Skydiving, Skinny-Dipping

by Sarah Zolton Arthur

  Unsure of what to say, because he caught me staring hard, I asked, “Can I cut your hair?”

  He nodded.

  I pulled out the barstool and motioned for him to sit down. Then I went to the bedroom to retrieve my box of goodies—comb, scissors, spray bottle—that I’d brought with me when I left the salon. As I walked back down the hallway, I grabbed a towel from the linen closet.

  With the towel draped around his shoulders, he sat for me. I picked up the spray bottle to spritz his hair, dampening all the strands. I looked over his face shape, found the way his hair naturally fell, and gathered up a thick bunch between my fingers. Something changed in the room as I snipped. The air felt thick, heavy. Every breath weighty.

  Why? I had no idea. But as the hair drifted to the floor, his intense stare never left me. It touched me physically. Or that was how it felt. When I finished, I pulled at the hairs by his temples to make sure they were even. He stayed my hand, gently forcing the scissors to drop, and he stood, shrugging the towel off.

  “What’s happening here?” I asked—whispered. Though in my head, I totally knew what was happening here. We were having our very own Ghost movie pottery wheel moment. Never in my life did I think I’d have a pottery wheel moment.

  That was when he took my mouth in a powerful kiss. He moved slowly, worshiping my body. Caress after caress. Not hurried, meandering. He took his time building me up. Years to remove my outer clothing. Millenia for my undergarments. I wanted to return it, but other than mouth kisses, he wouldn’t let me do a thing.

  My heart felt so full, I feared it might explode. He didn’t know I’d fallen for him, but the way he worked my body made me feel like he might have a clue. And he returned it. Right there, on the carpeting separating the living room from the kitchen, Lennon, no other words for it, made love to me.

  Forget orgasm mountain. We boarded the orgasm space shuttle, launched into orgasm space, and orbited around the orgasm planet. Our OMS burned hot. The hottest.

  How could he make me feel like this? We hadn’t been together long enough. I mean, didn’t it take time? Less than a month, wasn’t that too fast?

  No. That was fearful Kami talking again. We’d spent nearly every hour since he’d rescued me in that bar together. So no, not too fast. Other people would call it fast. They might even confuse it with insta-love. But I never claimed to have fallen in love at first sight. Lust at first sight, sure. But not love. Forget that. Forget all of that.

  Those other people, they weren’t in this relationship with Len and me.

  Forget them.

  Forget them.

  Forget them.

  On a deep breath, I started to tell him. Started to but didn’t get the chance, because as chance would have it, he beat me to it. “I love you, Kam. I’m in love with you. If it scares you, I’ll do anything I have to, to prove it—put you at ease.”

  I started to laugh.

  “Not the response I was hoping for.” His voice sounded sad, but he hugged me tightly to him despite my reaction.

  “You don’t get it. I’m laughing because… well, because I was just about to tell you that I’m in love with you. But you got there first.”

  “Baby, you just made me the happiest man in the world.” He paused and a devilish grin split his lips. “Now, we have a week of no sex to make up for. It’ll be a sacrifice, but I need to know, are you with me?”

  Fifteen:

  “Where are we going now?” I asked. My girl parts finally got a Lennon reprieve at about 3:30 this morning. Of course, I didn’t complain. Len loved me and he showed me in every position he knew. I think he made up a few on the fly.

  We’d been driving for about twenty minutes.

  That was when he turned to make the drive off the highway. Up ahead of us I could see a tall, unfinished bridge. Tall and unfinished. I got a bad feeling. A booth which looked like a toll booth sat to the driver’s side. Len eased to a stop and rolled down his window.

  “Welcome to Jump,” the girl in the booth said in greeting. “Will you be jumping or observing today?”

  “Jumping, naturally.” Len winked at her, that flirty, sexy wink that made all the girls’ panties wet.

  “Up the drive, you’ll turn to the left,” she said. “Have fun, and be safe.”

  It wasn’t until he started driving again that what he’d said sunk in. “Jumping? What do you mean, jumping? Who’s jumping and from where?”

  “We are, baby. From that bridge.”

  My mouth hung open and all I could manage was a few squeaks as he turned the truck to the left and drove into parking lot.

  “You still trust me?” he asked.

  Deep breath in. Deep breath out. “Yes.” Because I did. Even more now.

  “You’ll be hooked to bungees and fall over water. You’ll be perfectly safe. My friend owns this place. You want to leap from an airplane, this is the next step.”

  Yes, I had to jump from an airplane before we left for the open sea. Crazy Kami wouldn’t step foot on that vessel. I nodded my head in defiance of the old me. “Let’s do this, then.” And I hopped out of the pickup.

  My stomach began that nauseous cramping bit when Len sat me down to sign the stack of wavers and consent forms. He signed his no problem. My hand didn’t want to write my signature. Mentally, I yelled at my hand, told it we had to do this and to grow up.

