Chapter 23. The Ideal Place to Question Your Life Choices Is 8,000 Feet Above the Ground
Aiden texted me the morning after Evie’s wedding to set up a coffee date, which then turned into a handful of lunches over the next two weeks.
So far, so good: He was delightful, polite, and it didn’t hurt that he had a charming accent.
If there was someone I had to fake being in like with for the next few months, I could do a lot worse than Aiden Cho.
Plus, he was the distraction I needed to stop myself from thinking about Rob, because I couldn’t afford to dig myself a deeper hole by spending more time than I should thinking about him. It would only make it easier for me to fall for him, and I could not fall for Rob Carmichael. For anyone.
It was as simple as that.
At one of the lunches with Aiden, I casually brought up the topic of a bucket list—which I didn’t have, but he did, according to Rob’s dossier—and Aiden got very excited.
He was planning to tick skydiving off his list next, and it was something I’d always been very curious about (although, to quote Jenna, “Why the hell would you want to jump out of a perfectly good airplane?”), so I’d agreed to go on a jump with him.
Today was a rare sunny Sunday, the perfect weather for our skydiving session.
I’d arrived at the drop zone ten minutes before our assigned time, and Aiden was nowhere to be seen.
I pulled out my phone, thinking that I’d let him know I’d arrived, only to find out that my battery was flat.
Before I could even send him a text message, it went completely dead.
I rolled my eyes at myself, then stuffed my phone back in my bag.
The small hangar where we were at was busy, full of other skydivers and the instructors and several long racks of what looked like harnesses on both sides of the hangar.
My pulse was pounding with anticipation, because I’d been checking out (too many) skydiving videos on YouTube to get a feel of what I was committing myself to, and the more I watched, the more excited I was for today’s jump.
I checked in and was given paperwork and waivers to sign, then sat with a group of five other jumpers to go through the safety brief.
Meanwhile, Aiden was still nowhere to be seen.
A feeling of unease crept into me. What if something had happened to him on the way here?
He had no way of reaching me, so he wouldn’t have been able to let me know if he needed help or anything.
And if I wanted to be perfectly honest, the thought of doing the jump on my own, without a friendly face around, felt a bit daunting, no matter how pumped I was.
We were five minutes into the safety briefing when a familiar face dashed in, his frantic gaze searching the area before finally finding me.
Relief took over his face, but before he could come over, one of the instructors stopped him.
I watched as he explained something to the other man, my forehead creasing when I saw him scribbling his signature on the same waiver forms that I’d signed minutes ago.
Why was he here? Where was Aiden?
Rob squeezed into a spot next to me, and I breathed in his familiar, comforting scent. We hadn’t seen each other since his cousin’s wedding two weeks ago, although I’d been texting him updates on things with Aiden.
“Hey.” He scooted closer, leaning down so he was whispering into my ear.
“Aiden called me. He was freaking out, saying over and over again how he couldn’t do this.
Your phone is off, and he couldn’t call to let you know he was backing out of the jump.
So I thought I’d drive out here to take his place and do the jump with you. ”
I whipped my head toward him, my eyes popping wide. “But … why?”
“Something about him being scared of heights, I think.”
“No, I mean … why are you here to do the jump with me?”
He shrugged. “Because I know how much you’ve been looking forward to this, and I didn’t want you to be disappointed that Aiden wasn’t here.”
I stared at him, my mouth gaping open, as the orientation video droned on in the background about the basics of skydiving safety, trying to wrap my head around what he’d just done.
Because this wasn’t something most people would normally offer to do.
My throat felt thick, and my chest felt like it was going to burst into a million confetti pieces of gratefulness.
This man had practically dropped whatever he was doing and gave up his Sunday to hurl himself out of a perfectly fine airplane so I wouldn’t be disappointed.
He did that voluntarily.
For me.
Rob nudged me, his eyes riveted on the safety video. “We should be listening to that.”
It took me another few seconds of gawking at him, before I slowly swiveled my head toward the screen, and yet another few seconds before my brain could process what the video was explaining.
After the briefing was over, we were broken up into smaller groups.
Our instructors explained what the possible risks involved were, what to do if the chute didn’t open and how to deploy the reserve parachute, what to expect during the jump, the free-fall body position, and proper landing procedures.
