Page 60 of Someone Like You

“Rod?”

“Yes. And you must be Casimir, and this is Elle?”

“The one and only,” I replied and smiled at Giselle, who bucked her eyes at me.

I leaned in and kissed her neck. “I will always protect you,” I whispered.

I didn’t see the need for our operator to know her name. We filled out a few forms regarding safety and releases before Rod explained to us what we could expect and went over the rules with us.

A few minutes later, we had not only climbed inside the balloon, but Rod had already begun heating the air in the balloon’s envelope using the burner.

“Are you scared?” I asked Giselle as I wrapped my arms around her from behind. She stood at the edge of one side of the balloon and her hands held onto the edge of the basket.

“A little, but excited too.”

“I’ll protect you, baby,” I whispered.

She looked over her shoulder at me and replied with a smile, “So, you keep saying.”

“And I’ll keep proving it too.”

“Is that what Elle is all about?”

“Mm-hmm,” I murmured and bit the shell of her ear.

The balloon slowly floated up into the air, and Giselle released a happy peal of laughter as we continued to rise.

“This was never something I dreamt of doing, Cas,” she shared when we had reached eleven hundred feet.

Everything below us was still clear, but plots of land were clearly delineated and outlined in squares in a grid-like system like they were when flying in an airplane, but it was much clearer.

“Where are we going?” Giselle asked Rod.

“I don’t know.”

“Uhm . . . what do you mean you don’t know?”

“You see those guys down there?” he asked as he pointed at some pickup trucks down below.

“Yeah.”

“That’s our ground crew. We’re at the mercy of the wind up here. Because there’s no engine, we ride the wind currents at various altitudes. Now, I can control our altitude.”

“How?” she asked.

“Heating the air with the propane in this burner. It makes the air in the balloon less dense and causes it to rise. When we’re ready to descend, I’ll reduce the flame or vent the air out of the top, and we’ll begin to descend. Relax,” Rod said with a friendly smile.

“Oh . . . okay.” She agreed with a nervous laugh.

But the longer we flew, and the higher we rose, the more Giselle calmed down.

“This is so unbelievable, Cas,” she shared with laughter. Her eyes were bright and sparkled with happiness. She looked like a little kid, and I wondered, not for the first time, how often her late husband had done things to surprise her and bring this look of awe to her face.

“It’s so peaceful up here,” she remarked.

“It truly is. Rising above all the limitations that people put on us,” I stated quietly.

She turned to look at me and placed her hands on either side of my face. Pressing her lips against mine, she stated, “Thank you.”

---