Page 1 of My Fearless Fake Fling

One:

“I can’t do it!” I yelled against the rushing of air, making it hard to hear myself, let alone hoping for anyone else to hear me. The roar was deafening, my eardrums ready to explode at this elevation.

“You sure?” asked my instructor, a sweet, pretty woman much braver than me. “I got you!” she yelled back.

For my answer, I pressed my body against the solid wall of the plane, opposite the open space.

“Whatever.” The other instructor, Lennon, grumbled loudly and leapt out through the door with his client strapped to his body, on the count of three.

My instructor began to unstrap me, having her pinned between my tensed body and the cold metal wall, because how the other instructor and his client jumped, that was supposed to be how Lacy and I jumped before I chickened out yet again.

The fourth time I’d paid to jump out of a plane. Zero times completed. Zero. Zip. Zilch.

Once unhooked, and with the door shut, Lacy, able to talk quieter now, patted my arm. “It’s okay. We’ll get ’em next time.”

I hated disappointing Lacy. And she didn’t have to tell me of her disappointment, no—the look on her face said it all. The same look she wore after failed jumps two and three as well.

Apparently, not after jump one. She’d been used to people backing out on the first attempt. But I owned a special kind of cowardice. The outright humiliating kind. The kind that so stunted your life you felt like other people could pick up on it from just a glance. Average height, cute outfit, coward.

Exactly as Brian had insinuated, well, it would be a year ago, now. A nice restaurant, wine, a beautiful night. I thought with the stage set, he’d been ready to propose. Instead, he’d crushed my future plans by breaking up with me. He’d been kind about it. At least, as kind as he could be under the circumstances. In his words, I’d grown boring. Set in my rituals. And he’d been right. I used to be a braver girl when we’d gotten together. I mean, I’d never been an adrenaline junkie or anything as extreme as that. Still, he knew the day it all stopped.

Brian had been nice, and in the beginning, he’d tried to help me move on. But I’d become stunted. He’d said he had dreams of adventures the two of us would share together, but after two years, he realized that dream was never going to come true. So he had to change his dream. And although he still loved me, that new dream didn’t include me.

Like an idiot, I held on to the hope that he’d change his mind, that his leaving was a chance for me to get my act together so we could continue on with our lives, but maybe I’d be able to get some of that old Kami back.

Yeah, I held on to that hope until his facepage status update told his friends, which at least online I’d still been considered, that he’d sold off everything he could sell, turned in the keys to his apartment, and bought his ticket to Argentina. Brian had pretty much fallen off the social media radar after that, too busy backpacking across a country. As his ex, I no longer rated an email or phone call which sucked, because I still wanted to know how his travels were going.

I heard from mutual friends, who did rate that call or email and felt like it had been long enough since our breakup to discuss Brian with me again, that he was happy. Met a girl from New Zealand not long after he landed, and they’d been adventuring together ever since.

Once I heard about him leaving, I decided to try to regain my bravery. It took me until six weeks ago, when I heard about New Zealand girl, to actually act on said decision. Every pay period I plunked down my three hundred dollars determined that this would be the day.

And I could post my video online for our mutual friends to tell Brian about. So he could see that if he’d only stuck it out a little longer…

Not today.

The plane glided along the runway, breaking. Lacy pulled the door open and stood aside for me to hop out once we’d come to a complete stop. Before I left, I turned to her. “See you in two weeks?” I offered.

“Kami, I feel bad about taking your money. I think maybe we should part ways.”

“No. I got this.”

“I don’t think you do. I’m sorry.”

So even my diving instructor broke up with me.

Great. Just great.

She took off walking toward the office and I followed a little slower to collect my purse and phone locked in one of the ten guest lockers. We branched off inside the building as she headed to restock the gear, and I stopped in front of the row of lockers to press my temporary code in to retrieve my belongings.

My phone had been blowing up.

Messages. Messages. So many messages alerted me this friend or that friend posted on another friend’s facepage. And they all said essentially the same thing:Congratulations, Brian and Kiki. Of course there were variations with more or less information.

Times like these, I wished we didn’t share the same friends.

I walked back to my car, opened the door to a what could only be considered a sweatbox instead of a front seat, and immediately started the air conditioner to cool it down. Being up in the sky kept me cool, all that wind blowing and high-altitude chill. Back down here on the ground, the weather app on my phone said we were hitting almost ninety. But I refused to complain because it wouldn’t be too long before all this glorious sun became a long, Michigan winter.

With the cool air blowing on me from the vent, I decided to torture myself a bit further and see what kind of ring he’d bought her.

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