Chapter 5
five
After coffee with Tripp, I headed back to our office to decompress. I’d peopled far too much over the last twenty-four hours, and all I wanted was silence and a dark room. And maybe a few hours to escape into a fictional world. Unfortunately, Ava was waiting for me at the front door. I didn’t even have time to sit in my car and stare into the void.
“So?” she asked. “How did it go?” She’d never admit it, but she’d been worried I was going to mess this whole thing up. She hadn’t wanted me to be alone with Tripp long enough to sell him on another idea. Especially after I’d already tried to talk her out of it a number of times.
“I’ll be jumping off a bridge in less than two weeks.” I collapsed onto the sofa we kept in the sitting room for casual client meetings. “It went well. Tripp is a nice guy. He does all this in honor of his little brother, Noah, who died of cancer two days after his fifth birthday. The whole family is involved.”
If human irises could actually transform into hearts, Ava’s eyes would’ve permanently melted into that shape long ago. She swooned an actual swoon and sunk into the couch beside me. She had a flair for drama. “Does he rescue kittens and puppies on the weekend, too?”
“Stop,” I said and playfully slapped her arm. “We’re not developing any client crushes, okay? This client may actually get me killed, so I don’t want you getting too attached to them. We should also have Amanda update my will…just in case.”
“And you think I’m the dramatic one? I’ve got nothing on you.”
“Speaking of being dramatic, I need about ten hours where no one speaks to or looks at me. Can you manage without me?”
“I’ve already stocked your room with snacks and tea, and the next episode of Grey’s is queued up for you.”
“The heated blanket?”
“Plugged in and ready to smother you into introvert heaven.” She knew me well.
“Thank you! You’re the best,” I said as I made my exit. “Oh, and don’t let me start doom-scrolling bungee jumping disasters, okay?”
“I’ve already blocked those search terms on your social media and browser settings.”
“Can you do that?”
“Do you think I can do that?” she asked flatly.
“No, but I’ll pretend you can.”
“Good.”
I tossed a grateful smile at my friend and dragged myself up the stairs. True to her word, Ava had loaded my room with everything I needed to hide out for a few hours. Before I dove into my solitude, I pulled out my laptop to do a bit more research into Tripp and the James family. I’d thought our initial deep dive into him and his business had been thorough, but we’d somehow missed the story behind Take the Leap. He’d told me pretty much everything, but I still felt the itch to keep learning more. I chalked this up to plain old curiosity about a new client and my desire to do the best we could for them. There definitely wasn’t any other motivation behind my inquisitiveness. Nope. None at all.
It took a little digging, but I was able to uncover the early news articles on Take the Leap’s founding and the James family, which included the photo of Tripp and his sisters skydiving for Noah’s fifth birthday. While the idea of skydiving still scared the crap out of me, I was drawn to the four smiling faces in the photo. If I focused on their smiles, I could ignore the fact that the photo was taken mid-air, a few thousand feet off the ground. Despite everything they were going through at the time, the four healthy James siblings looked as if they’d left every single one of their worries and fears on the plane they’d just leaped out of. And if I didn’t overanalyze the photo, I could, for a second or two, see why this had become their thing.
But not overanalyzing wasn’t something I was capable of doing. I overanalyzed everything. My brain never stopped. I was like an internet browser with a thousand tabs open. After enjoying their happy faces in the photo for less than two minutes, my mind jumped to the possibility that the James parents could’ve lost all of their children in a matter of days. Imagine if their four oldest kids’ parachutes had failed. Didn’t they think about that before they stupidly jumped out of a plane? How did people do this? How did enough people choose to skydive to sustain the hundreds of companies dedicated to the sport? Was it even a sport?
Before I could delve into an internet rabbit hole of skydiving research, I slammed my laptop shut and shoved it aside. Despite my plans to use this time to unwind, I’d spent my first hour of solitude doing what I do best—obsessing. At least it hadn’t been on my life dangling at the end of a bungee cord, but now that was all I could think about. I’d started to look up Tripp James Bungee Jumping just before I’d closed my computer. That was a path I didn’t need to take tonight.
