by Jo Watson
We smiled at each other. Stupid, silly smiles. Smiles of complete joyous abandon. To leap through the sky like this was the most liberating, exciting thing I’d ever done. The adrenalin whooshed through my veins like an intoxicating drug and I’d never felt this good before.
We began to laugh as we held onto each other’s fingers and twirled through the air. I’d forgotten there were even instructors strapped to our backs. Right now, it was just the two of us. Nothing else in the world existed. This was what living in the moment felt like! I was one hundred percent in the here and now. No looking back and wishing things could have been different. No looking forward and wanting to control and manipulate the outcomes of things. I was here. Now. That was all.
And then suddenly, I felt a huge jerk, we were forced to let go of each other’s hands and were physically pulled apart. Thrown backwards as the parachutes opened and slowed everything down.
And now I was floating, not falling. It was a totally different feeling. It was soft and slow and gentle as we wound our way back down to the Earth. Trees, houses, hills and roads soon came into view. And the more of them I could see, the more I didn’t want to, because I didn’t want this to ever end. I didn’t want to put my feet on the ground again.
I wanted to stay up here forever. Free from everything. But I knew that what went up had to eventually come back down. Everything got closer and closer, objects rushed towards me until, finally, my feet touched the ground.
At first I was disorientated as my knees and then hands collided with a sudden bump. It wasn’t painful, but it was hard enough to snap me out of where I’d been and bring me back to reality. I scrambled to my feet and immediately looked around for Alex. And there he was. Without communicating our intentions, we both ran and threw ourselves into each other’s arms. I held onto him as tightly as I could, I didn’t want to let go.
“Oh my God!” I screamed into his ear as I clutched onto him for dear life. I could feel his heart pounding against my chest. It was beating so hard and fast, just like mine. We tightened our grip and suddenly it felt like our hearts were beating as one. I could no longer feel where his heart began and mine ended. I put my face against his. His cheek was cold, and yet, I felt hot. I wasn’t going to let go of him, and it felt like he wasn’t either, that is until we heard someone clear their throat. We pulled away from each other and that’s when we both realized there were still humans attached to our backs. We laughed as our instructors unclipped us.
“Thank you,” I said softly, looking into his cool, gray eyes.
“No . . . thank you,” Alex replied. And then he did something. A small gesture that for some reason felt so significant in that moment. He kissed his hand, and then blew it across to me.
I smiled, and like a child might do, I reached out and grabbed the invisible kiss. I closed my hand around it, and I swear, I could almost feel something there sitting in the palm of my hand. I didn’t want to let this kiss go. Even though I knew it wasn’t real, I wanted to hang onto it. So I tucked the imaginary kiss into the pocket of my pants.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
We were back on the road driving and laughing. The excitement in the car was palpable. I tapped the steering wheel as I drove, as if I needed some physical outlet for the energy that was surging through my body right now. The magazine had been right! Adrenalin was the answer. Adrenalin was the answer to everything.
Alex held the magazine up triumphantly and then took his pen and frantically began ticking the step on the page. “Done! Ticked!” He tossed the magazine into the back of the car looking so pleased with himself. He reached out and turned the radio on. An instant eighties hit blasted into the car in all its colorful, permed glory. We both looked at each other and started scream singing. When the song ended, I turned to Alex.
“So where to next?” I asked. “What else do you have planned?”
“We’re off to a place called Cilaos, it’s up in the mountains and it’s meant to be beautiful.”
“That’s not what I meant. I meant, what does the magazine have us doing next?” I couldn’t believe I’d actually started enjoying this, and dare I say, believing in it. Something inside me did feel like it was shifting. I couldn’t quite place it, but I’d barely thought about Matt lately, which was a total miracle in itself.
“Let’s see.” Alex pulled the magazine out of the back. It was well worn already, the corners were dog-eared and tattered. He was just about to start reading when—
“You missed the turn,” he suddenly said, looking behind us. “Quick. Reverse.”
I put the giant vehicle in reverse and quickly backed up. The sign came into view. “The RN5?” I asked.
Alex turned his head and smiled at me. This time his smile was mischievous.
“What, Alex?” I asked.
“I forgot to tell you, this road looks quite . . . interesting.”
“Interesting?” I asked.
He nodded. “And steep.”
“Steep? I can see that,” I said, looking around. We were really beginning to climb now. Huge imposing mountains surrounded us on all sides, rising up as far as the eye could see. In the distance, carved high into the side of the mountains, a gray line coiled and snaked around them. Was that the road? Surely not?
“And the road winds too,” Alex said.
“Winds?” I started getting slightly nervous as I looked up at the mountains. “How steep and windy does it get?”
“Let’s just say, there are over two hundred reviews on TripTaker about this drive, many of them referring to the fact you need nerves of steel to drive it.”
“What?” As he said that, a sudden and dramatic turn made it look like the road straight ahead of me simply disappeared. To my left, a sheer cliff face dropped down, to my right, a huge rocky cliff rose straight up.
