Chapter Fourteen #3
Bill sailed off after his wife, then Ariana. Alejandro gestured for Tyler next.
Tyler’s eyes flashed to hers. “You should go next.”
A sudden bout of second thoughts hit her. “You go ahead. I’ll take up the rear.”
Slow and steady, Tyler shook his head. “I’m not gonna leave you here,” he stated matter-of-factly. “If you go, I’ll follow. And if not, we can head back down together on the tram.”
Tyler gave her a deep stare, the kind that excavated tunnels through her insides. With a stubborn set of his jaw, he said, “We’re sticking together. You go, and I’ll follow right after. Or neither of us goes. You choose.”
Lulu clamped her jaw and breathed through her nose. She knew if she intended to brave this, which she did, now was the time to go all in. So she put her chips on the table.
“Alright. Let’s do this,” she said. “Let’s go.”
“Really?” His expression brightened like he’d won a car on a game show. “Really? Okay!”
Javier, who had been observing the negotiations, now offered a hand to help Lulu up to the platform.
For what seemed like an hour but probably was only thirty seconds, Javier clipped her trolley to her harness, checked her handholds, reminded her how to wiggle the trolley to brake, and how to use her gloved hands to pull herself backward on the cable if she got stuck on the line due to too little momentum, which she sincerely doubted would be a problem considering all the guacamole she’d consumed of late. “Ready?” he asked.
Ahead of her, the cable seemed an impossible answer to a math word problem.
If you travel thirty miles per hour for two hundred feet on a zip wire across a jaw-dropping mile-high abyss, how thick does the cable need to be to ensure you don’t die?
Lulu certainly hoped the engineers had done their homework.
“Ready,” she heard herself say. I can do this. I can do this, her brain repeated.
“I’m right behind you,” Tyler said.
And then, Javier was counting down. “Three. Two.” And he pushed her off the platform.
She had little time to be indignant that he hadn’t said “one,” because her body was already flying. The plunge in her belly was nothing like the sensual swoop she felt minutes earlier under Tyler’s gaze. This was more of a puke swoop.
Screwing her eyelids shut, Lulu panted through her pursed lips, bringing herself into a dizzy downturn.
The air rushed past her in a whoosh, tugging at her shirt and whipping her hair against her cheeks.
In the distance, she could hear shouts, but they made no sense to her addled brain.
Daring to squint through her lashes, Lulu caught sight of Carolina, the guide on the far platform, waving her arms in a wild gesture.
Lulu panicked. Wiggle your legs and spread your arms?
Wiggle and spin backward and use the gloves, hand over hand, to brake?
Kick-step, clap, and turn? What was it she was supposed to do?
But her contemplations came to an abrupt stop when her momentum pushed her past Carolina’s arms, propelled her forward, and slammed her into a giant blue mat, designed, she imagined, to stop the senseless freefall of terror-stricken individuals like Lulu.
Ariana flicked off her helmet cam. “I’ll just delete that, okay?” she said while Carolina looped an arm under Lulu’s and began unhooking her from the torture contraption, aka fun experience.
“I’m fine. I’m fine,” Lulu said. Physically, sure. Emotionally, put her in a skillet and call her scrambled. Lulu sunk down right there on the metal grate of the platform and put her head between her knees, disappointed with herself.
Taking deep breaths, she filled her lungs and tried to still the trembling in her limbs.
The buzz of the cable grabbed her attention, and she looked up in time to see Tyler’s graceful dismount.
If she were to type “elation” in a Google image search, his face would be the first hit.
But when he caught sight of Lulu, his expression fell.
“Are you alright? Are you hurt?”
“Nope. Not hurt. I’m fine. I’m fine. Fine.” Perhaps repeating it would make it so.
Tyler squatted beside her. He rested a hand between her shoulder blades. “You look a little pale.”
“Uh…” she stalled, catching her breath. “I think…” Her words wobbled. “I think I’m good on this zip-lining thing. I think I can call it good now.” Embarrassed at the attention, she blinked the stinging wetness from her eyes.
Dammit. She had done it. Pushed herself to try something really hard and scary and now look at her.
She was shaking and nauseated. And even though she had promised herself she wouldn’t let her fears hold her back, Lulu really did not think she could strap herself into that contraption and fly again.
Javier zipped onto the platform and unclipped. “Hey, superstar,” he said to Lulu. “How’d that go?”
“Good.” Lulu tipped her head to the guide and gave a decisive nod. “I think I’m done now.”
Javier exchanged concerned looks with Carolina. She nodded in agreement and zipped down the next run, but Javier remained. He sent Gwendy, Bill, Ariana, and Alejandro on their ways and then kneeled down to where Tyler sat with Lulu.
A stream of words sputtered from Lulu’s lips. “Okay. So. I’m gonna go back to the tram, if that’s okay. I’m just done. And. Sorry. But I can’t—”
“So…” Javier drew the word out. “Here’s the thing. You are on the other side of the valley now, and zip lines, well, they work with gravity. What I’m saying is, you can’t zip back up from here to the tram.”
“How am I supposed to get down then?” Lulu asked, honestly perplexed.
Tyler, as gently as he could, said, “Zip?”
“No.” Lulu dug her heels in. “That’s not gonna work.”
Lulu could have knitted a cardigan during the pause that followed.
At last, Javier said, “There is another way. A maintenance trail.” He scrutinized Lulu, maybe hoping she would crack, change her mind.
“We use it to carry supplies or do repairs, but it’s long and steep, and it could take a couple hours for you to get down. ”
“Sold,” Lulu said, without a second’s hesitation. She began to unbuckle her harness. “Maintenance trail. Got it.”
“First of all, leave that harness and the helmet on. Easier than carrying them. And also…” Javier cut his eyes toward Tyler. “For safety reasons, it’s best if you don’t walk back alone.”
“I told you I’d stick with you.” Tyler tilted his head to hook Lulu’s eyes. “You wanna walk down? Then I wanna walk down.”
Her gratitude and relief were palpable. Javier, in a hurry to catch up to the rest of the group, handed an extra walkie-talkie to Lulu.
“In case of emergency,” he said. And he clipped himself into the line.
“Listen. If you change your mind, when you’re about two-thirds of the way down, you’ll see a raised platform where you can access the zip lines and jump on the last one.
We run these tours one after another, so another group’s guide will be there to help you if you decide to give it another try. ”
Sure, her nod said. When pigs fly, hell freezes over, and the Seahawks take the Super Bowl. Sure. She’ll be excited about it.
Javier gestured below the platform. “The trail starts right there,” he called as he zipped off to join the tour.
Left to their lonesome on a cloud-draped mountain in the middle of the Costa Rican jungle, Lulu considered her situation. The wind bit at her skin and the scent of about-to-rain hung in the air.
Beside her, his hair tempest-tossed, his limbs at ease, Tyler crouched on the metal platform grate. His eyes were trained all-too-wistfully on Javier’s departing form. He turned, feeling her eyes on him, and shifted his expression into a ready smile. “Let’s hike.”