.” Sylvie took the words right out of my mouth. “We’re going to be scared, traumatized, and terrified beyond all measure, but I’ve done the research, and all signs point to us surviving this horrifying wish.”
I frowned. “Well, it’s notthatscary.”
“To you,” Sylvie answered back. “To us? This is a nightmare.”
As I stared at their concerned faces, for the first time, I started to rethink my wish. I didn’t want to traumatize my best and only friends. I wanted this to be an incredible experience for us all. Until now, I had gotten a kick out of their reluctance to jump, but I hoped my excitement would rub off on them once we’d arrived. Instead, it seemed the closer we got to the jump, the more fearful they became.
After a long pause, I set down my drink. “I’m sorry, ladies. I thought you would get into this wish, but it sounds like you may be more scared than I’d expected. If you want, I can go by myself, or I can pick something else.”
Before anyone else could answer, Doris sat straight up. “No! This is your wish, Marge. And wewilldo your wish. The whole point of our adventures is capturing the dreams we’ve always wanted to do, and to heck if our prattling on and on about being scared will stop us from fulfilling your dream. No. We’re going—all of us. And we’re gonna stop whining about it. That’s that,” she ended with a huff, crossing her arms tight over her pink, flowered suit.
We all stared at Doris, blinking. Her unusual outburst and the force of her words were so out of character that none of us seemed to know how to respond. Finally, Sylvie spoke.
“You’re right, Doris. You’re absolutely right. We have been really unsupportive of Marge. And I say from this moment forward, we all get our heads wrapped around the idea that wearejumping out of this plane, and we are going to stop bitching about it.”
Alice huffed. “Ugh. Fine. I’ll stop. But let me make one last statement before I go quiet. If I do plummet to my death, I’m coming back to haunt you, Marge.”
I grinned. “I’ll be thrilled for the company, Alice. I’ll even get some clay, and we can reenact theGhostscene together.” I mimicked the romantic scene pretending Alice’s ghost was sitting behind me.
After a moment, all three women burst into laughter, Alice tossing her head back and laughing with such abandon that she caught the attention of all the other guests on the beach.
“We’re causing a scene,” Sylvie said as her laughs petered off. “Everyone is staring.”
“Good. Let them stare,” I answered. “They’re just jealous they aren’t having as much fun as us. Because no one out there has better friends than me. Thank you, ladies. For the laughs and for supporting my wish. It means the world to me.”
“And you mean the world to us,” Doris answered, reaching over and touching my shoulder.
Warmth flooded every inch of me while I looked across the faces of my truest friends ... the ones willing to launch themselves out of a plane just to support me.
