“I guess not,” he said. He slid me a sideways glance. “Does that mean this is your last great summer for adventure?”
“I hope not,” I answered. “But I want to fit in as many adventures as I can, just in case.”
“Sign me up,” he said. “I feel like I already wasted too much of this summer on lame business stuff. Maybe I should amp up the next month to make up for it. Speaking of which . . .”
“Yeah?” I asked, mustering my last bit of energy to crack an eye open again.
“Don’t you owe me some skydiving?”
“Are we going to do that for real?” I asked.
“Oh, I don’t know. It depends on what you’re doing on Thursday afternoon.”
“Thursday as in two days from now?” I asked, suddenly alert.
“Yeah. My buddy Cujo will take us up from the Perris Airfield for a jump if we want to go.”
I shot bolt upright, wide awake. “Cujo?”
“It’s a Marine thing.”
“Thursday?”
“Uh-huh. Unless, you know . . . you’re scared,” he taunted.
“Them’s fighting words,” I said.
“So you’re going to jump?” he asked.
“It means I’m definitely not going to miss a chance to push you out of a plane.”
He grinned. “I’ll tell him we’ll be there.”
I tried not to stare at his flashing dimple, but he caught me, anyway. His gaze narrowed and he leaned toward me, but a sudden stomach flip propelled me to my feet.
“Time to go out again,” I said. “I didn’t think I’d be ready so soon, but I guess I don’t need as much recovery time now. I must really be building up my endurance and all, which is good because that’s what I wanted to do. I mean, that’s why I’m out here almost every day. And to practice stuff and everything. The waves still look good, so that’s—”
“Ashley?” Matt said, climbing slowly to his feet.
“Yeah?”
“You’re chattering.” And he swooped down for a quick kiss on the lips. “It’s really cute,” he said, then grabbed his board and started back toward the water. “Last one in has a really big crush on the other!” I scooped my board up and headed out at a dead run, splashing in until the waves were waist high before I turned around to grin at him.
He waded up slowly, his dimples flashing again. “Guilty,” he said. “So very, very guilty.”
* * *
Hanging out with Matt meant accepting that time seemed to compress and warp around him. One minute we were joking around in the ocean and the next, I was staring from the open door of a jump plane cursing myself for ten kinds of fool. I know there was a day and a half in between where we sat together in Institute one night and watched a movie at his house the next, but somewhere along the line, I blinked and Thursday afternoon appeared.
I’m not afraid of heights, but peering out into the open space below, I discovered a sudden fear of skydiving planes. And skydiving. I ran over the instructor Leon’s directions in my mind for the millionth time, reviewing the sequence for jumping and landing. Especially landing. I really wanted to get that part right. Matt caught my expression.
“Whoa, are you okay?” he asked.
I nodded. “Just nervous.”
He moved next to me and reached down to take my hand. I tried not to flinch, knowing my palms were disgustingly clammy. “It’ll be fine,” he said, giving my hand a squeeze. “And you don’t have to do this. You can just stay in the plane and land with Cujo.”
I whipped my head around to glare at him. “The only way I’m getting off this plane is if I jump,” I said. “But I’m trying hard not to think about the details.”
“Think about this, then. It’s one of the coolest things you’ll ever do, and you’re jumping tandem with an instructor who’s got a perfectly clean record, okay? Nothing bad will happen.”
I nodded, distracted by the clinking of Leon’s buckles and rings as he went through a final gear check.
“You ready?” he called over the wind whipping past him from his post at the gaping door.
I nodded.
“Let’s do this!” He waved me over and went through a double check. Or maybe it was quintuple check. I’d gladly let him check ten more times if it meant being sure every strap held.
Once he had tethered me to him with an industrial strength clamp, he maneuvered us to the edge of the plane. I kept one hand wrapped tightly around the cargo netting right next to the door. “The more you think about it, the less likely you are to do this,” he shouted over the wind. I nodded but kept my hand where it was.
I watched the other guide, Bruce, tethering to Matt. When he had cinched and locked everything to his satisfaction, Matt grinned over at me. “You scared?”
I nodded.
“Don’t be!” he yelled. “Just think of it as a giant metaphor for our relationship!”
And even as I shouted, “What does that mean?” he and Bruce disappeared in a free fall from the plane.
“Ready?” Leon shouted.
Numbly, I nodded. I heard him counting down in my ear, but the reality didn’t set in until at his hollered command, I flexed my knees and flung myself out into the screaming wind.
* * *
“Whoo hoo!” The adrenaline-fueled exclamation tore from my throat, and I couldn’t hold it back if I wanted to. Sitting in Matt’s FJ Cruiser, waiting for our turn at the drive-thru window, I felt the memory of that dive flood my bloodstream again and a full body “Whoo-hoo” was the only way to let it out.
“Was it worth it?” Matt asked.
“Totally!” I grinned and flopped my head against the seat. “That was the most amazing thing I’ve ever done. I totally understand adrenaline junkies now.”
“Yeah, it’s pretty incredible,” he said.
“It makes me want to go again,” I said. “And again and again and again.”
