“When I said I would see you later.” He looked in her eyes. “Was I lying?”
Julia pressed her lips together, then smiled. She rested a hand on his chest and he felt his blood leap at her touch. She shook her head.
“There was no frown.”
“Then I guess it’s a good thing I’m here.”
He brushed her lips with his before leaving to get his wallet, passport, water bottle, and camera. They met back outside with the rest of the crew. Blake took a step closer to Julia when he saw her waving to Lukas. God, what was wrong with him? Changing his plans, postponing Argentina, revisiting a part of the waterfalls he’d already seen, staking out his territory against the other young and single male—he had to remember this was just another one-night stand.
Or maybe two nights. Tops.
This time they called a van to fit everyone. Blake squeezed into the back after Julia. As the driver took off, she idly rested her hand across his knee while she looked out the window, taking in her first sights of the town by day.
The border was porous here, and it was an easy crossing, tourists constantly coming and going to see the waterfalls that stretched from either side. Waiting in line to cross through, they pulled out their passports. Blake grabbed Julia’s before she could protest.
“Julia Allyson Evans,” he read. “Nice.”
She snorted. “Checking out my address?”
“Nah, Chicago streets mean nothing to me. Here we go.” He evaluated her picture. Her hair was pulled back, like maybe she’d come from the gym. She wasn’t smiling.
“I like your hair better down,” he declared, brushing the long strands over her bare shoulder.
“Noted,” she said. “Although to be fair, post-yoga isn’t exactly my finest.”
“Nope, still beautiful,” he whispered in her ear, sure no one could hear him over the hum of the motor and the samba-reggae the driver was blasting.
“But the hair is up,” she protested.
“I didn’t say it wasn’t beautiful,” he clarified. “Just that I like it down best. It’s like having to choose your favorite ice cream flavor. They’re all good. In fact, if you could have them all on one giant cone all at once, you would.” She laughed. “But if you have to pick, then you choose something chocolatey with lots of chunky bits of everything in it. And Julia with her hair down.”
“So I’m a chocolate chunky bit?” She frowned.
“Exactly.”
She grabbed his passport out of his hand.
“Hey, I didn’t say this goes both ways!” he cried, but she had already found his picture, too.
She burst out laughing so loudly that the whole row in front of them turned around to see what was going on.
“You have no hair!” she exclaimed.
“Let me see that,” Chris demanded. She was sitting directly in front of Julia and the passport was passed over before Blake could stop them.
“Come on, not fair.”
“Blake, you didn’t tell us you had a buzz cut,” Chris said, passing the photo to Jamie beside her.
“I cut it off right before leaving. Thankfully it’s grown back.”
“Somehow we all missed that stage,” Chris said, snatching the picture from Jamie and passing it up to Lukas. “How’d you keep the cameras off of you then?”
Blake cringed. “Solitary confinement,” he shot back. Of course Chris and Jamie had known who he was—they lived in Melbourne, not under a rock. Blake had been nervous when he first heard Aussie accents coming into the hostel, and then pleasantly relieved to find out that they were happy to treat him like a normal person and not like the current celebrity gossip course, laid out on a platter for everyone to feast. Obviously they knew about Kelley and Liam, too, but they’d been good about keeping things discreet. It was pretty clear, knowing what the tabloids had said, that he was there to get away.
He willed them to hold on to some of that discretion now. The last thing he needed was for Julia to be curious about why there’d be cameras around and start fishing for more. He tried to change the subject—look at the roadside vendors lined up on the side of the street!—but it was no use. Julia shifted in the cramped space to face him.
“You’re actually famous in Australia?” she said, loud enough for everyone to hear.
Blake’s stomach clenched. Chris and Jamie had no idea how much he wanted Julia to see him as a regular person and not pursue—or avoid—him because of who he was back home. Nor could they guess how desperately he was trying to hide his humiliation at the hands of his ex. It was just his luck that the two of them burst out laughing as the van inched forward in the line.
“Famous?” Jamie said, shaking his head. “Everyone who owns a television knows who he is.”
Julia’s eyes widened. “And you’re just hanging out in Brazil at some hostel with the rest of us?”
Blake’s mind was racing, trying to find a way out. But the only way to play this was to stay cool. “What can I say?” he said with a shrug. “I’m just a regular bloke.”
“Who decided to shave his head and come to South America.”
“I started in Central, but yeah.”
“Because…?” Julia started, and Blake caught Chris and Jamie exchanging glances he hoped Julia didn’t see.
“Because why not?” Blake said carefully, and at last a border official stepped up to the side of the van to stamp their passports, saving him from further embarrassment.
But it wasn’t over, because Chris turned around to face them. “Seriously, all you foreigners should get your hands on a copy of The Everlastings. No one is doing drama in Oz like this guy.”
“He told me it was boring,” Julia said, talking about Blake like he wasn’t even there.
Chris shook her head. “He’s being modest. You should know not to take anything he says too seriously.”
“I’ll remember that,” Julia said, and Blake looked at her in alarm.
