Oakley
Eighteen
Jessie was right. The water is cold as ice, but on such a hot day, it’s a welcome reprieve from the sticky humidity that hangs in the air, especially after the sweat I worked up from hiking and climbing up the rocks.
After jumping from the cliff the first time, I wanted to do it again and again. I must have jumped ten more times, and the group—my friends—encouraged me each time with cheers and hollers.
Levi even jumped a few times with me, holding my hand as we launched ourselves off the steep cliff, never letting go, not even for a second on the way down.
I’m not sure when I stopped tiptoeing around him, but being near him makes me feel like I can suddenly breathe again after months of feeling like I was drowning.
Even so, worry still gnaws at my insides when I consider where to go from here, and that I’m not anxious about what might come of this connection we’re forging.
Something about today, with these people, makes me want to fight for the courage buried deep within me. To grasp onto what little of it I can and wrench it to the surface, so I can start living life the way I want to—emboldened and not constantly searching the shadows for the next pitfall.
I think my “initiation,” as Levi called it, worked wonders.
I’m floating in the water, head tipped back, eyes closed, soaking in the sunshine and the sound of the rushing waterfall, when Jessie calls my name from the shore. I pop my head up, squinting my eyes open and shielding them from the blazing sun with my hand while I tread in place.
“Justin and I are going to hike up to the top of the waterfall! Want to come with?”
Already, soreness has seeped into my bones from the hike and the jumping, my body clearly not used to strenuous physical activity. The water feels too good wrapped around me that I don’t even consider accepting her invitation.
“That’s okay! I’ll just hang here while you go!”
She throws a thumbs up in my direction, and she and Justin disappear around a large boulder where the trail to the top must start. Sighing, I lean my head back again and close my eyes.
This must be what peace feels like. After so long without any semblance of it in my day-to-day life, the feeling is foreign, but not unwelcome. I remind myself again that it’s just a matter of taking things day by day.
The shifting water around me lets me know I’m not alone, and my stomach does a little flip, knowing who it is before my eyes can confirm.
My eyes find him immediately upon opening, almost like my head and heart are searching for him without my body making a conscious effort to do so.
He floats on his back the same as me, his head turned to face me as his piercing green eyes stare right into mine.
“You seem different today.”
I know he picked up on it earlier by the way he seemed to be studying me intensely as I jumped from the cliff.
Normally, I’d shy away from the observation, retreat into myself for fear of what he might see if he looked too closely, but I don’t.
The way he seems to see right through me, right through the walls I’ve erected around my battered heart, fills me with a sense of ease and comfort.
I think it says more about him than it does about me.
“Do I?”
“Yeah. Care to share?”
“Maybe.” I give him a sly smile.
“Maybe…” He repeats the word as if he’s picking it apart in his mind and trying to figure out the way it works. The real meaning behind it.
“Yeah, maybe.” I shrug. “But not today.”
He grins at me, and my eyes trace the lines of his face, noting his tan skin and the dark stubble that outlines his angular jaw.
The way his hair looks even darker and more tousled when it's wet.
I want to run my fingers through it to see if it's as soft as it looks.
The way his pine-colored eyes have a tinge of blue in them, no doubt caused by the reflection of the water.
“Do you think everything that happens in our lives happens for a reason?” I don’t know what prompted me to blurt out the question, but I wait with bated breath for his answer.
He’s quiet for a moment, contemplating. “To an extent, yeah. But I’ve seen too many bad things happen to good people for no reason at all. It’s hard for me to say that those things were meant to be.”
“What if it’s karma? Like someone was really bad in a past life, and the universe is getting back at them for it in this one?”
“I mean, sure, we could talk about karma and how what goes around comes around. But when you go by that logic, you’re actually placing the blame on yourself then, aren’t you?”
“What do you mean?”
“Take my mom, for example. My dad was an asshole. Like, a grade-A asshole. Drank too much, and sometimes he’d hurt my mom. Sometimes he’d hurt me.”
My body goes still, hanging on the edge of a tightrope, waiting for him to continue.
He clears his throat. “Does that mean I was a bad person in a past life and deserved it? I don’t think it does. I think if we blame the bad things that happen to us on karma, it’s just another way of convincing ourselves that it’s our fault.”
“Did it change you?”
He gives me a melancholy look that shakes me to my core. It’s not a new look. It’s always been there, I realize. I just have a name to put to it now. How did I not recognize it before?
“Of course it did. Everything in life does. The trick is being able to recognize that change and decide if you’re happy with how you turned out. You can do that fifty years from now, but there’s no way to turn back the clock. Or…” He trails off, and I nudge him with my elbow.
“Or…?”
“Or you can do it now. Every day. Growth is a part of life. We can resist it all we like, but, in the end, we’re only doing ourselves a disservice by not embracing it. It doesn’t always come easily. I’m still working on it, myself.”
In this gentle moment, among the sounds of nature and the rumble of his voice, a few things are becoming apparent.
Levi is way smarter than I originally gave him credit for.
All of a sudden, I’m back up on that cliff, in the moment before I jumped, where I felt the clutches of fear, heartache, and rejection tearing at my skin and trying to drag me back from the edge.
This time, though, it has nothing to do with my past and everything to do with the man floating next to me, baring his soul like he doesn’t have a shred of worry in the world. Like he wants me to see this part of him.
Because, despite having just met him, I feel like I know him. Like part of my soul knows part of his on some intrinsic level and was just waiting for me to recognize him.
I think I’m falling for him and that scares the shit out of me.
But remember the freedom as you fell?