For Once In My Life: An absolutely perfect laugh-out-loud romantic comedy

by Colleen Coleman

  John Boy bites his lip and uh-huhs a lot while Christopher fills him in on the feature and the reason I’m here, whilst I just lie on the soft, cool, solid ground.

  ‘So you think it’ll be okay?’ Christopher asks him.

  He sucks his teeth and looks sidelong at Christopher. ‘Why do anything if you are aiming for “okay”? It is going to be absolutely phenomenal! I shit you not, like nothing she’s ever experienced. Believe me, I wouldn’t be here if this was an okay way to spend a Monday morning.’

  I grab Christopher’s ankles. ‘This is insane. Tell me I’m not insane thinking that this is insane. If my spine snaps and I become a quadriplegic, I have no one to take care of me. My mother will refuse. She will just text me “I told you so” and literally never see me again.’

  ‘It is insane,’ John Boy answers as he squats down to meet my eyes. ‘But this isn’t even the craziest part. You see, the craziest part is that you are going to strap yourself to me like an infant in a Baby-Bjorn with a parachute, and you are going to put your life in my hands. Right now, Lily, we are the most important people in each other’s lives. My whole job is to throw you out of an airplane and not let you die. And I won’t let you die, okay? Because I’m a bit of a stickler like that. I’ll be with you every step of the way.’

  I want to believe him. I want to feel reassured. But I can’t ignore the physical reaction of resistance I’m experiencing. I wish I could just say okay, get excited and not over-think this. But if I’m going to entrust my life to this guy, I’ll need to know more about him; ‘Can I see your qualifications?’ would be a start. But just as the words leave my lips, a car pulls up in front of us with another ‘excited’ kamikaze skydive participant and John Boy turns from me and runs to greet them. So much for being there every step of the way! He’s already abandoned me mid-sentence!

  Christopher hunches down beside me. He waits to meet my gaze and places his hands on both my shoulders. ‘I really appreciate you coming this far, but it’s clear that it’s too much, so I’ve got an idea. Why don’t I do the skydive for you? No one will know. We’ll get some great shots of you in your jumpsuit, here on solid ground, then we’ll edit the rest so that there’s lots of vague skyscapes and sun shining through the clouds, that kind of thing.’

  ‘Really? You’d do that?’ I like this idea. I like him for having this idea.

  ‘Of course! If it spares you from your worst nightmare, then of course.’

  I take a moment to study him, now lying flat on his tummy beside me. His face is so close, I can hear him breathe. He steadies himself on his elbows and meets my gaze, his eyes staring earnestly in to mine. In terms of distracting me, this works. I can’t stop looking at them – such a beautiful, deep green colour, so unusual, like flecked marbles, a glasslike quality that makes them shine in a way that I’ve not seen before. But it’s even more than that. They are so expressive. Looking at him this way, this close, right now, with nothing but a few blades of grass between us, there’s nowhere to hide. Those eyes tell me everything. If he didn’t care about me or the paper or if he was running out of patience, he’d have to be an Oscar winner to keep that from coming through, as up close and personal as we are now.

  I absolutely don’t want to do this. But I also don’t want to let him down. I don’t want to let myself down. But which is worse? How do I choose the lesser evil of what I don’t want?

  ‘But what about the article? How can I write the feature if I don’t experience the skydive?’

  ‘I’ll help you with it – we could definitely cobble something together,’ he tells me.

  ‘I’ve never backed out of a story before,’ I say, starting to pull at the collar of my jumpsuit. God I would love to be back in my bed now, tea, book, onesie. Definitely not here. Not doing this. As much as I’d like to think I could rise to the challenge, maybe I’m not wired that way. Maybe I’m simply unable to adjust, to evolve, to grow. Maybe I’m just going to be me. As I am. Forever. And everything I’ve got is all I’m ever going to have. From now on. So maybe it’s time I stopped deluding myself that I’m ever going to be anything different. I’m not going anywhere, I am not changing, I’ve landed in my spot in life and will stay put for ever more. Just like the rock with my name on it in some LA ditch.

  Is this what I want?