“I know. That was only my second jump. I want to get enough experience so I can jump on my own, without an instructor. Wouldn’t that be awesome?”
“Yeah,” I said. “I’m too chicken to go by myself yet, but I totally see why you’d want to.” I dropped my head back against the seat while the car inched forward in line. “I kind of want to try all this other stuff I’ve seen now.”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know. Maybe cliff diving. That sounds fun, right?”
He shook his head again. “I don’t think so. I guess it depends.”
“On what?”
“On whether I have a wife and kids waiting for me after the jump. There are just certain risks I wouldn’t take if I had a family to worry about.”
“Naturally.”
He tilted his head toward me. “You say it like it’s a bad thing,” he said.
“No, it’s just common sense—I know that. It makes my point about marriage, doesn’t it?”
“Which is?” He inched the car forward in line.
“You know . . . that there’s a lot of things you don’t get to do anymore because you’re tied down.”
He mulled that over while he stared at the shrubs outside the car window. “I thought you meant it would you hold you back from a financial point of view when we talked about this before.”
“That too, but then there’s all the stuff that responsible adults don’t do when they have families that are no big deal when they’re single.”
“Like cliff diving?”
“Exactly,” I said, distracted as I tried to peer around him to the window in hopes of spotting our food.
He shifted slightly, letting his broad shoulders block my view. “Here’s the thing,” he said. “I don’t think if you found a place tomorrow and said, ‘It’s the best cliff-diving spot in the world,’ that I would do it. Our area authority gave a talk about this last year in stake priesthood session and I’ve never forgotten it. He said that it isn’t right for us to treat our bodies like disposable playthings in the search for an adrenaline high.”
&n
bsp; I quirked an eyebrow at him and he flushed. “Sorry,” he muttered. “I didn’t mean to preach.”
“It’s not that,” I said. “I just hadn’t thought about that before.”
He shrugged. “I think there are certain things that are fun with low risk if you know what you’re doing or go with someone who does, like skydiving and surfing. And I think there are things that I can’t justify. The one time I went against my own better judgment, I learned the hard way not to be an idiot.”
“You mean the BASE jumping?”
“Yep. When it took me out of commission for eight weeks and I suddenly couldn’t work or teach my surf students or anything, I felt kind of like a jerk for chasing a thrill instead of thinking about the consequences.” He hesitated, then added, “I guess I saw it as being selfish to worry so much about having fun that I didn’t really think about others, and I’ve tried to avoid that since.”
I squirmed uncomfortably in my seat, telling myself his reprimand wasn’t directed at me. I didn’t have a bunch of crazy items on my list. As matter of fact, now that skydiving was out of the way, I didn’t having anything remotely risky left to cross off. And yet, I felt a nagging sense that some people, like maybe Matt, might see the whole list as selfish. I thought about that while Matt paid for our dinner and reeled in the white paper bags full of fried heaven.
The List was the opposite of selfish, really. The whole point was not to become some empty shell of a married woman all riddled with resentment and regret over things I never got to do. I didn’t want to be raising kids and seeing them as obstacles to my happiness. Regret over missed opportunities would lead to that. Feeling so strongly about that had led to this six-year quest to finish these items one by one.
Even the ones you outgrew? a little voice whispered to me. You don’t really care about being a movie extra, but you won’t take it off The List. How does that fit your theory? The truth was I didn’t know anymore. I mean, what if ten years from now I watched some movie with my kids and I thought to myself, How cool would that be, to be on a movie set, just as a fly on the wall? And what if that morphed into, I could totally do that if I didn’t have kids. And what if that planted a little seed of resentment that took root and grew with every sacrifice I had to make because I had kids? I didn’t want to live with that, to be as worn down as Leila, run ragged by her kids, stressed by her finances, and bitter as she watched life pass her by. I didn’t even want to be like Juliana, finishing her education as time and life allowed, always a last priority.
The List represented an insurance policy, a guarantee that I exorcised every bit of the wanderlust and thrill seeking out of my system. I’d seen too many things pass Leila and Juliana by to think it wouldn’t happen to me if I wasn’t careful.
“Where’d you go?” Matt asked softly, breaking into my reverie.
“Off in my head,” I answered.
“Anywhere interesting?”
“Not really.”
He nodded and handed me my food. I dug into the greasy paper bag and fished out the best french fries in Southern California, but even their salty goodness couldn’t dispel my sudden funk. I needed a bigger distraction.
“Are you still going to Institute tonight?” I asked.
He nodded. “Are you? Or are you too tired?”
“I’m the opposite of tired. I’m kind of wound up, to tell you the truth.”
“Adrenaline?” he guessed.
“Maybe. It’ll be good to get out on the waves tomorrow and work some of it out. What time do you want to surf?”
“I can’t in the morning,” he said. “What about after lunch?”
“No, I’m working a double. Fridays are busy. Do you have lessons tomorrow morning?”
“No, I’m training.”
“For what?”
He reached over to poke me lightly in the side. “Promise not to think I’m lame.”
“I promise,” I said, holding up my hand in my best guess at a Boy Scout pledge.
“Well, one of the other wards in the stake sponsors a triathlon every year, and I need to train more on the biking part, so I figured I’d better get started because I only have two weeks.”