As the briefing went on, panic began to creep in.
I’d done my research, and I knew that statistically this was supposed to be safer than driving—something about the odds of dying in skydiving to be one in two hundred thousand, while the odds of someone perishing from a motor vehicle crash was one in ninety-three.
But hearing the things that could also happen still pricked my heart with fear.
Then I glanced at Rob, and I could feel my worries quietly fading away. And somehow I knew, that whatever happened, it would all be okay, because he was here with me.
Once the briefing was over, we got fitted with our jumpsuits, harnesses, and goggles. Rob’s face was slowly turning pale, as if the reality of what he was about to do was just starting to sink in.
I leaned over and whispered to him, “Starting to regret coming over?”
“Not at all.” But his ashen face said otherwise.
“You sure you want to do this?”
He turned to me. “Do you want to?”
“Yeah, but not if—”
“Then we’re doing it.” He gave me a firm nod. “Face your fears and all that jazz, right?”
“Okay.” I reached for him and enveloped him in a hug. “Thank you. For giving up your Sunday and doing this with me.”
There was a low chuckle as he wrapped his arms tighter around me. “Always, Kim.”
We stood like that for a few minutes, our arms around each other, as gratitude and affection for this man poured into me.
He’d promised Ellie that I would get my swoony moments.
And this, to me, was one of them.
Rob and I piled into a small plane with four other jumpers and our instructors.
Mine was called Mark, a gray-haired guy sporting a hip man bun.
The small aircraft slowly climbed higher as I sat in an awkward position behind him, while my brain rapidly churned, excitement blending with fear as I questioned my poor life choices.
I could have been standing on solid ground right now, safe and sound, yet I had to go and be all curious about this sport, and here I was. I brought this onto myself.
Almost ten minutes later, we were flying over the gorgeous blue stretch of Port Benedict Bay.
Mark turned to me and made final checks on my harness and goggles, and when the pilot gave us a thumbs-up, one of the other instructors closest to the door pulled it open.
He and his jumper scooted over to the edge of the plane, and when I blinked next, they were both airborne, their loud, unhinged yell piercing the air.
I watched with a mixture of fascination and dread as their bodies became smaller, until they were nothing but tiny dots floating in the sky, and then, a white parachute popped open.
“You good?” Rob yelled at me over the loud drone of the plane. “Ready to do this?”
“I don’t have a choice, do I?” I yelled back.
“You do,” he shouted. “You always have a choice. We’ll tell them you changed your mind. They’ll understand.”
“No. I’m doing this.” No matter how terrified I might be right now. “It’ll be fine. And if it’s not fine, I’ll be dead anyway, so it won’t really matter. If I die, can you tell my grandfather I loved him?”
“You’re not going to die!” He was shaking his head. “I need you to be alive so we can go celebrate after this!”
“What are we celebrating? That we’re still alive?”
“I’ll tell you when we’re on the ground.” He gestured at his instructor, who was now shimmying toward the door.
“Tell me now! I need something to distract me.”
They were almost at the edge of the plane door now.
He grinned. “We have an offer on the house.”
My mouth fell open. “That’s awesome! Congrats!”
“Thanks.” He gave me a thumbs-up. “I’ll see you on the other side.”
With that, he and his instructor were gone. I watched as their bodies floated farther away and their parachute popped open, and relief went through me at knowing that he’d be okay.
Then it was our turn.
Mark must have seen the frightened look on my face because he started yelling some encouragement that totally went over my head, because I was too busy questioning myself and my sanity.
It was worrying how I had willingly surrendered a few hundred dollars of my hard-earned money to fling myself out of a moving airplane, from 8,000 feet above the ground that humans should be walking on.
That I should be walking on. What was I thinking?
What if something happened to me? Who’s going to look after Opa?
“Kim!” Mark was yelling, trying to get my attention over the loud sounds of the airplane and the wind howling in our faces. “You still good to go?”
I only nodded. “It’ll be over in a few minutes, right?”
“It’ll be over in no time. You won’t even realize.”
Sure, especially if I was lying flat on the ground, too busy being dead.
“We’re going in three!”