“Oh my Gooooooooddd,” I said, inching my way around the thing and feeling like if I made the slightest wrong move, I could lose control of this car and we would simply fall over the side.
“Just keep calm,” Alex said in a hushed voice.
“You’re not the one driving,” I said through my tightly clenched jaw. My eyes were wide. I was too afraid to blink. I was afraid that if I closed them for a second, we might go plummeting off the edge of the cliff.
The road was so narrow that in places it was only big enough for one car at a time. We continued to wind our way up the steep mountain range, curving and coiling with the most intense hairpin bends I’d ever seen.
The road twisted endlessly up and down the sides of the cliff faces. But when I took a deep breath, and my nerves weren’t on a razor’s edge, I had to admit that it was beautiful up here. The views were breathtaking; jagged rocky pinnacles rose high into the air. Dramatic, electric-green mountains jutted up in uneven peaks with diving valleys, cutting through the mountainous panorama.
Alex suddenly started reading. “ ‘Number Seven. Reality Check. There’s a reason your relationship didn’t work. Take a moment to think about the relationship and why it didn’t work. Take those rose-tinted glasses off and take stock of what went wrong, as well as what you might have done wrong too. And once you know what those thing are, admit them out loud, own the reality of what happened and then vow to never make that same mistake again.’ ”
“Wow, that one’s quite deep,” I said looking over at Alex thoughtfully.
“Pull over here,” Alex suddenly said as a lookout point arrived. I pulled over and we both climbed out. It felt good to stretch my legs and arms, and it was only when I was out of the car that I realized how tense all my muscles were from the scary driving. We walked over to the edge and looked down into the green valley below. Everything looked so crisp and clean from up here and the air felt fresh. The sky was overcast and the sun was hiding behind the fluffy clouds. But every now and then, through a crack in the façade, a shaft of bright sunlight shot out and illuminated a part of the world below.
“This is just so beautiful,” I said quietly.
&nb
sp; “So what’s the reality of your relationship?” Alex suddenly asked me.
“I don’t know,” I admitted.
“What mistake did you make?” he pressed.
“Well that’s easy. I loved a man who didn’t love me back. I poured everything I had into him, every single last drop and I got nothing back for it, but I just kept going.”
“Like pouring water into a bucket with a hole,” Alex added.
“Yes, exactly like that.” I looked at him. I liked that analogy, because that was how it had felt. “And the more I poured, the emptier I became. The more I loved him, the more it hurt.” I sighed. I actually felt empty and drained. Like a part of me had disappeared somewhere along the way. A part I didn’t even know was missing . . . until right this very second.
This realization hit me all at once. Suddenly, I ached to be whole again. I ached to find that piece of myself that was missing and plug it back in. I needed to fix the leak. I wanted to feel like I’d felt when I’d been free-falling through the sky; peaceful. Whole. Complete. My vision blurred as I felt the sting of tears creep into my eyes. My heart lodged itself in my throat and a tightness squeezed my chest.
“Shit.” My voice quivered now. “I didn’t realize, until right now, how truly destructive loving Matt has been for me. And how much energy it’s stolen from me.” I grabbed my chest as a sharp pain pressed into me.
Alex stepped closer to me and grabbed my shoulders tightly with his big hands. The gesture was both reassuring but forceful. He then lowered his head so that he was looking directly into my eyes.
“Val,” he said slowly and deliberately, “you deserve someone who will love you back, with as much fire and passion as you love.” He gave me a little shake, as if he was trying to snap me out of something. “Promise me you won’t spend another wasted day pining for someone who is too stupid to see your worth.”
His words hit me like a punch in the gut. “Yes. I promise,” I said softly, the words struggling to climb out of my constricted throat. At that, Alex smiled at me. The smile swept across his face, transforming him and all his features. The genuine warmth contained within it spilt out into the world and inhabited the space between us like a bright rainbow after a storm might do.
“And what about you?” I said, lifting my hand up to move a piece of silver hair out of his face. “You deserve that too. Someone who will love you back like that.” I didn’t stop at moving that one piece of hair though. After putting it back, I ran my fingers through his hair, watching as the separate gray and black pieces mixed together to form a new gorgeous color.
“You know,” he said quietly, “the worst part is not the actual cheating. It’s feeling that you just weren’t good enough for them.”
“You are good enough, Alex!”
“Not to her,” he said.
“Then she’s not the one,” I quickly added.
“And Matt’s not the one either,” he said back to me.
We looked at each other for a while and then Alex walked past me and right to the very edge of the cliff face. And then, before I knew what was happening, I heard the scream . . .
“I proposed to a women who didn’t love me and cheated on me and I’ll never let that happen again!”
Alex’s words suddenly bounced back at us. They hit the sides of the mountains and came straight back.
“Oh my God. What are you doing?” I walked up to him and stood there as the two of us listened to his words echoing over and over and over again, until finally it was silent.
“Okay, your turn,” Alex said.
I shook my head. “No! That’s ridiculous.”
“But we’re meant to say it out loud and own it,” he said.