“Why would I think that’s lame?” I asked.
“It’s not a real triathlon,” he said. “It’s just this ward’s thing, and it’s become kind of a tradition, but some people think it’s stupid to spend time training for it when it’s not official or anything.”
“Who thinks it’s stupid?” I asked.
“Derek, for one.”
I decided to keep my opinion about Derek’s ability to judge the relative intelligence of anything to myself. “I say if you run, bike, and swim the standard distance, then it counts. Is it too late to sign up for it?”
“Nah. Like I said, it’s unofficial so the rules are pretty loose. You want to do it?” he asked.
“Yeah, I’ve always thought that sounded fun.”
“You know, if you want to hang out more, you can just say that. You don’t have to do a whole triathlon for me to spend time with you,” he said, his tone longsuffering.
Knowing better than to take him seriously, I gave his arm a solid thwack. “I’m serious. I want to do it.”
“Cool,” he said. “Do you want to train with me too?”
“Maybe not on the swimming because I think I get enough practice while surfing. But the biking and running? Sure, I wouldn’t mind having a partner for that.”
His forehead crinkled in worry. “I’m not taking my own life in my hands because I’m doing another sports-related activity with you, am I? I don’t want to tempt fate. You’re due for another freak accident, right?”
“Look at it this way. This is where you get to prove you’re man enough to hang out with me.”
He snorted. “You’re on.”
Satisfied, I scooped up another helping of french fries. Suddenly they tasted wonderful again.
Chapter 23
“It’s really unfortunate,” I grunted from my crouch over my bike’s handlebars.
“What’s that?” Matt called, several feet ahead of me, as usual.
“It’s unfortunate how many times I ask myself ‘Why the heck am I doing this again?’ when I’m around you. Why, Matt. Why?”
“Because it’s fun!” he yelled over his shoulder.
I spared a thought for my aching backside and silently begged to differ. Stifling a groan, I dug into the pedaling, convinced the last two miles on our return trip were ten times longer than normal miles. When my calf muscles screamed through the last mile, I amended my estimate. It was twenty times longer than a normal mile. I slid off my bike in front of Matt’s house, where he was already waiting. My Jeep sat parked on the road, and a flutter of white paper under the windshield wiper made my heart sink.
I dismounted and twisted over to adjust my sock so I could hide my huge grimace. Then I waddled in my cute (and by that I mean padded like a ridiculous adult diaper and not at all cute) bike shorts over to pluck the offending paper from my car. Sure enough, it was a street-cleaning ticket. I stared at it, not sure I had the energy to howl in annoyance.
“Oh no,” Matt said, tugging it from my hand. “It’s the second Wednesday. I forgot it was street cleaning day. I’m so sorry. Let me pay this for you.”
I took the paper back. “Thanks,” I said. “But that sign probably should have been my first clue.” I nodded my head toward the sign six feet in front of us, clearly indicating the street sweeping schedule. “It’s my fault. I swear I thought I put my common sense on when I got up this morning, but this whole day has been nothing but evidence to the contrary.”
“You mean because . . .”
“Because common sense should have told me to read the sign, and, more importantly, common sense should have told me not to get on a borrowed bike for a two-million-mile bike ride.”
“It was eight miles.”
“Two million, eight . . . same difference.”
“The triathlon is going to
be a fifteen-mile ride. I was trying to start you out easy.”
“Ha!” I said, with an absentminded rub of my bottom. “I think you were trying to kill me.”
“No way. I survived a whole summer with you. Why would I knock you off three weeks before you go home?”
“I don’t know. Maybe you’re trying to knock me out of the triathlon competition.”
“Considering we don’t compete in the same age or gender category?” He shook his head. “I don’t think so.”
“Maybe you should give Louisa back her bike and tell her I never want to see it or her again.” I tried my best glower on him.
“Okay, I’ll give her the message, but you might lose cool points with her.”
“Never mind, then. I like her so I better keep my cool points. Maybe you could just take the bike out back and burn it?”
He laughed. “I have never seen you be such a drama queen.”
“That’s because you didn’t see me my first day out surfing. It takes a week or two for the bellyaching to stop.”
“Great,” he said. “Something to look forward to.”
I grinned. “I am kind of a pain,” I said. “Feel free to drop me as a training partner. It won’t hurt my feelings.”
“Yeah, but then I’ll be hanging out with you less.”
“Derek will be happy. He was complaining the other day that I was cutting into his cuddle time.”
That earned an even bigger laugh and a hug. “Too bad,” he said. “I’m not giving up one second of that.”
I hugged him back. “I’ll stop whining if you promise I never have to ride a bike again.”
“You never have to ride a bike again. Until the day after tomorrow when we take the same route.”
“Deal.”
“Do you work today?” he asked.
“No. Wednesdays are slow so I took it off.”
“Then the rest of your day is open?”
“Yeah,” I said. “Do you have something in mind?”
“I was thinking we could head out to one of my favorite Mexican places for dinner, but it’s more inland and we’d need to leave a little early.”
“Isn’t there a ward activity tonight?”
The List Page 23
