Chapter Eight #2
Quique slid his eyes to Tyler. “This would be the part where paying attention is super important,” he said and nodded to the group before stepping his boots backward so that his heels were over the edge. Lulu’s stomach lurched in visceral empathy.
He snapped the clamps of his harness open, clipped them together, kicked a pebble over the waterfall, and watched it descend. Then he followed.
Ana-Sofia offered the rest of the directions and double-checked the harnesses on each participant. Once on the ground below, Quique waved to indicate he was ready on belay, prepared to use slack and tension on the guide rope to moderate the rappelers’ descents.
“Who wants to try first?” Ana-Sofia asked.
Tyler’s shoulder twitched. Then his eyes skipped to Lulu and he checked himself.
“You should go ahead,” Lulu urged. “I’ll go after I watch a little.”
Tyler stepped aside. “I’ll wait for you.”
She did not want that. Lulu had decided that if she went, and that was a very big if, she did not want anyone to witness her delay tactics, her terror, or her escape.
Especially not Tyler. Years ago, she had allowed herself to be vulnerable with him, and her openness had only dug a deeper pit for her despair.
Whether she gave it a try or not, today she would win a point for self-reliance.
“No. You go ahead. I’m fine.” With effort, she threw some confidence behind her voice. “I got this.”
He tilted his head, his glance questioning the veracity of her statement, but now she dug her heels in, and she refused to let him see her fear.
Widening her stance, she crossed her arms over her chest. “I’m doing this.
I’ve totally got this.” She stared him down.
“Can’t wait.” It was a little much; she might have tipped over the edge of bluster. But now there was no turning back.
Ana-Sofia gestured to Tyler. “So, you’re first, right?”
“Oh-kay…” With a final check in Lulu’s direction, Tyler marched toward the edge. Ana-Sofia ran through the basics one more time, and Tyler inched toward the lip of the falls. Tyler looked to Ariana’s lens, flashed a thumbs-up, leaned his weight back, and walked himself over the ledge.
The rest of the group raced around to the stairs for a better view, but not Lulu. From the top she couldn’t watch his descent and that was just fine by her. Six minutes and one hundred and fifty feet later, she heard Tyler’s successful whoop. The group cheered their support.
Lulu swallowed the lump that was building in her throat. She knew that when it came to her turn, cheers would not make her feel supported. An elevator would make her feel supported.
Fortunately, before she tortured herself with further mental calisthenics, Gwendy had strapped in. She squatted over the edge like a geared-up menopausal superhero. “Fifty is the new thirty, baby!” she shouted as she dipped below the lip.
And Gwendy was down. Then Bill eased himself over the lip. Then Alejandro. And forty-five anxiety-inducing minutes from when they had begun this twisted idea of fun, Ariana peered her camera over the edge. “Want me to go next?”
Unable to respond with actual words, Lulu nodded her head.
Ariana dropped over, leaving Lulu essentially alone on the apex, her thoughts bearing down on her like deadweight. Bad choice of words, she amended mentally.
Then it was her turn.
As Ana-Sofia tugged on her harness and checked her rope, Lulu felt like a player in a puppet show, costumed ridiculously and knotted up in strings.
Her tongue felt dry and sandy; the effect was so drastic she worried it might be permanent.
Dread moved her feet over the rockface toward the cavernous maw.
The waterfall, which from below had sprinkled like a pleasant mist, rivaled the Niagara from above.
Catching her breath and holding it, she gave Ana-Sofia the tiniest shake of her head.
“That’s normal to be nervous, but don’t worry,” the guide offered kindly. “Quique is down there, on belay, waiting to support you. And your whole group is cheering you on.”
Lulu peered past the rushing curtain. Tiny as Lego people, the six intrepid rappelers gazed up at her, and in truth, their support bolstered her.
She pushed the air from her nostrils. I can do this. She thought of Zoe, of how much she wanted her daughter to grow up to be the kind of person to step out of her comfort zone and try hard things. Lifting her chin, she set her jaw, determined.
Lulu faced Ana-Sofia, who handed her the rope and made a point of double-checking all the safety features.
Then, inching her heels back toward the edge, Lulu tilted her rear over the ledge but kept her weight on her legs, her feet planted on the solid rock of the overhang.
All she needed was to step back. One step.
Suspended in space, she looked down and spotted Tyler…talking to Ariana’s camera.