I hit play on the episode Ava had queued up for me and tried to shift my focus away from our new client and let myself get completely sucked into Meredith Grey’s ridiculously dramatic life. Ten minutes in, I realized that any attempt to distract myself was futile. My brain refused to let go of Tripp, Take the Leap, and my impending doom. Just as I was about to give into temptation and start researching all the ways the bungee cord could fail, my phone rang with an incoming video call. I groaned. My brother couldn’t just text like a normal millennial. He had a strange affinity for FaceTime.
“Hey,” I answered with very little enthusiasm. But as soon as I saw my brother’s wide grin and dimples, my frustration melted. Ava insisted we had the same smile, but my brother’s had a certain charm to it that I lacked. I hated that it usually worked on me.
“So, bungee jumping, huh?” my brother asked. His smile widened as he tried and failed to hold in his laughter. He swiped at a wisp of brown hair. He was overdue for a trim, and it was forever getting in his eyes. Just like mine did every time I let my bangs grow out. Aside from being nearly a foot taller than me, we really did look a lot alike.
Personality wise, we were polar opposites. He’s a big fan of Take the Leap and a Quest member. His favorite activity to do with the company was parasailing. He went a few times a year, which is how he’d met Liam and Tripp. Through his work on the app, he was able to give Ava and me the heads-up that they were looking for a new digital marketing agency. When I’d told him we were serious about submitting, he’d laughed. As if the idea of his sister helping market a company that was the very antithesis of everything she was was preposterous. Sure, I’d been skeptical about how I’d be able to connect with the brand, but that wasn’t my job. Or at least, it shouldn’t have been my job. My job was to imagine campaigns that would appeal to their target consumers, not people like me. Yet here we were doing the exact opposite and I only had myself to blame.
“Who told you?”
“I had a meeting with Tripp and Liam this afternoon.” The more he talked, the less impact his charm had on me.
“Great,” I groaned, “so are you calling to laugh at me or to remind me just how lame you think I am?”
“Neither actually.” I didn’t believe him for a second. “I was actually calling for something else.”
He frowned. His tone shifted from jovial to serious. Concern flooded over me. I wasn’t going to like whatever he was about to say. “Okay.”
“Dad called me this morning.”
I bit my lip to keep from responding. I let the silence between us linger until he spoke again. But he knew me too well and kept quiet. My throat tightened.
“Can we go back to you laughing at me?” I pulled the phone further away from my face with the hope that he wouldn’t see the hint of tears that formed in my eyes.
“He’s coming to Nashville soon and wants to meet us for dinner.”
“Did you tell him to go?—”
“I told him we’d love to,” Seth said, cutting me off.
“You answered for me?” Unbelievable.
“He said you weren’t answering his calls or returning his texts.”
“Perhaps that’s because I don’t want to talk to him.” Or because I had his number blocked. It’s hard to say.
“He’s coming to town anyway.” Seth carried on as if I hadn’t said anything. Our conversations were often like this—both of us having a one-sided conversation without the other person’s involvement. “Dinner is the least we can do.”
“Well, I think that’s the night I’m bungee jumping.”
“I haven’t told you the date, yet.”
“Doesn’t matter, I’d rather jump off a bridge than share a meal with Brett.” I couldn’t even bring myself to call him Dad . He hadn’t earned the name or the affection that came with it.
“Great, I’ll pick you up around six, then?”
“I won’t be home.”
“You don’t know the date.”
“That’s fine, I’ll just avoid being home at six every night for the rest of my life.”
“One meal. We haven’t seen him in over a year.” Which was also the last time Seth had surprised me with a dinner with him. This was becoming a pattern.
“Whose fault is that?”
“And it’s almost our birthday, which means it’s also?—”
“I know what it means, and I don’t want to spend that day or any day with the man who spent our entire lives blaming us for it and then left us to be raised by his mother.” With that, I ended the call and flopped backward. So much for spending the rest of the day as a recluse. I pushed myself up and got off the bed.
“Do we have any whiskey left over from New Year’s?” I asked Ava as I sulked down the stairs. We didn’t usually keep liquor in the house, but we’d hosted a New Year’s Eve gathering for our clients a few months ago.