“Tell me there’s more coming,” Jamie said. “You’re going back for the next season, aren’t you? You can’t leave Anderson to untangle the storyline with Celia and Reese—it’s just not possible.”
Anderson was the writer under Blake, the guy he’d hired when they were signed for a third season and things got too crazy for Blake to handle by himself. Now they were between shootings, and he was supposed to be drumming up scripts for the next two seasons they’d signed for and going through all the scenarios the writers under him were working on.
But instead he was here, in the back of a cramped van, edging past the border into Argentina and then bouncing through the countryside, full of eggs and toast and coffee and juice and the warm touch of a smart, funny, beautiful American by his side.
It was agony to sit there listening to talk about the show and all he’d left behind. But there were worse places to be.
And worse ways to be reminded of Kelley and Liam and the mess he still had to sort out with them on and off the screen. In retrospect, maybe it wasn’t the best idea to cast his girlfriend as Celia and his best friend as Reese and make a slow and steady attraction build between them over each episode. By this point, the characters were so enmeshed in the storyline that he couldn’t cut one or both of them out. Much as he wanted to.
Chris, though, was shooting daggers at her boyfriend. Jamie looked like he wanted to eat his shoe for letting slip his curiosity about Celia and her love interest, Reese. It wasn’t Jamie’s fault, though. Blake was going to have to learn how to deal with Kelley and Liam professionally, at least while she and her new boyfriend were both on the show. If he could get used to talking about the characters, then maybe he’d finally be able to face going back.
“Don’t worry,” he reassured Jamie—both about the plotline and about the slip he’d made in bringing up Kelley and Liam’s characters. “I’ve still got some tricks up my sleeve.”
Jamie hit the back of the seat in eagerness as the van pulled up to the entrance. “I knew it! We’ll definitely be home for the premi
er.”
“We will?” Chris turned to face him, but whatever they were disagreeing about now was lost in the murmur of their voice and the diesel cough of the van lurching ahead.
I wonder if I will, Blake thought, counting up how long he could spend traveling before his real life beckoned him back.
Julia had been silent throughout the exchange about the show, looking out the window even though Blake knew she was taking in the whole thing.
“Right, you’re just a regular guy who breaks his schedule to go to a tourist site he’s already seen,” she whispered as everyone shuffled out of the van, counting up bills for the driver.
He tried not to flush. He could plan and plan forever, mapping a route, typing a schedule, sketching his future like he was diagramming a scene, everyone blocked in the right place, each action a link in a clear and obvious chain of cause and effect.
But then life happened, and so did people with their messy surprises. It used to feel like each new surprise was a dagger to the heart. Until there was brush on his shoulder, long hair lifting in the breeze, and now none of his plans seemed clear.
“Sure,” he said with a grin. “Why not?”
“So you really wanted to come back to the falls today?” She was looking at him skeptically, like she was trying to read him but not sure what she’d found.
He grabbed her hand. “Come on,” he said, helping her out of the van. “Aren’t there some times you have to say yes?”
Chapter Six
Julia could hear the falls long before she could see them. A roaring, pulsing hiss that swelled like the ocean but without the pause between waves. It was so loud it seemed alive, an animal threading its way out of the jungle to devour them whole. There was nothing for them to do but walk into its grasp, mesmerized by the power it held.
They started off in a dense green forest, deafened by the cicadas chirping in the thick, humid air. The path followed along a snaking river, and they could hear the noise swelling up ahead but still had no sense of what was to come. The current below was swift but beside them the water ran flat and calm. The landscape held onto its secrets until the last possible moment, when suddenly the path opened up and the river dropped away.
Coming upon the break in the stream, it looked like a vortex had suddenly appeared out of nowhere, a hole in the water where everything that once seemed certain plummeted away. They were on top of the world, looking down on the waterfall as it dropped over the edge.
Julia stepped back, feeling the rush to her head.
“Whoa there,” Blake exhaled, steadying her with his palm on her back. “I didn’t think to ask—are you afraid of heights?”
Julia shook her head. “I never thought so. I just—” She looked up at him, searching for the words, but all she could say was, “Wow.”
“I know,” he agreed, and it was nice to know there was no need to try to put into words what both of them were thinking.
“Doesn’t it make you want to jump?” she blurted out suddenly.
“What?” Blake turned to her in alarm.
“Not like that,” she clarified. “It’s just… If you could fall and fall forever, and never land.” If you could feel the thrill of release, the water and wind, the never-ending weightlessness as every last responsibility disappeared.
She would never do it, of course. She wasn’t a daredevil—she barely even rode her bike fast. But to stand there with her feet firmly on land and think about the possibilities made her mind spin.
“All that freedom,” Blake said almost to himself as he looked out over the falls, and Julia knew that somewhere inside him, he understood what she meant. “It certainly is tempting.”
She couldn’t help it. She slipped her hand in his and squeezed his fingers tight. If she’d ever said that to Danny, he would have freaked, thinking she was being morbid or depressed or any of the “bad” states they were forever keeping an eye out for in Liz.
