Page 44 of The Big Race
"Wait," I gasped.
The guide paused. Ray stepped forward, concern etched on his face.
"I just need a moment," I said, breathing deeply.
"Take all the time you need," Ray said. He moved closer, speaking so only I could hear. "Remember what you told Leo when he was afraid to dive off the high board? Fear is just excitement that forgot how to have fun."
I laughed despite myself. "I stole that from a refrigerator magnet."
"Doesn't make it any less true."
I took another deep breath, focusing on the horizon as instructed. "Okay. I'm ready."
"One... two... three!"
I stepped forward into empty air.
The fall was pure terror transformed into something else entirely. As I plummeted toward the gorge, a strange thought flashed through my mind:I'm falling toward Ray, not away from him.All these months, I'd been pulling back, creating distance, protecting myself. But here I was, literally taking a leap of faith.
The initial terror transformed into pure exhilaration. The wind rushed past my face, carrying the earthy scent of the jungle below and the distant sound of water cascading over rocks. For those suspended seconds, I wasn't the cautious computer geek who triple-checked his alarm clock every night. I was flying.
The canopy rushed beneath me in a blur of green, and I caught glimpses of colorful birds startled into flight by my passage. A toucan's distinctive call echoed from somewhere in the depths below, answered by another from across the gorge. The world had become a three-dimensional painting of emerald and gold, dappled with patches of sunlight that filtered through the leaves.
"WOOOOO!" I heard myself yelling, the sound torn away by the wind. When had I last made a noise like that? When had I last felt so completely, recklessly alive?
Then came the moment of truth—the bungee cord reached its limit and snapped me back upward with tremendous force. My stomach lurched as I bounced skyward, then fell again, then bounced once more, each oscillation smaller than the last until I hung suspended a dozen feet high, gently swaying.
The world swung slowly around me as I dangled there, catching my breath and marveling at the view from this impossible vantage point. Then I heard the noise of the winch lowering me to the sandy island at the bottom of the gorge.
I stood there for a moment, regaining my balance. My heart pounded so hard I could feel it in my fingertips.
A guide helped me out of the harness and I turned to watch Ray come down behind me, whooping and waving his arms like a lunatic.
We hadn't had so much fun together for years. Fun was something that had slipped by the wayside, pushed aside by overtime, yard maintenance and the stress of raising our son. Ray landed, catching his foot in the sand and sprawling headfirst on the ground. I rushed over to help him up, but he was still laughing, even with a face full of sand.
On shaky legs, I made my way to Ray, his face split with a wide grin.
"That was... not terrible," I admitted.
"You looked amazing," Ray said, and the pride in his voice warmed me in a way I hadn't experienced in months. "Like you were born to jump off cliffs."
But there was something else in his voice, something that made me study his face more carefully. His smile was genuine, but his eyes held shadows I was only beginning to recognize.
"Ray?" I prompted. "What's wrong?"
He shook his head quickly. "Nothing's wrong. That was perfect. You were perfect."
But I'd learned to read the subtle signs of his distress over twenty-five years together. The way his jaw tightened almost imperceptibly, the slight stiffness in his shoulders.
"Tell me," I said softly.
Ray glanced around at the crew members who were busy preparing for the next customer, then looked back at me. "When you were falling, for just a second, I thought... what if something goes wrong? What if the equipment fails, or..." He trailed off, running a hand through his salt-dampened hair.
"But it didn't," I pointed out. "I'm fine. I'm right here."
"I know. But watching you fall away from me like that..." He paused, struggling for words. "It made me realize how easily I could lose you. How close I came to losing you already."
The adrenaline from the jump was still coursing through my system, but now it mixed with something else—a sudden, sharp awareness that Ray's fear wasn't about the bungee cord or the height. It was about us.
