How to Fall

by Rebecca Brooks

  “I think I know just the thing,” he said, trying to sound happy despite the heaviness that had settled in his chest.

  “What is it?” she asked, eyes wide, but he shook his head.

  “It’s a secret.”

  “Damn,” she pouted, and turned to rinse her hair. “I hope it involves breakfast, I’m starving.”

  “Find a café, and then coconuts?”

  “Perfect,” she agreed.

  He rushed out of the bathroom to check the address in her guidebook before she had a chance to come out, naked with her hair wrapped up in a towel, wheedling him for hints.

  “Secrets,” he whispered in her ear as he pulled the towel from her hair and wrapped it around her body, holding them close.

  It seemed impossible to leave the hotel room when every step she took toward putting her clothes on made him want to take them off again. But the sun was bright through the curtain, and Blake couldn’t wait to execute the new plan that he had up his sleeve.

  Chapter Sixteen

  They had finished a breakfast of pancakes with fresh berries, coffee, and a sweet, tart pink juice from the small acerola fruit, and the promised coconut while strolling along the beach, when Blake hailed a cab and gave directions to a part of the city Julia had never heard of.

  “Oh, are you going to—” the driver said excitedly, but Blake cut him off before he could finish.

  “Shhh,” Blake silenced him, pointing toward Julia. “It’s a secret.”

  The driver roared with laughter, and Julia suddenly found herself feeling apprehensive. Maybe it wasn’t such a good idea to put so much trust in Blake. He hadn’t steered her wrong so far, but the driver obviously found something funny in where he was taking her. She was always so in control—in Chicago, at her job, in her personal life. It was freeing to be reckless this week, like it wasn’t just a vacation from Chicago but a break from her whole life. A new way of being thirty, for the brand new decade to come.

  She hoped she wouldn’t regret it after today.

  Blake squeezed her hand as they looked out the window at the city rolling by, the northern hills along the coast getting closer with every block.

  “Something new,” he reminded her.

  “I guess all of this is,” she laughed, trying to keep her nervousness in check.

  They pulled up at a nondescript street corner, and Blake ushered her out if the cab. Julia looked around, unsure where they were. But as the cab pulled away, Blake set off resolutely toward a cluster of green where the road ended and the hills began.

  She followed him into a park and then along a wide path that climbed steadily up. Julia matched her stride to his as they headed deeper into the lush green foliage. She figured they were climbing the hill and imagined the view they’d get at the top. They’d be able to see the whole city, both Christ the Redeemer and the Sugar Loaf Mountain they’d seen yesterday and the ocean curving around the whole city as it jutted out from land.

  A different view—not exactly a wild deviation from their day yesterday, but the short hike was a nice way to get moving after lounging all morning in bed, and it was sure to be beautiful to stand up on such a cliff and look out over the sea.

  The thought of their morning made Julia’s pulse leap. How was it that no matter what they did together, she still wanted more of him? More of his smooth chest, his sweet smile, that look on his face when he rolled his eyes back as she sank down on her knees. As he plunged inside her. As her own orgasm made him come so hard, it was like he was memorizing her body and not just capturing it. She slid her hand in his, heart beating from more than the climb.

  But along with the thrill of touching him came the fear of that thrill, a voice of warning in the back of her mind. This wasn’t allowed to be more than it was. She couldn’t afford to let herself forget that.

  As the path began leveling off, Julia realized there was starting to be something of a crowd. More people were hiking on the path, alone or in couples and groups, and it was louder than she usually associated with hikes. Everyone seemed to be chatting animatedly as they breathed hard through the climb. Julia shot Blake a questioning look. She knew why the tourist sites they’d gone to yesterday had been so crowded, but there were plenty of hills right here along the coast. What was so special about this one?

  “Almost there,” he said, flashing a smile and squeezing her hand. “Come on, let’s try to get ahead of this group.”

  They sped up to pass a cluster of middle-aged men and women with thick New York accidents who screamed tourist! with every bounce of their neon fanny packs. They were talking loudly, marveling at the heat and the climb, gulping at water bottles as they stopped to point out the different flowers along the path.

  “I can’t believe we’re really going to do this!” one of the women squealed to her friend as Julia walked past.

  “I don’t think I can,” the friend said.

  “You have to! You promised!”

  “I’m too old to die,” the woman gasped, and her friends erupted into laughter.

  Julia clutched Blake’s arm. “Where the hell are you taking me?” she demanded, but Blake leaned around to cover her ears.

  “Don’t listen to them, it’s going to be amazing.”

  “It?”

  But she didn’t have to wait for an explanation. At the top of the hill the path opened into a clearing. And at the far end of the clearing was a van.

  “Oh shit,” Julia said, and stopped in her tracks.

  Conrado Hang Gliding Company, it said on the side of the van, next to stacks of colorful harnesses laid out on tall racks. Everywhere people were milling about, duck-walking with harnesses cinched around their legs and waists, helmets perched awkwardly on their heads.

  “No.” Julia shook her head. “No, no, no, no, no.”

  Blake flashed his most charming grin, and she practically growled.

  “Hang gliding? Are you kidding me?”

