Total pages in book: 79
Estimated words: 76807 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 384(@200wpm)___ 307(@250wpm)___ 256(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 76807 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 384(@200wpm)___ 307(@250wpm)___ 256(@300wpm)
Okay.
Fine.
Almost no one died skydiving.
But it felt like certain death now that we were all the way up here. I was almost shocked that I didn’t pass out from stress with the takeoff of the tiny little hobby plane.
“It’s go time,” the instructor yelled, reaching out to push my goggles more firmly in place, and giving a nod to Brooks.
“We could turn back,” Brooks called to me.
But no.
No, we couldn’t.
“We got this far,” I said, voice shaking as much as the rest of me.
To that, Brooks nodded to the instructor, then moved us into the doorway, turning us so that he was the one with his back facing out, holding both of us in the opening by the bar over my head.
“I love you, Cali,” he said in my ear, making my heart leap.
Just before he released the bar.
And my heart damn near flew out of my chest as the world bottomed out below us.
I was thankful then, as we first started to fall, that I wasn’t behind Brooks, because I was pretty sure I would have made him deaf with how long and loud I screamed.
Slowly, though, it was like my body just… accepted the fall, seeing as there was nothing it could do.
Almost at the same time, Brooks’s hand went to the lever, and we were jerked upward as the parachute flew open, slowing our descent.
It was terrifying and electrifying and the biggest feeling of being alive I’d ever experienced.
It was over so soon, our legs running across the ground, but we ended up tumbling anyway, landing in a mass of tangled limbs, hearts pounding, blood rushing.
Brooks reached to release the harness, giving me the freedom to roll my body over his. “I love you too,” I told him, feeling it down to my bones before I sealed my lips to his.
We were interrupted, though, by the instructor walking up to us, his hair wind-mussed, looking like he’d just taken a casual stroll, not dropped out of a plane.
“You did it,” he said, beaming at me.
And, hell yes, I had.
I’d slowed down a little on the frantic attempts to scratch everything off my bucket list. It was still a goal of mine, to get through it all.
This time, though, I was happy to share the experiences with Brooks. Even if he wasn’t super interested in whatever the task was, he was right by my side, a happy participant, often urging me to overcome my fears, finding the freedom on the other side of it.
Sometimes, I wasn’t even aware I was ticking off a bucket list item. Like the time I was pulled over for speeding and found myself arrested, fingerprinted, had mug shots taken, and was tossed into a cell, my heart in a free fall the whole time. I sat there in that cold holding cell, thinking about how I needed to call Brooks, how he would get me out of this.
Only to have him walk up an hour or so later, smirking, and holding a picture frame where he had my mugshot and fingerprints framed.
Because it was all a hoax.
To get that item off my list.
Yeah, I did still had my concerns about the fact that every member of my family had passed before their time, that maybe the same fate would belong to me one day.
Now, though, I had lots of other things to think about.
Good things.
Happy things.
I wasn’t so afraid anymore.
Brooks - 6 months
“I still see the blank spot,” I said, squinting at the Christmas tree we’d put up two weeks before.
I’d never considered myself much of a decorator before. I guess because I never had my own place to get ready for the holidays. I hadn’t anticipated how much I would enjoy shit like walking down the aisles in the store, deciding a color scheme for the house, then spending endless hours making our vision a reality.
But the tree.
The damn tree.
I just couldn’t seem to get the lights how I saw them in my head.
“I think you’re just looking at it too hard. I don’t see any blank spots,” Cali said, bringing two steaming mugs of hot chocolate loaded with mini marshmallows into the living room, handing me one as she stood next to me, head tilting side to side, trying to find the spot I was hyper focusing on.
“I think this might just be my version of decorating the porch,” I decided, remembering her frantically arranging and rearranging it for days on end because it just never quite felt right.
To be fair, it was our first holiday together.
In our home together.
We’d opted on buying a townhouse just a few doors down from Colson, one of the OG club members. Mostly, we went that route because neither of us were really all that invested in the idea of lawn and garden maintenance, and the townhouse meant that someone else dealt with that.