Page 76 of One Year Ago in Spain
“It’s beautiful,” she said, both of the sky and the idea that Matías somehow made the world never-ending.
Until she thought about how he was in a coma. And how things could definitely come to an end.
“You’re frowning,” he said.
“Yeah…um, it’s nothing.” She forced a smile. “Tell me something good. What should we do next?”
“You’re not tired yet?”
“Only a little,” Claire said, even though her eyelids felt as if they weighed ten pounds each. “Are you?”
“Not at all,” Matías said. She wasn’t surprised, though. He didn’t have the constraints of a physical body that demanded sleep.
He turned his face back up to the clouds. “Have you ever been skydiving?”
“God, no.”
Matías laughed. “You seem very sure about something you’ve never tried.”
“I…like control,” Claire said.
“You should give it up.”
“What?”
“Control.” The corner of his mouth curved up a little.
She knew that look. One part amusement, one part dare. It was how Matías prodded her limits. In the early days of their relationship, she’d given in, but in the past few months, she’d dug in her heels for her stable status quo. After all, one of them had to be the practical partner.
And if she had come on the original trip to Spain with Matías, she could have insisted that he and his friends not drive the speedboat like Hollywood stuntmen, or hell, not even get on the thing at all.
“Skydiving is out of the question,” she said.
“Why?”
“It’s too dangerous.”
“Not if you go with someone experienced,” Matías said. “Besides, if you think watching the sunrise and sunset from the ground is beautiful,free-fallingas the sun goes down is a masterpiece. Youmusttry it.”
“Matías—”
“Tonight, 9p.m.We’ll fly with Nubes Aladas, Clouds Like Wings, at Ocaña Airport. They have the best instructors and you can dive tandem with one of them. And I will be right beside you.”
“No.”
“Think about it.”
“I did. The answer is still no.”
Matías sighed. “You’re missing out…But I think I will go, regardless. Now that we’ve talked about it, I realized I want todo this one more time before I leave Madrid. I’m sure the sunsets in New York are nice, but there is nothing like the Spanish sun. If you change your mind—”
“I won’t.”
“You know where I’ll be.”
Claire thought about lecturing him on the dangers of dropping out of a plane from thousands of feet in the sky and banking your entire life on a flimsy, fluttery piece of tarp. But then she remembered that it didn’t matter, because the real Matías wasalreadyin life-threatening danger, and a soul couldn’t be hurt by clouds and air.
She’d have to go back to the research she did on her computer for activities she and Matías’s soul could do that didn’t involve her jumping out of an open airplane. In fact, maybe she could remember her list now. Her brain was foggy from lack of sleep and food, but if Claire just closed her eyes, she might be able to envision what she’d written…
