Page 33 of Walk on the Wilder Side

“Bring her back around!” Lucas called to the pilot.

The plane did some maneuvering until we were back over the drop zone. When it was time, Lucas took me to the door. This time, when I looked down and saw the looming space below me and the panic started, I closed my eyes and took a breath. The only panic I should be worried about was living a boring life, waiting to die on a couch somewhere. I should panic about not giving this life everything I had and sucking every last drop of joy and excitement out of it. I should panic about giving up on my dreams instead of going at them with everything I had.

I opened my eyes, harnessing the crippling anxiety and channeling it into excitement.

“On three!” Lucas shouted.

My heart sped to racing.

“One ... two ... three!”

With a push, the ground dropped out beneath me. A scream ripped from my throat as we catapulted out of the plane, the wind whipping in my face so hard I could feel my skin pulling up. My heart was in my throat when we hit speeds so fast that I wondered how we wouldn’t hit the ground in seconds. But after a few moments of pure panic ripping through me, I gave in to the experience and let go of all that fear. All that anxiety. I let it all go and sank into the fall.

I had done it. I’d jumped. My body filled with sheer joy floating above it all. Before I could really take my time and appreciate the view below, movement to my left caught my eye. Alice and Bryce flew toward us, her mouth wide open in what I was fairly certain was a scream, but the wind in my ears howled too loud to hear anything. They made it over to us, and I reached out, grabbing Alice’s hand and squeezing it tight. When I saw movement to my right, Sylvie and Doris sailed towards us, both mouths wide open like Alice’s in silent screams. I opened my other hand, catching Sylvie’s in it while she grabbed Doris’s hand, who locked onto Alice.

As the four of us pulled into a circle, my heart nearly exploded, but not from the fear of death that had it racing before ... it nearly exploded from the happiness I felt soaring through the sky with my best friends at my sides. My Widows and I, hand in hand, soaking up every drop of joy from this life that we could. In all my years, I never would have guessed that when Doris knocked on my door that fateful day, opening it to her would open a whole world of adventure waiting for me. The life I’d always hoped for was no longer only a dream because these three women pushed me out of my comfort zone and into the great, wide world I’d always wanted to see. The ones I now floated above holding hands with them.

“This is amazing!” I shouted, but I didn’t think they could hear me.

But that word didn’t fully encompass how I felt as we soared across the sky together. There was no word to encapsulate the feelings swirling inside me like a tornado of emotions. Excitement. Fear. Wonder. They were twisted up into a new emotion I had never experienced, and an emotion I wanted to remember always.

The skin on their faces flapped and sucked upward, and when Sylvie opened her mouth to shout something back, the wind caught her lips and moved them like depleted sails in a windstorm. When I looked over and saw the same thing happening to Alice and Doris, I nearly fell into hysterics at the sight of their distorted skin. The ridiculous looks on their faces caused me to explode with laughter, and when the air caught my face as well, I felt the same damn happening to me.

With flapping faces and huge grins, we squeezed hands for a few more seconds before our partners gave us the taps on the shoulders that meant it was time to separate. We gave each other one last strange, stretched, flapping smile, then let go and drifted apart. Lucas veered us off to the east and pulled the chute when we were the right distance away.

It felt like getting sucked straight back into the air when the chute pulled open. The straps around my body went taut, and I gasped from the jarring feeling. Seconds after the abrupt change in speed, the world around me quieted, and we soared softly toward the ground.

“You okay?” Lucas asked, the winds now quiet so I could hear, though my ears still rang from the wind that had been whipping through them for the last forty-five seconds of free fall.

“I’m amazing!” I shouted, opening my arms and enveloping the open air surrounding me. “This is incredible!”

I looked over and saw the three other chutes a slight distance away, and I hoped all the Widows were feeling the same awe and wonder as me as they floated softly toward the ground.

“I knew you’d like it. Enjoy the scenery on the way down.”

Lucas went quiet as if he knew I needed a moment to soak in the experience in silence. The world below was a canvas of colors cocooned beneath the bright blue sky I sailed across. The greens looked so green, and the ocean looked such a vibrant shade of aqua blue. Everything seemed brighter. Better. Maybe it was a deepened appreciation for life and the world after that exhilarating and terrifying freefall, but this was the most incredible sight of my life as I swung gently through the Australian sky. My heart surged with the wonder of how amazing it looked from this height ... how small the world below seemed.

Did you see me, Percy? Did you see me, Manns and Stilts? I did it, too.

I reached up and touched the tags beneath my shirt, closing my eyes and drawing them into my heart as I imagined them floating lazily beside me. I tried to picture the huge grins that must have been on their faces the day they got to jump and I had to stay back at the hospital ... the same one they’d arrived at later that night with Percy badly injured, Manns barely alive, and Stilts already gone. I’d been so jealous to hear they would get to parachute together, and I’d spent the whole day excited for their return so they could tell me about it. But, so quickly, things had changed. In an instant, life had changed. Only Percy had remained the next morning, our friends gone forever, and a friendship between Percy and I was forged so deep that we’d vowed to marry one another to take care of each other for always.

And we had.

Percy had been my person for over forty years, and I’d loved him every minute of every one of those days. And then he’d left me. In the blink of an eye, he was gone, and I was the last man standing.

Alone.

I looked over at the silhouettes of my three Widows floating in the distance. Doris looked over and waved wildly.

But I wasn’t alone anymore. I had them. I had Roxie. I had so many incredible things in my life that I’d never dared to dream before. Sometimes, I felt guilty that it took losing my best friend to gain this new life I lived, but I knew Percy had sent them to me to ease the grief of his loss. To help me move forward without the one person I’d depended on almost all my life.

And it was a life I wasn’t done living. But that didn’t mean taking the easy way out and hiding out on the couch, terrified to lose it all. No. The Widows were right. To live this life and enjoy this gift I’d been given meant I needed to keep pushing myself as far out of my comfort zone as possible. Grabbing ahold of my dreams with both hands and refusing to let go.

I refused to stop leaping into the unknown.

I refused to give up on a relationship filled with passion.

I refused to go quietly into the night when it was my time.

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