Page 57 of My Fearless Fake Fling

The Fall

Sixteen:

“I can’t do it!” I yelled against the rushing air, making it hard to hear myself, let alone for Len to hear me. The roar rumbled through my entire body, vibrating down to the tips of my booted toes.

“Yes, you can,” Len yelled back. “You’re fearless now.”

“Maybe she can’t,” Lacy, my former jump instructor, yelled to him.

“She can,” Len insisted. “You can, Kam.”

We stood in the open doorway, Len and I hooked together fourteen thousand feet up in the sky. He had one hand braced to the top roller and the other to the door pushed open as far as it could go.

How dare she have so little faith in me? Lacy had been the one to dump me as her jump trainee in the first place.

Lennon believed in me.

I looked over my shoulder at Lacy, “You got your camera on?”

“Yes,” she hollered back.

Well, then. I turned my neck to kiss Len. “Let’s do this.”

He leapt from the plane and I closed my eyes. The wind, I swear, pushed my face flat, rippling the skin around my cheeks. Somehow, he knew I’d closed my eyes.

“Open your eyes, Kami. Baby, you’ll regret it, you don’t.”

What was I doing? He was absolutely right. The biggest fearless moment of my life—I’d jumpedout of an airplane—and I was missing it. Well, not today. No way. No how. I popped my eyes open. The ground rushed up at me, or I rushed down toward it. Like with the bungee jumping, I squealed out of utter delight. If I’d have been able to clap my hands together and singsong, “Hercelese,Hercelese,” I would have.

“Hang on,” Len shouted. We’d maybe fallen for sixty seconds tops when he pulled the ripcord and the parachute sprang from his backpack.

We jolted from our freefall, like hitting the brake on a car really hard, when the chute opened fully. Then we drifted down. Len tugged on handles connected to the parachute, which acted like rudders to direct us to the landing zone.

I lifted my feet before we touched down, a skill I remembered but didn’t think I’d ever use. Once his feet hit ground and he steadied us, I touched grass. The landing took seconds and Len was so graceful. Of course, he did it for a living, but my Spidey senses told me that Len had that kind of first-time grace that instructors raved about.

Lacy landed just after us. “I can’t believe it,” she said. “How’d you get her to do it?” That, I was sure, was directed to Len.

“Kam always had it in her.” He set about unhooking the parachute, and then me from him so he could turn me around to face him. “I’m so proud of you. So darn proud. For the rest of your life, you’ll have today. You’ll know you conquered your fears and jumped out of an airplane.”

“Good job, Kami,” Lacy said to me. “I’m uploading this footage to the site. I’ll send it to you, Len, when I’m done editing.”

“Thanks, Lace.”

After we gathered up the chute, we walked back to the hangar. Len was busy putting away the gear when he asked, “What do you want to do next?”

“I don’t know. Maybe swim with the sharks?”

That got me a huge, boisterous, throw-your-head-back laugh. “I meant today, but I like how you think. That can be arranged—for us to swim with sharks. I got a friend who runs a boat out of Isla Mujeres. He’ll totally hook us up.”

“What about Iceland?”

“We’re still going, destination Iceland for the wedding, remember? After, though, Meredith and Brandon are adventure junkies, so they pretty much do whatever I put on the schedule. And September is the best month to swim with the whale sharks. That’ll give us plenty of time. Besides, that side of the world…” He stopped, like to think. “Ever thought about climbing to Machu Picchu?”

“Like the Incan city, Machu Picchu?”

“No, like the burger joint, I’m starved—yes, the Incan city.”

I unzipped the jumpsuit and stepped out, handing it off as I thought about it. Me at Machu Picchu? “I do like burgers,” I answered instead.

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