Chapter 8 Wren Go Skydiving
Wren: Go Skydiving
“This is pointless. I know what they’re going to say,” Arthur said, pressing his foot to the gas pedal so begrudgingly it was a miracle they were moving at all.
“If you don’t quit complaining, we’re going to need to start talking about consequences.”
“Consequences?”
Wren was getting annoyed at Arthur’s incessant pessimism.
She knew what Google would say, but there was no harm in asking, just in case they got a lenient instructor who might be willing to let a few things slide.
She’d even sign a special waiver promising not to sue, if she had to.
Come to think of it, she wasn’t so sure a lenient skydiving instructor who wasn’t super concerned with doing things by the book would be a good idea.
But this is why nothing good ever came of thinking before doing.
She needed something to shut him up.
“I propose that if we refuse to do something we pull from the bucket list—or if one of us is overly naggy about it—that we give up our naming rights.”
“For the baby?!”
“No, for your penis. Of course the baby.”
“Absolutely not, that’s crazy. Besides, we’ve never talked names. How do you know we won’t just agree?”
She smirked. “You won’t agree with mine.”
“Oh God. What are you thinking?”
“Not telling.”
“Wren, you’re scaring me. This is an innocent child you’re talking about.”
“You’ll never guess in a million years.”
She’d gone full Rumpelstiltskin on him.
“What if I don’t agree to your terms?” he asked skeptically.
“I’m the mom. I can tell them whatever I want on the birth certificate and they’ll just write it. No one will even ask you.”
She had him there, and he knew it. His only choice was to placate her.
“Look, fine. I agree. I’m just saying, not nagging, just saying. There are better uses of our time when a quick Google search will tell you that pregnant women cannot go skydiving.”
“What exactly is the problem? If my chute fails to open and I go splat…”
Arthur winced. “Please…”
“…what difference does it make? If I were some childless cat lady, it would be totally fine for me to risk my life. But because I’m some holy vessel now, I suddenly lose all agency?”
She was being snarky on purpose, but there was something about it that annoyed her.
Every day women got beaten, groped, and insulted in every corner of the country, the world even, and no one gave a shit.
No one particularly cared about her when she nearly flunked out of school years after her parents died, for example, and when she had a brief phase of lashing out, getting into fights, smoking, drinking Smirnoff Ice out of paper bags like the world’s frilliest little drunkard.
The only intervention ever suggested was to send her to one of those Scared Straight camps for troubled teens where you sleep in a barn and they throw things at you and spray you with a hose until you agree to shape up.
So the way everyone was suddenly fawning over her protectively now, it made her more than a little ill.
“I’m not making a moral judgment, OK? It’s just the facts,” Arthur said.
“The act of free-falling out of a plane apparently puts a lot of stress on your body, and so Big Skydiving, their lawyers, the insurance companies, I don’t know, whoever, has decided that it’s not a risk they’re willing to accept.
I don’t make the rules, but they do exist for a reason. ”
Wren stroked her chin for effect. “I’ve been thinking a lot about redneck names lately. I think they get a bad rap. Like Skyleigh, now, there’s a good name. Or how about Kennedy with a bunch of random h’s thrown in there? Bri’anne with an apostrophe?”
“Look, we’re here, OK?” He held one hand up as if to say, Don’t shoot, and then returned it to the wheel to make the final turn. “We can ask them and see what they say, if that’s really what you want.”
She unclicked her seat belt with a satisfied hmph as they parked in front of a ramshackle building called Velocity Skydiving.
“But I still don’t understand why we couldn’t do this over the phone,” Arthur added. He just had to get that little comment in there.
“My particular brand of charm and charisma doesn’t translate as well over the phone. Plus, I can’t do this.” She flashed him her best puppy-dog, Disney, Bambi-just-watched-his-mother-die doe eyes.
They parked and walked inside, the door chiming behind them. A preposterously handsome instructor fellow manning the check-in counter flashed them a quick smile, his triceps actively testing the tensile strength of his Velocity Skydiving polo.
“ ’Ello.” And he had an Australian accent to boot, like he was literally made in a lab to be a poster child for adventure sports. “Can I help you?”
Wren stepped forward and gave Arthur a “follow my lead” nudge.
“You can, actually. I just had a question, about the—”
He cut her off. “No.”
“Sorry?”
“The answer is no, pregnant women can’t jump. No, there’s no special waiver you can sign, and no, I can’t make any exceptions.” He smiled again. “You’d be surprised how often this comes up. But, sincerely, congratulations.”
Wren’s face ran hot with embarrassment. It was over, already, before it even began.
She started to look over at Arthur, as if for backup, but stopped herself.
He’d surely be giving her that little look, the half smile with his lips tucked in, I told you so.
She wasn’t going to give up that easily, nor was she going to give Arthur the satisfaction.
She was just inquiring, after all, so who was this guy to shut her down?