But Blake was different. He could travel and dream and imagine other things. Julia wasn’t a writer—she dealt with the elegance of numbers and the way they flowed according to a series of rules, not unlike each drop of water on its path toward the sea. But there was a poetry to the numbers that she could get lost in, when she was able to let herself go. She imagined Blake felt the same about words.
Julia was conscious of not wanting to broadcast some kind of “togetherness” when they weren’t a couple at all, but the beauty and surprise had made her reach for him without thinking. She felt a buzzing inside her that had nothing to do with the current rushing past or the thrill of gravity when he squeezed her hand and didn’t let go.
She could have spent hours standing in that one spot, but there was so much more to see and the rest of the group was moving ahead. They kept walking as the vortex opened into a mouth and the mouth yawned into a canyon.
Below was nothing but blinding, obliterating spray, a thick blanket of white streaked with an enormous rainbow arcing across the falls. It hovered in the mist as the water surged over the edge of the canyon and battered the rocks below. Blake wrapped an arm around her waist and pulled her in front of him as a group of Japanese tourists shuffled past.
“Devil’s Throat,” he said in her ear, nibbling her own throat playfully. He was close but still had to shout to be heard over the deafening roar.
“What a view.” She was completely captivated by the sight.
“I’ll say,” he sighed, but he wasn’t looking at the falls. He’d taken the chance to rest his chin on her shoulder, trying to sneak a peek down her dress. She wriggled playfully out of his grasp and he laughed, catching up to where she was walking down the path to get close to the edge.
“You’ve already been here,” she said, and suddenly she felt disappointed that she was the only one of them experiencing something so incredible for the first time. She’d thought the same thing last night, that this was all old news to him. It wasn’t special for him anymore. She was embarrassed about what she’d said about falling. Now he’d think she was twisted or weird.
But he surprised her by shaking his head. “I don’t think this is the kind of place you could ever get tired of.” And looking out at the view, it was true. She didn’t think it was possible to take it all in, no matter how many times you came. “Besides,” he added, “I was here on a morning when the rest of them slept in. The company is better this time.”
She couldn’t help smiling as she slid her hand in his again. Maybe there was something to the view, or to her—or both—that was worth a second look. Maybe she could let the day happen without worrying about where it went.
The whole stretch of the river had two hundred and seventy-five separate waterfalls, and she could see the smaller cascades cutting through the endless green. When she closed her eyes and felt the spray in the air as it hung in the muggy December heat, heard the drum beat of the falls pounding relentlessly in her ears, she tried to imagine the landscape without any people around, just water rushing through time. When she looked down at all the falls from their perch at the top of the tallest, widest part, the water seemed timeless, almost solid. A whole mass constantly churning.
But if she squinted and focused and let her eyes shift, she could almost make out the individual drops in flight. She’d follow one as it hurtled down until she could no longer see it anymore, and then start back up at the top. There was green moss growing on the shiny rock edges, constantly battered by the water. Its whole purpose was to take a beating, to lend color to the impressive sight.
“Doesn’t it make you feel small?” Blake asked, breaking the silence as they gazed at the surf.
Julia nodded, smiling to herself. It was exactly what she’d been thinking, too. Small and insignificant, but also desperately, wondrously alive.
It was hard to remember that they were still in the world. Streams of tourists buzzed around them, the rise and fall of voices and snap of cameras and phones adding its own cacophony to the sound of the surge. Blake lifted her hand to his lips
and kissed her knuckles.
“Should we catch up to them?” Julia asked. Blake looked ahead to where Chris and Jamie were taking pictures against a railing overlooking the edge of the falls. Jamie waved for them to come over and Blake sighed.
“I guess so,” he said, and they weaved their way through the crowds until they rejoined everyone else, busy taking photographs and marveling at the sights. Lukas, laden with camera bags, kept switching lenses as he tried to capture the perfect shot.
“So you guys want to walk around?” Jamie was asking as they walked up.
“I want to get on that river,” Chris said.
“Your wish is my command,” Lukas declared as he produced a brochure from his back pocket.
Chris squealed in astonishment as she flipped through. “Boat tours! Come on, Jamie, let’s do this.” She passed the brochure to him.
“Are you sure you want to—”
“They give you ponchos and you go right up under the fall,” Lukas interrupted.
“Awesome,” Chris exhaled, her eyes shining with excitement. “You want to do it?”
“I’m game if you are,” Lukas said with a grin. “I have to keep my equipment dry, but can you imagine the shots?”
“So it’s settled!” Chris said.
Blake looked over at Julia, and she shrugged. A boat tour sounded fine to her, and she was happy doing whatever everyone else wanted to do.
But Blake leaned over and whispered in her ear, his voice drowned out by the roar of the falls, “If you’d rather…”
She knew exactly what he was saying. His arm was around her in a gesture that seemed not only affectionate but possessive, and she moved closer to feel the heat of his body against her bare skin. She didn’t have to say anything—just a blush she couldn’t control, and then the slightest nod.
When Blake looked in her eyes, it was like they didn’t need to speak to know what the other was thinking. If she was going to get one more day before her fantasy ended, why shouldn’t she take advantage of all that she could?
How to Fall Page 7