  My skin prickles with the realisation. That if this is all I want, then this is the way to get it. By staying still, by saying no, by chickening out. But if I want something different, I’m going to have to do something different.

  This feels definitive, like something I’m going to remember, that I’m going to refer to when I think about who I am. Just like that rock climb when I was eight; it defined me as ‘scared of heights’. Just like my non-wedding day, which defined me as ‘jilted’, as ‘betrayed’, as ‘unworthy’. Maybe today, I can define the moment, define what happens here. I just wish it wasn’t as terrifying as a freakin’ skydive.

  I can feel my eyes pool with tears. I’m so embarrassed for crying, it only makes me want to cry even harder. I cover my face with my hands. Get a grip Lily!!!

  Christopher gently brushes a stray hair from my cheek and stoops to find my eyes. ‘Hey! No need for tears. Oh my, Lily, what have I done? I’m only here a day and already I’ve made you cry!’

  I shake my head. ‘No, it’s not you. It’s just me, I’m sorry, you probably expected someone way more professional…’

  ‘Enough; you are amazing, okay!’

  Amazing? Seriously? I’m streaming from my nose and I’m face down in a field. I shake my head. ‘That’s well meaning, but I don’t believe that.’

  Christopher wriggles forward on his elbows and takes my hand in his. ‘And that is exactly it. I have no idea what happened to make you so unsure of yourself, Lily, but believe me, you are a breath of fresh air and you are brilliant at what you do. I knew that from our first meeting when you got McArthur and Jennings onside. Look at the way you handled that meeting this morning. I couldn’t keep up; I’d have totally bombed if you weren’t there. I’m going to come clean; I barely slept last night, I was so nervous about meeting the team. I’ve never really worked so… closely with people before.’

  ‘But you work at headquarters? Surely you work with hundreds of people every day?’

  ‘Yes, but not so intensely, so personally. Generally, I email them, then they email me back and we keep going like that until the job gets done. So, face to face, real time… it’s a new thing for me.’

  I wipe my eyes and, for a second, the tears seem to stop. Christopher was nervous this morning? About talking to us? I hate to think of him sleepless and anxious. I feel even worse now for not inviting him on Friday night. It is hard to arrive in as an outsider. All of us already know each other. We’re all pretty comfortable with how things work and what we want. But everything is new to Christopher. This is something I’m going to have to keep in mind, make sure he feels welcome while he’s with us at the Gazette, consultant or not.

  Just then, I notice John Boy holding the door open for the other tandem skydiver.

  She’s a nun.

  She’s an ancient, tiny, sweet-faced, smiling, hunched-over nun.

  And here I am flat out on the floor acting like a spoilt brat. Or a drama queen. Or a coward. A dramatic, spoilt coward.

  Either way, I’m not acting like anything I’d be proud of. I’m not acting like an Editor in Chief, I’m not acting like the person who fought so passionately to save the paper when face to face with McArthur and Jennings. And that makes me feel like a fraud. Like I’ve misled him. Like I didn’t mean everything I said back there, but I did. So now I need to follow through and put that into action.

  I smile up at Christopher. ‘Do you really think I can do this?’

  ‘Absolutely! The trick is to have complete faith that you are in safe hands, let go of all control and remember you can trust these guys, they know what they are doing. You can trust me too, Lily, I wouldn’t let anything happen to you. I cross my hear
t and hope to die.’ He crosses his chest and then twirls his fingers around each other, making me laugh at the action despite his unfortunate phrasing. ‘My sister used to do that when she was about eight.’ He takes himself by surprise and half-smiles.

  I smile back, remembering that I used to do it too. Back then, it seemed the greatest measure of trust you could give to someone else. And somehow, it actually feels meaningful, right here, right now. It makes me believe him.

  I look up and blink slowly at the sign above reception. Skydiving—Everything will probably be all right!

  ‘They have a zero percent death rate. I checked,’ Christopher assures me.

  ‘But I bet the dead don’t review,’ I answer back.

  ‘They’re the best in the business.’ He regards the sign above the door that reads, If at first you don’t succeed, then skydiving is not for you. ‘They just at suck at jokes.’