And every ounce of “I can do this” dropped like a brakeless elevator down through her belly and right out her toes.
It was one thing to go first and disappear over the edge of a cliff, leaving her to stress it out at the top on her own despite the fact that she had insisted, but it was quite another to turn away from her altogether, knowing how she feared this.
Because the fact was, they did know each other.
And despite every drop of water under the bridge, the least he could do after screwing up by deserting her on the trust walk was to watch. Just watch.
Breathe, Lulu. Count to ten. One. Two. And just like that she was back on the tennis court in the moonlight on Bainbridge Island. Tyler, pressing a palm down on her chest, pressing his words into her heart. “I’m here. I’ll always be here.”
But back then, too, he had been looking elsewhere when she had dropped off into the abyss. So absorbed in himself and his fame that there was nothing to spare for her needs. History repeating itself. Her legs tensed with pent-up, pissed-off fury, and in the process, her balance shifted.
Her shoes skittered backward on the gravely ledge.
Suddenly, Lulu was weightless.
Her heart fell through her toes. Her feet clambered for purchase, but she had already slipped off the precipice. She listed, scrabbling, and lurched, falling. Her body careened toward the wall of water.
“Lu!” Tyler’s voice reached her just as the harness jerked her to a halt.
She hung there, her heart rate popping like arhythmic fireworks. “Lulu!” Ana-Sofia called from above. “Are you okay?”
“I’m okay,” she managed, even though it was far from true. Her brain tried to make sense of the wall of water in front of her, the empty space above, below, and around her. The rope swung gently while her heart thundered. But physically, she was unharmed. “Can you…pull me up?”
Lulu did not like the expression on Ana-Sofia’s face.
It was the kind of face that said, That is not something that the laws of physics will allow.
Her heart throbbed against her rib cage and Lulu shivered, soaked from the startling curtain of water that engulfed her.
The mist blurred her vision. No. No, this was not good.
“Well,” the guide hedged. “The thing is, you’re kinda far down there, and the good news is that you have gravity on your side.” That was the good news? Lulu braced. “So you can just take yourself down. You’ve already done the hard part!”
“Or Quique can bring you down.” The guide took Lulu’s nonresponse as agreement. And right before Lulu shut her eyes, she spotted Ana-Sofia giving Quique a winding signal—which Lulu hoped meant “bring her down gently,” but might have meant “this one is a little crazy.”
The sway of the rope and the spray of the water and the wooziness in her belly and the irritation at Tyler Demming, whose fault this all was, conspired in Lulu to bring about a cocktail of humiliation blended with fury.
Lulu had plenty of time to contemplate her predicament as she was lowered, lids shut tight, swaying like a pendulum, the lashing spray of the water hitting her cheeks and the sound of the falls playing in her ears like a torturous melody.
Down she went, slowly, slowly, until at last she opened her eyes as she felt the gentle touchdown of her rubber soles on the gravel, where her new status as survivor of an assisted rappel was lauded with claps from her travel mates and nothing but hollow shame on Lulu’s part.
With practiced efficiency, Quique unclipped her from the horrid contraption.
From behind her, Tyler asked, “You okay?”
She whirled on him. Suddenly, it poured down on her—not only her embarrassment of having failed at this activity that the rest of the crew had conquered so easily, but her shame at allowing herself to be drawn into the comforting clutch of Tyler’s empty promises.
“This,” she said, her eyes pricking with moisture, “is all your fault.” She blinked away her humiliation.
Tyler’s jaw dropped liked he’d been socked in the cheek with a live fish. “My fault?” He looked genuinely affronted, that ass. “What?!”
Color rose in Lulu’s cheeks. “You!” she ranted.
Grunting with frustration, Lulu threw her hands into the air, turned her back on him, and stormed away from the group.
It was one thing to blindfold her and then ignore her, but quite another to ignore her without even having the courtesy to blindfold her first.
“Lu. Come on!” he called after her.
Whipping around to face him again, she lowered her tone.
“You have not changed, you know that? You’re there for you.
You’re there for them,” she said, pointing toward Ariana’s lens and stirring up a gesture that indicated the ever-present audience of Tyler’s followers.
“But you’re not there for me. You never have been.
” Taking a deep breath, Lulu nodded decisively to clarify that the episode was over and done. “And don’t follow me.”