  My hand called me a series of mean names, tried to tell me I wasn’t the boss of it and I needed my head examined. I never had this issue with my hand when I went to jump out of a plane. I wonder if that was because deep down, I knew I wouldn’t back out today.

  Finally, in sync with my hand, I scribbled my name or initials where appropriate and handed the forms off.

  A tall man with a prominent scar cutting through his eyebrow approached us. “Len, buddy. It’s been a while.” The man had a broad, white smile.

  “Sure has,” said Len. “I’ve been busy. Setting sail end of next week.”

  Then, as if the man had just noticed me, he said, “Hello. And who might you be?”

  “I’m Kami,” I said, holding my hand out to him.

  As the man shook it, Len moved in close to press his front to my back. “This is my girlfriend, Jake. She’s sailing out with me.”

  “Kami—the girl—the one?”

  Len punched Jake in the gut, and it looked pretty hard. Jake made an oomph noise and stepped back on one foot.

  “Got it,” he coughed out. “Nice to meet you, Kami.”

  What was that about?

  “Rude much?” I asked Len.

  Len simply shrugged. “Now we have an understanding.”

  “You couldn’t have used your words?”

  “For some guys, words aren’t enough.”

  “And Jake is one of those guys?” I asked. Not that I needed an answer. His gut punch pretty well clued me in.

  Like at the airplane jump, they had lockers for us to lock our valuables inside. Unlike at the air jump, we didn’t need a jumpsuit. One of Jake’s assistants helped Len in to a harness while the man—Jake himself—helped me into mine, his hands often getting a little closer to friendly than I was comfortable with.

  “Watch your hand now, or watch it dangling broken in a minute,” I warned him.

  “Feisty,” he said. “No wonder Len likes you.”

  “Len loves me. Would you like him to prove it to you?” I turned my head and called, “Hey, Le—”

  Jake’s hand wrapped around my mouth to muffle my words. “You don’t need to do that.”

  “Oh, but I think I do,” I said. Though with his hand over my mouth it sounded more like, “Owe, mut I hink I to.” And then I bit him.

  Jake howled, shaking his hand out. “Listen, you can’t jump if I’m bleeding.”

  “Fair enough. Hands to yourself, yeah?”

  “You’re all his,” he said as his consent.

  From that point on, Jake treated me like any other customer. Harnessed and with helmets on, we walked up to
the unfinished bridge, which Jake had turned into his platform for jumping off of.

  One end of the thick bungee he hooked to a metal railing with a hook as big as my hand. Then, per his directions, I climbed over the railing to stand on a ledge.

  “Right, Kami. Now I want you to bend your knees, spring up and back, understand? You’ll be fine. The bungee will stretch and snap you back up a couple of times before you dangle. The second bungee will be used to pull you over to the platform lower down. They’ll help you out of your harness.”

  “Got it.”

  “You can do this, baby.” Len kissed me. “I’ll be videoing you the whole way down.”

  On the count of three (I bent my knees), two (I sprang up and back), one. The air rushed over my face, so loud in my ears. Vaguely, I became aware that I screamed like a gleeful maniac. And I wasn’t scared. Not this time. I looked at the river below growing closer as I fell until the bungee couldn’t stretch anymore and snapped me back up. I dropped a second time. The bungee snapped me back up a second time, not as high, and I dropped a third and final time.

  “Woo!” Len screeched. “Good job, Kams. Woo!”

  I looked up and waved to him and his phone, knowing full well I looked like an idiot in the video. Did I care? Not one single, solitary bit.

  Crazy Kami just bungee jumped off an unfinished bridge over a river. “I want to go again,” I called back up to him.

  “Wait for me. We’ll go again together,” Len called down.

  The assistants pulled me over to the lower platform and I watched Len fall from below him.

  I clapped and screamed and clapped some more. When they pulled him in, I didn’t even give him the chance to unlatch the hook from the harness before I launched myself at him. Those strong arms wrapped to hold me tight.

  “This was amazing,” I said. “You’re amazing.” You couldn’t pry the smile off my face with a crowbar.

  We climbed the wooden steps back up the side of the cliff to reach the platform again.

  “Going again, Jake,” Len informed him.

  Still smiling, or should I say smiling again, Jake nodded. “So I heard.”

  This time Len and I jumped off while holding hands.

  What a rush. I thought ziplining and rock wall climbing were fun. This just became my new favorite pastime.

  After our second jump, new people had shown up, so we let the assistants help us from the harnesses.

  “Still feeling good?” Len asked.

  “The best.” Yeah, okay. So my giddy cheese factor (i.e. How emotionally cheesy I felt at the moment) might have been hitting critical mass, but this was monumental for me. When we reached the lockers, I could hear my phone pinging with notifications before I got the door open.