  “You said something you’d never done before!” Blake paused for a second and frowned. “You haven’t done this before, have you?”

  “God no!”

  “Good, me neither,” he said, at the same time that she added, “Because I like my life!”

  Laughing, he dragged her toward a tall Brazilian man with a dark ponytail and a company T-shirt who was signing people up.

  “Come on,” Blake urged her. “Do something with me you’ll never forget.”

  She almost said, I couldn’t forget you even if I wanted to, but she bit her tongue. If Blake wanted to have one last hurrah before they went their separate ways, then she wasn’t going to ruin things by getting maudlin about it.

  “Okay,” she said, taking a deep breath to steady her nerves, and gave the man her information. The next thing she knew, she’d signed away her life and was being outfitted in a tight harness, bobbing around in her own round blue helmet, alternately laughing and, to put it mildly, totally freaking out.

  “I can’t believe we’re doing this,” Julia said, watching the other groups anxiously waiting to jump. The atmosphere atop the mountain was jittery and frenetic as the anticipation grew.

  Blake kissed her nose, their helmets bonking as he leaned forward. “You look adorable in a harness,” he whispered, and then laughed as Julia’s cheeks colored.

  “You weren’t sure where to find one in a hotel room so you took me here instead?” she teased, trying to keep cool and act like harnesses and sex was totally a combination she was familiar with.

  “Trust me, if this place weren’t crawling with people…” He trailed off with a low moan, a shining look in his eye.

  “Are you this insatiable with everyone?”

  Blake stepped back as though considering her question. “I haven’t been with everyone,” he said, “so I really can’t say.”

  Julia stuck out her tongue. “You know what I mean.” But she also knew that his refusal to answer her teasing meant that what to her was unusual—an appetite that seemed to click, that grew the more th
ey had each other—was just another lay for him. The fact that she thought it meant something both inside and outside the bedroom didn’t mean he was thinking the same thing. She had to stop herself from going down that path before she inevitably wound up hurt. It was time to stop thinking about Blake and start thinking about the fact that she was about to jump off a giant cliff with nothing but fabric wings holding her up.

  Because even that was less terrifying than facing the truth she had realized that morning when she opened her eyes and saw his body practically glowing from the sun diffused through the curtains: how hard she had already fallen, and the crash that she knew was to come.

  She must have been frowning because Blake cupped her chin in his hand and raised her eyes to meet his. “Not this insatiable with anyone,” he whispered, and she felt something inside her trip and stumble before her heart could resume its beat. “You said before that you wanted to feel what it would be like to fall.”

  “I wasn’t serious,” she said. “I was talking about jumping off a waterfall. You know, hypothetical. Poetic. That sort of thing.”

  “And I’m here to tell you that you can really do the things you want.”

  “I don’t even know how,” she protested weakly.

  “You don’t need to. They’ll take care of everything for us—the only thing you have to do is enjoy the moment.”

  “I’m not very good at that,” she grumbled, well aware that she was stalling so she wouldn’t have to peer over the edge and think about what Blake was asking her to do. The leap he wanted her to take.

  “Aren’t you ready to go flying?”

  “More like falling,” she said, and shook her head. She couldn’t tell him that she already had. Not through the sky, of course. But in the ways that mattered. Whether she wanted to or not.

  The giant contraptions lay in wait, folded before they would take to the air. They looked small and frighteningly simple. Julia swallowed hard and looked away, her legs starting to shake.

  But when she looked at Blake, he was beaming, excitement radiating off him in waves. Seeing his face, she knew that she couldn’t say no. If she was getting off this mountain, it was going to be by jumping.

  And not for Blake—not really. If she was being honest, she knew it was for herself, too. That was why he was doing this, for him but also for her. How could she live with herself if she walked down the same way they’d come, passing all the people on their way up for the flight? They would know that she was the one who’d chickened out, who’d gone all the way to the edge but been unable to throw herself off. The one who looked and watched and waited but never did, taking notes while other people lived.

  She was in Brazil. In Rio, the most beautiful city she’d ever been in, with the most beautiful man she’d ever been with, who never failed to surprise her. If she wanted something new, something to shake up her life, some way to prove to herself that she was more than the quiet, passive single girl who did her work and then went home—well then, this was it, wasn’t it? This was completely insane, so out of character she barely recognized herself.

  And then their names were being called and it really was it. There was no turning back. She followed Blake and the man with the ponytail to the edge of a clearing, the peak of the mountain where the ground dropped off and all that surrounded them was sky.

  “Julia?” the man asked, elongating the vowels so that suddenly her name sounded beautiful, alive, like some kind of bird already in flight. She nodded tentatively, as though waiting for someone else to rush up and say there had been a mistake, she was somebody else, there was some reason why she couldn’t go through with this. She was lying, she was an imposter, she was a high school math teacher from Chicago and not this bold and surprising woman about to do something so unthinkable she felt like her brain had completely stopped working the minute he said her name.

  But he was off on a series of safety instructions she could barely keep track of. They were each going to be strapped in with an instructor who would be flying the glider; all they had to do was enjoy the ride.