“I don’t think the magazine meant we should scream it off a mountaintop.”
“Do it,” Alex urged.
I looked at him for a while, weighing it up. It did seem totally ridiculous, not to mention embarrassing. But Alex was looking at me in a way that for some reason made me feel it was okay to do it. “Fine.” I sighed. I readied myself and then screamed . . .
“I’ve loved a man for three years who didn’t love me back and I will never do that again because I deserve MORE!”
My words hummed and buzzed around me in the air, filling it with energy. There was something so cathartic about this, so I did it again. This time I screamed as loudly as I could, until my throat hurt.
The words flew back at me. “More, more, more,” they echoed. I deserved more. Those three words ran through my mind and for a moment, I actually believed it. I did deserve more, didn’t I? I deserved someone who would love me back. Someone who would see me, really see me. Someone who would remember kissing me and would want to kiss me again.
Alex joined me and screamed again too.
We stood there and listened as our invisible words knocked into each other, reverberating through the valleys below and back up the mountains.
Hearing our words repeated in that way, a strange feeling began coming over me.
Alex yelled again. And then so did I. And soon, we were both yelling our realities to the mountains in front of us over and over again. And then I found myself inexplicably crying.
Alex took a step closer to me and suddenly his hands were on my face, wiping my tears away. It was the nicest, most unexpected gesture. And it felt good. I closed my eyes for a moment and savored the feeling of his soft hands on my face.
Something was happening. Alex. This view. The echoes of our words. This journey. Us. Something inside me was stirring and moving and shifting. I could physically feel it. A weight was slowly being pulled off me and I seemed to be feeling lighter and lighter with each passing moment. Was I finally getting over Matt? Could this really be working?
I opened my eyes slowly and looked up at Alex again; he was looking down at me with such care and concern etched across his face.
“I think we can do this together.” He said it with such conviction.
I nodded. “I think we can.” And I really meant it this time, because for the first time in years, I felt Matt slipping further and further away from me. And it felt good.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
The mood when we got back in the car was different. More reflective, as we sat in silence and continued the rest of the journey. The winding road soon came to an end as we finally arrived in the small mountain village.
The quaint town looked like it should be on the side of a chocolate box, or one of those old vintage biscuit tins. The first thing you noticed was all the color. There is one thing I can say about Réunion island, it pops and explodes and bursts with color. I’d done some more reading on it and its fascinating history might have had something to do with its colorful present. The island was a mix of different cultures, a melting pot of French, Creole, Tamil, African and Chinese influences, all coming together to form something so unique, I wasn’t sure it existed anywhere else in the world.
I looked out at the town. It was surrounded on all sides by mountains. Dotted at the foot of these mountains were small wooden houses painted in a bright array of colors. Yellow houses with bright green shutters. Pink houses with bright red roofs, colors you would never think of mixing together, but they worked. Some of the houses were almost totally swallowed by overgrown gardens; huge ferns and palms and bougainvillea that only added to the rainbow that this little village town in the mountains was.
“Where are we going?” I asked Alex, who was also staring out the window at the sights.
“We’re checking into our hotel and then I have something else planned.”
“Does it involve volcanos, helicopters and dangerous roads?” I asked. “Because I think I’ve had enough excitement for one day.”
“No, on the contrary.” Alex keyed the hotel address into his phone and soon we were listening to the polite British lady again. I followed her instructions. We wound our way through the somewhat sleepy town. It had a charming, slow atmosphere about it. People here seemed to walk a little slower even
. Finally, we arrived at our hotel.
“Wow.” I looked up at the building. It was beautiful. A triple-storey painted in bright yellow. An intricately carved bright teal balustrade ran the length of its upstairs balconies. Flower pots filled with flowers clung to the balustrade, creating a carpet of bright pink that swept across it. The hotel was right on the street and small tables and chairs had been placed on the pavement like a street café in Paris.
We parked the car and walked inside. Alex immediately strode up to the reception and started speaking in French to the lady behind the counter. She seemed all smiles and only too happy to help. Alex started digging in his back pocket and soon pulled out a wallet. This was my cue to rush up to him.
“Wait,” I said, pulling out my wallet, “how much is it?”
“Don’t worry.” He shrugged, pulling out a shiny card. It was way shinier than mine, but just because it was shiny and mine was more matt, didn’t mean I wasn’t paying my way.
“I’ll pay for my room,” I said, sliding my card across the table towards the receptionist, even though I knew my emergency fund would be very depleted by now.
Alex looked over at me and gave a small smile. “Of course,” he said. Once we were booked in, the receptionist showed us to our rooms. But instead of being inside the hotel, we were led through the back and outside.
Stretching out in front of us was the most beautiful garden. It was the smell I noticed first. There was a soft breeze, and riding on it, the sweet, sticky smell of frangipani and fresh-cut grass. The garden sloped up steeply and was filled with so many different shades of green. And in between all that green, explosions of flowers in various shapes and sizes and colors; bright purples, cotton-candy pinks, oranges and big white trumpet-shaped flowers.