“Maybe?” Ava answered. “Why? Did Seth call?”
I raised my eyebrows at her. “What do you know?”
“Nothing.” She answered too quickly.
“Lying liar who lies. When did you talk to Seth?”
“While you were meeting with Tripp. I called him to get access to the beta test for the app. He may have mentioned something about he who shall not be named.”
“Did he mention when?” Ava shook her head. “I don’t know what makes him think he can just spring this on me. It’s just rude.”
“Do you want to talk about it?” she asked, already knowing the answer.
“No, I want to continue avoiding him and everything he brings up.” Ava followed me into the kitchen and watched as I searched the cabinets for any remaining whiskey. When I came up empty-handed, I settled for a Diet Coke and a stack of Oreos. I handed her the rest of the package of cookies and leaned against the counter. “It’s like he knows the exact wrong moment to re-insert himself into our lives.”
“Is there ever a right moment?” She twisted open an Oreo and scraped off the cream. She handed it to me. I scraped the cream off two of my cookies and stacked them on top of the cream she’d given me. Then I handed her my remaining cookie pieces. She was the cookie to my cream—decent apart but perfect together. This was one of the reasons we were best friends. We’d sat next to each other one random lunch hour in elementary school. She’s had a pack of Oreos, and I’d watched in absolute horror as she scraped off the cream and set it aside. When she caught me staring at her wide-eyed, she’d asked if I wanted it. We’ve been inseparable ever since. I may be hard to love, but give me sugar, and I’ll be as loyal to you as I am to myself.
“No, I suppose there isn’t.”
“What makes this moment the exact wrong one, then?”
I considered her question for a moment before answering. I could lie and tell her that all moments were wrong, and this one wasn’t any more special, but we’d both know that it wasn’t. “With the new client and this whole challenge thing, it just feels like I’m already opening myself up to more vulnerability than I’m comfortable with.”
“That’s fair, but let me say something without you freaking out,” she said and handed me another round of cookie cream. “Maybe that makes this the best time.”
I knew why she’d believe that. Ava was an optimist. She was kind and forgiving and always looking for the one tiny flicker of brightness on the darkest of nights. It was another reason we worked well together. I was the doomsday queen. I’d find the one dark spot on a sunny summer day and burrow myself in the cool darkness.
But that didn’t mean I agreed. “No,” I answered flatly, “he decided he didn’t want to be my dad a long time ago. I’ve accepted it and everyone else needs to, too. Including him.”
I scrapped the cookie crumbs off the counter and into my hand, dumping them in the trash on the way to my office. Along the way, I picked up the pair of shoes Ava had discarded in the hallway and straightened the Nashville skyline painting that refused to hang right.
“You know you’re going to have to deal with this one day, right? Seth won’t let you give up on him.”
“Probably not, but he also can’t force me into a relationship with Brett.” I tucked my legs beneath me as I sat down at my desk. “Can we please talk about bungee jumping or something else. Anything.”
“I printed out a list of all the adventures on Take the Leap’s website. I figured we could rank them from best to worst. That way you don’t go into each planning session blind. Or maybe we could just go ahead and pick your next four?”
“No,” I said, “I can’t handle the mental gymnastics. What if we just cut them all up and drop them in a jar? Then after we complete one, we draw the next one. But use this list from Tripp, instead. He added a few that weren’t on their website.” I pulled the list from my pocket and passed it to her.
“Can you handle that? You’d have no control.”
She knew me too well. “Probably not, and I reserved the right to change my mind, but I also know I can’t sit across from Tripp and outline my impending doom four more times. I’m afraid I’ll let him talk me into something worse each time.”
“Because of his seductive blue-grey eyes or his megawatt smile?” Ava teased.
“Neither. Both. I don’t know. Maybe he has another long-dead relative that he camps on cliffs for. You know where they tie a tent to the side of a cliff and sleep in midair.”
“Or maybe you think he’s cute and want to try something even scarier than skydiving?”
I scoffed. “I cannot think of anything scarier than that.”
“Dating.”
I gasped, feigning horror. “That’s not scary, that’s just downright terrifying.”