  Julia tried to laugh along with him, but all that came out was a nervous titter. Blake rested his palm on the small of her back, a simple, calming touch to let her know he was there.

  But then he wasn’t, because they were being divided up and introduced to the instructors they were going to jump with. Julia wanted to protest that this wasn’t part of the arrangement—Blake never said they wouldn’t be jumping together! How could she do this without him?

  But she had to, she realized. This wasn’t about them doing something together. It was also about her—alone, solo, independent—and who she wanted to be when she went home. Blake may have gotten her up the mountain, but she was determined to get off it without his help.

  She took a deep breath and slid his hand off her back. She was going to be fine.

  Blake was paired with a tall man whose name she didn’t catch but who seemed to be Blake’s new best friend, giving him high fives and laughing loudly. Julia’s instructor was a petite woman with a mass of curly hair named Suzi whom she didn’t believe could possibly navigate such a giant and unruly bird. Suzi was all business, cool as could be, like this was the ten thousandth jump she’d done. She had her own harness with carabineers that hooked onto Julia’s so that the two were lined up unbearably close, the puff of her ponytail hitting Julia’s chin whenever she moved.

  “It’ll be more comfortable when we’re in the air, don’t worry,” Suzi said, as though she knew what Julia was feeling because every other person she’d taken out had felt the same exact thing. It made her feel almost silly for her nerves. She reminded herself again to stop freaking out and start enjoying herself, like Blake was. He was asking all sorts of questions about how the harnesses worked, where they strapped in, and how his guide was going to steer.

  “You’ve done this a few times before?” Julia laughed nervously, trying to make light of her question even as she sought reassurances from this tanned and perfectly toned woman who now held her life in her hands.

  “Eight times already this morning.” Suzi stopped what she was doing with the harness and looked at Julia, her sunglasses resting on her forehead. “Don’t worry, honey, once you get in the air it’s going to be the most amazing thing you’ve ever done.”

  The most amazing thing you’ve ever done. Julia repeated the words in her head like a mantra. Then they stepped together, one body with four legs, toward the edge of the mountain, and the words became a frenzied pitch in her mind, just so she didn’t keel over and take this woman with her.

  “You go first!” Blake called behind her, flashing her a giant thumbs up.

  She flipped him the finger instead.

  His guide roared with laughter.

  “He’s making you do this?” Suzi asked, probably having seen the same dynamic dozens of times before.

  “No, I want to,” Julia said emphatically, as though if she said the words they would come true. Nobody makes me do anything. The newfound resolve gave her legs the strength to keep standing as she and Suzi practiced moving together for the run they would have to take to lift off.

  “We’re going to start at the edge of the ramp,” Suzi explained, gesturing toward a wooden platform extending beyond the rocky mountaintop. “We’ll run seven steps together, starting with your right foot forward. It’s important that we keep our strides together. Okay?”

  Julia nodded. The ramp was 1,700 feet above sea level, on the edge of the São Conrado Mountain. 1,700 feet. She was about to jump from a 1,700-foot drop with nothing but a strange contraption of fabric wrapped around a metal frame to hold her up.

  “How many steps?” Suzi asked.

  “Seven,” Julia repeated automatically, like one of her students saying what the teacher wanted to hear.

  “When we get to the edge of the platform, keep running. No stopping, no stalling, no slowing down.”

  “Keep running,” Julia echoed diligently. If she said it, she could do it.


  “At the edge, you’re going to pretend that you’re taking another step right into the air. Don’t jump, because jumping will jerk the glider. You’re going to run and then let yourself fall forward. I’ll be right there with you, so follow my lead.”

  Don’t jump, Julia repeated in her mind. But what if she did? What if she forgot? What if she couldn’t stop herself? Would they go tumbling if she messed everything up? She looked around for Blake but he was off with his own guide, going through the same routine.

  No Blake, she reminded herself. All she had to do was fall.

  And fall, and fall—was she seriously going to willingly run off the edge of a platform nearly two thousand feet up and keep running into the air?

  She tried not to cry, because crying while both feet were still firmly planted on land would not bode well for the actual flight. Suzi gave her arm a gentle squeeze. “You see the ocean?”

  The platform faced the sea, and before them the vast blue inhaled and exhaled below.

  “It’s the most beautiful moment, when you’re running straight into the ocean and let yourself drop into the sky.”

  Suzi really loved what she did, Julia realized. She stood atop this mountain countless times each day because she couldn’t get enough. There was beauty all around them, in the rich green foliage and the curve of the mountains and the bend of the beaches and the rise of the tall city spires. But looking wasn’t enough. Blake hadn’t wanted to take her to another view like the ones they had yesterday. This time, they were going to be a part of it all. It was his gift to her, not to witness but to experience everything herself.

  She took a deep breath. “I can do this.”

  “I know you can.” Suzi smiled back. Then she dropped her sunglasses down over her eyes. “Ready?”

  After Suzi strapped them into the hang glider wings, Blake made his instructor crabwalk over with him to give her a quick kiss before they took off. The four of them were crammed together, the two guides helplessly strapped into their charges, the glider wings bulky and awkward behind them, while Blake gave her one last peck for good luck.