  That’s true.

  ‘Really. McArthur let me on this leadership programme by the skin of my teeth. A staff death in the first week would reflect very poorly on my judgement. So, believe me, I’ve got almost as much to lose if you crash land.’ He offers me his hand. ‘All you have to do, Lily, is get up and then come down. We’ll take care of everything else.’

  I take a deep breath and look into his lovely green eyes a second longer than I should.

  He raises a half-smile and says, ‘Trust me?’

  Without my job at the newspaper, I don’t have much. Without the feature, I won’t have the newspaper. Without Christopher, the paper is almost certainly going to fold. What choice do I really have?

  Because I’ve got to start trusting people again.

  Or die trying.

  So I nod and slip my hand in his.

  * * *

  The first thing I’m handed is a thirty-page document of waivers, saying that in the not-as-unlikely-as-I-would-like chance we die, they aren’t responsible for anything. There is no such thing as risk-free or the perfect equipment or the perfect instructor – just as everything in life, we can only hope for the best and, even so, shit happens.

  As I squidge my eyes shut and sign my name over and over, deciding to just ‘let go of control’, John Boy takes thirty seconds to demonstrate proper form. When I try to imitate him and show him my form, he shrugs and says, ‘yeah, close enough,’ telling me to sit back down and try to remember to breathe.

  I really thought it would all be over by now. Not that I’d spend most of the morning winding myself up before I even leave the Skyfall centre. But some suspicious whispering and nudging and chin-stroking begins. People notice that a lot of dark, thick clouds have rolled into the area. Even I can guess these aren’t ideal conditions, because when you’re in the sky, you need to see the ground so you know what your route down will be. Not that there’s much more to it than falling straight down, right?

  I remind myself I’ve already signed the forms. I’m doing this. I just need to quieten the manic monkey chatter in my head.

  Time goes by, but those thick, dark, stubborn clouds remain…

  The more experienced jumpers are now packing up, resigned to the fact that the conditions are too bad and it doesn’t seem like it’s going to happen at all. Maybe it will be possible that I escape this and save face at the same time? But the reality is that I need to do this today. I can’t possibly put myself through this again and I need to write this feature, so it can go to print on Friday. If there’s no skydive, then there’s no feature and McArthur will shut us down before we’ve even taken off. I’ll break the news to the staff that we’re done, we lost, the Newbridge Gazette is no more. That I was exactly like Gareth in the end, all talk, no action. Just another bullshitty suit who couldn’t follow through when things got real. And my mum will tell me in no uncertain terms that she told me so, that I’m not up to this. That she knew all along. And that I’ll have little option other than take the job as my mum’s PA. And that’s not a conversation or a life I ever want to have.

  And if I fail here, Christopher will go back to wherever he came from, which I don’t want to happen just yet. There’s something about him that makes me hopeful. Excited. Like something has woken up inside me. I want him to see me. I want to show him what I can do.

  What can I say, but I like him being around. And it’s more than him just being attractive. If he was a complete twat, I’d not even see his good looks. I’d discount him straight away, because I’ve been there, done that with gorgeous guys with ugly attitudes. But Christopher, I can tell he’s not a twat. At least my experience has taught me that. A real twat would not have been patient with me back there – he’d have sighed and rolled his eyes and stropped off, pretending to be on an important call. Or he’d have hissed and shrugged and told me I was fired. But he didn’t do that. He even offered to do it for me. And that makes him 1000 per cent better than both my previous boss and my previous fiancé. Dare I say, he’s one of the nice ones. And that makes him different. Special. And really, really nice to be around.

  But that’s not to say I’m interested. Firstly, he’s a colleague, so out of bounds for a million obvious reasons, and secondly, for all I know, he’s probably already got a girlfriend. Even if it’s that blonde that screamed at him in public that first day in the car park, more than likely he’s attached to someone from his London life so that is the end of that.