Wasn’t she allowed to ask questions? She didn’t know how they did things Down Under, but this was America the last time she checked.
“You have some nerve, sir. I am fat, and I’ll have you know that I’m not ashamed of it. It’s 2026 and I will not adhere to your toxic nineties beauty standards.”
If he looked close enough, even through her shirt, he could probably see the distinct impression of a foot pressing against the inside of her belly. She folded her arms over her stomach just in case it might help.
“Good for you, but, lady, I don’t know what to tell you. It’s policy.”
He wasn’t going to budge, she could tell. The man was confident. And sturdy. But she had just the thing for that.
She tilted her chin down, eyes up, and gave him her best helpless damsel in distress.
It was a good one, too, she could feel it, the muscles around her eyes having been warmed up a few minutes prior.
He didn’t notice, however, not in the slightest, and even walked away to disinfect a pair of goggles.
That left Wren batting her eyelashes at the clock on the wall.
Arthur made his move to pull her away, save her from any further embarrassment, but she dodged his attempt to grab her arm. Wren followed the instructor man down to the other end of the counter.
“Look, let me level with you,” she said. “We could argue back and forth all day about who’s pregnant and who’s not. But the truth is that it’s my constitutional right to jump out of an airplane if I choose to.”
“It’s not.”
“How do you know? You’re not even from here. I’m not trying to be xenophobic, but it’s the truth.”
He smirked, not taking this encounter seriously whatsoever, maybe even enjoying it. “You know two-thirds of Americans can’t even pass the citizenship test? I’ll put my civics knowledge against yours anytime.”
And he was on the move again, shuffling to the other end of the counter to grab a stack of what looked like release forms. Now she was staring at an empty patch of drywall.
Christ, this was humiliating. She knew damn well she couldn’t go skydiving.
Or zip-lining. Or scuba diving or go-karting.
She had even looked up hot-air ballooning, on a whim, but apparently even gently floating around in a large basket was too dangerous.
Couldn’t jump off a diving board, couldn’t drink coffee, couldn’t take a hot bath.
Absolutely anything to protect the baby.
People wouldn’t even look her in the eyes anymore, would they?
The first and only thing they saw was the belly, including Walmart Chris Hemsworth, currently smiling at her.
He didn’t register her as attractive, or as young, or even as a woman, really.
She was just a vessel, and she didn’t matter.
It would only get worse after she gave birth, she knew that much.
How was she supposed to be the best version of herself for this kid if she barely even qualified as an autonomous person anymore?
Wren was out of fight. Right then, she wished Charlie was here. Charlie was never out of fight. She would demand to know where the man kept the parachutes, might even force her way into the back to see them for herself. She would not take no for an answer.
Instead, Wren had Arthur, who was staring at a photo wall of Velocity customers smiling after successful dives and inching ever closer to the door.
Wren felt an overwhelming sense of melancholy.
She mourned the loss of an idea, of being free to fly like a bird and stare death in the face, to be weightless and unhindered by anything at all.
It was a dream she’d had since she was a kid and it had slipped away.
Yeah, she could come back in a few months, when her achy postpartum body was still attempting to realign itself.
Or maybe in a few years when all the babysitting and school schedule stars aligned and she found herself with a free Saturday and a hankering to roll the dice with her life.
Or maybe when she was ninety and it no longer mattered all that much if her chute failed to open. It all felt so hopeless.
And she was looking at Arthur, one toe on the threshold of the exit now, when she came up with an idea.
“Well, what about him?” Wren announced, pointing to Arthur.
“Me?”
“See, that’s no problem. You’re not pregnant, are you, mate?” The instructor winked.
Arthur went ghost white. He looked like he’d stumbled across a Tyrannosaurus rex and was trying to stay completely still to avoid its motion-activated vision. Wren approached him gently and grabbed his hand.
“What do you think?” she said.
“I don’t understand. It was your dream to do this,” he croaked, fighting through dry mouth. “Not mine.”
“Right. And I don’t know if I’ll ever get the chance. If I do, I don’t want to do it alone. So what do you say?”
It wasn’t really about the skydiving, not right here and right now.
She just got to wondering. Would it always feel like this?
Like she was the gas and he was the brakes?
Would it always be her responsibility to bring the fun to their life together, to be the sole source of spontaneity?
There would be times when she couldn’t. She wondered if he would ever be capable of surprising her.
There was something in his eyes as he thought it over. Terror, there was plenty of that. But also a slight flicker of light, a barely visible raise of the eyebrows, that had her thinking that he might actually say yes. He might conquer his fears, right here and right now, because she needed him to.
“I think,” he said quietly, finally, “we should talk about it at home.”
Wren sank. What surprised her was that, for a second, she really allowed herself to believe that Arthur might do something wildly out of character, simply because he loved her that much. It wasn’t a fair thought, she knew that, but it was there nonetheless.