  We sit quietly for a few minutes, gazing up at the swirling, grey sky. Just when I begin to feel awkward about the silence between us, he asks if I’d like some tea and I accept the offer gratefully. When he returns – with chocolate biscuits – we relax a little more easily and begin to chat while we hang around to find out whether the jump will go ahead. I learn that he’s staying in an Airbnb in the centre of Newbridge, just a studio flat for the four weeks he’s here. He likes it; it’s basic, but really, he’s here to work and McArthur is still sending him work from head office, so she sees to it that he doesn’t get much spare time, so it serves its purpose and means he can walk to the office in a few minutes.

  We talk for ages, and then, just like that, the clouds scatter and the sun pierces through and shines down on us. Could this be a good omen?

  He nudges me. ‘You okay still? You look a bit pensive, or like you’re about to be sick.’

  I take a deep breath and decide that, today, failure is not an option. Today, I will fly. ‘Mostly pensive. But a little sick,’ I tell him.

  ‘You know, the first time I did one of these, my instructor told me that when it feels most scary to jump, that’s exactly the right time. Because if you don’t, you’ve let your fear own you. And if you do that, you’ll end up letting it rule you again and again and then you’ll never be the strongest person you can be.’

  ‘You think all skydiving instructors are failed philosophers and comedians?’ I ask.

  He shrugs. ‘Maybe. But it is true. I think it works on every level. And it’s not killed me yet.’

  Soon the sky brightens completely and sunshine streams through. John Boy announces that it’s okay, we can do it, not the best conditions, but still, a partly cloudy day instead of a fully cloudy day. But not everyone can jump. There was a small window, and although some people would indeed get to skydive today, the rest would have to come back another time. In a way, I’m now hoping I do get to jump today which is something I never believed I’d hear myself say, even if only in the privacy of my own thoughts.

  They announce the names of the first group to go up, which includes me and the eighty-six-year-old nun, who I discover is doing this to raise money for her convent roof. So if she can muster up the gumption to do this for a good cause, surely I can too. It’s now or never.

  I step forward, trying to remember to breathe the slow deep breaths John Boy advised. And I’m not even off the ground yet. Christopher starts taking photos and it dawns on me that not only am I doing this, I’m doing this for the whole world to see… in the paper, online and for Mum in Half Moon Bay. I am here not as the shy wallflower daughter my m
other thinks I am, but as a determined, fearless skydiver. It’s time to be that person. And even if that feels completely unnatural, I’m going to fake it till I make it. So, dressed in a hideous bright orange jumpsuit, I dutifully paste on a smile and act like I’m excited to be here… Then the main instructor gives me an extra rip cord.

  ‘What’s this for?’ I ask.

  ‘So you can pull it in case something happens to John Boy mid-jump. If he faints or has a heart attack, that kind of thing, and you need to release the parachute yourself.’

  My stomach heaves. If I’m not allowed to die up there, then neither is he. If John Boy has a heart attack on me, I will be furious. I will kill him myself.

  Christopher snaps my photo.

  I tell him that I hate his guts. And that if I don’t make it, he’d better make sure someone feeds Chaplin.

  We board an airplane so small, it looks like it came from Toys R Us. And this is a brand-new avenue of fear. I won’t be coming down in this plane, I’ll be falling hard and fast through the atmosphere, and that’s all I can think about. A nightmare I can’t wake up from.

  But I am not telling my mum I walked away. So I take a deep breath and take my next steps forward.

  The plane’s seats have been removed, so it’s just a hollowed-out space, where we huddle in our straps and helmets like apocalypse survivors. The little nun gives me two thumbs up, her face beaming. She’s looking out the window and smiling serenely. And that’s when it hits me.

  Maybe she’s okay about dying because she’s satisfied with the life she’s led? Is that why I’m so not okay with it? Is that why all I feel is a huge amount of anger and frustration with myself, because I’m sitting here wondering what’s going to flash before my eyes in my final few seconds? Memories of making lemon curd tartlets with my grandmother? A rare tender moment with my mother as we sang together? Time by myself reading and writing and imagining… Imagining that my wedding day was going to be the best of my life, when it turned out to be the worst? Imagining that a best friend like Hannah would never hurt me? Imagining that, one day, I’d have a life that would be rich and full and fearless?