  He’d posted the jump already.

  Holy cow, Kami.

  That was amazing.

  You go, girl!

  On and on the messages funneled in. I didn’t realize so many people paid attention to me. The irrefutable proof lay on my phone screen.

  Thanx, I responded back to one. It was fun.

  Len’s a beast. Best boyfriend in the world. My response to another.

  That last I threw in for Brian’s sake. Since I knew he’d been keeping track of my adventures. Not that I wanted to make him jealous anymore—because I didn’t care if he was. The Brian ship done sailed.

  No, I just wanted him to know, in case there was any doubt, that I knew what he’d done, and how Len treated me was how you treated a girlfriend.

  “Got another surprise for you,” said Len.

  “Lead on,” I offered.

  We drove to an Amazonian restaurant. I didn’t know they had a specific cuisine until we walked inside.

  “You’ve got to be joking, right? Please, Len,” I begged. “Please tell me you’re joking.”

  “Sorry, baby. Not sorry, and not joking. You can’t eat regular food after hitting a milestone like bungee jumping. We go big or we go home.”

  “Then let’s go home.”

  “No can do.” He took my hand, I think more to keep me from escaping than anything, and led me to a table in the center of the small dining room.

  It wasn’t fancy at all. No table coverings. The black vinyl on the chairs cracked and peeled. A napkin dispenser and salt and pepper shakers sat on each table. When our waitress approached, she spoke to us in Spanish. Lennon answered her as if he spoke Spanish every day of his life.

  “Sí,” she said, then walked over to the kitchen to put in our order.

  That word I knew. Yes. Score one for Kami.

  “What are we getting?” I asked. “How is Amazonian food different?”

  “This cuisine comes from a special part of the Amazon. You’ll just have to wait.”

  It wasn’t five minutes later the waitress came back with a soda for me and a soda for Len. They used red-and-white striped, wax-covered paper straws. Ten minutes after our drinks, the entrees began to appear. Fried bananas or plantains. Some sort of greens sautéed in oil and garlic. An unleavened bread. And…

  I literally had to bite my lip so as to not offend our hosts by screaming. She set a bowl of ants down next. Cooked ants, along with a large serving spoon. Next to the bowl of ants, white grubs. Lastly—I covered my mouth with my hand and swallowed back the bile—a platter of tarantulas. Of the spider variety. The hair had been singed off and they smelled like they’d been sautéed in bacon fat, like the grubs. But there was no way—a spider? Really?

  Len thanked her, as did I.

  But once she was gone, I laid it out. “I’m not eating that.”

  “You’ll offend them. You have to.”

  “No, if you’d have told me that you planned to feed me spiders and grubs, I’d have turned you down flat. This is on you, buddy.”

  “Please, Kam. Just try it. They taste different than you imagine. We’re here. Do this”—he wobbled his lip—“for me?”

  Fearful Kami would tell him to go to heck. But I wasn’t fearful Kami any longer. Crap, I did not want to do this. But I sucked up my reserves. “You first,” I ordered.

  He scooped up the ants first and dumped a pile on his plate. Plantains, greens, grubs, a whole spider, and lastly, he tore off a strip of bread. The ants and greens he layered on the bread, which he folded over to make a kind of sandwich. Then he took a big bite.

  He chewed.

  He swallowed.

  He didn’t get sick.

  Actually, he went back for a second bite right away.

  “Okay, I’ll try that,” I said.

  Before I could chicken out, he handed over his last bite. I put the whole thing in my mouth because it wasn’t that big. The greens tasted slightly bitter, as greens tended to do. The bread tasted like bread. There was a crunch like eating the crispies from a chocolate covered crunch bar from the ants, and then the oddest sensation. I tasted lemon. Lemon and greens always went together.

  “Wow,” I said around the mouthful of food. “That’s…unexpected.”

  “Right? Would you like more?”

  I shook my head yes, so Len piled ants, greens, plantains, and bread on my plate. I hadn’t even gotten to the plantains yet.

  “Ready to try the grubs yet?” he asked.

  “Are you?”

  He picked a fat one up and plucked it in his mouth. I watched closely for wincing or cringing as he chewed. He gave no negative responses, so I picked one up, too.

  “Here goes nothing,” I said, then bit the sucker in half. It didn’t squirt like I expected. The insides, having been sautéed in the bacon fat, were solid, and pretty much all I tasted was bacon. I didn’t enjoy them—it was a texture thing—as much as the ants, but I didn’t hate them either.

  Finally, we made it to the big show. The spider he dropped on my plate. I couldn’t watch myself eat it, so I closed my eyes. It crunched, audibly. With my eyes closed, I would have sworn in a court of law that he’d switched out the spider for crab.

  That’s exactly what it tasted like. Cra
b.

  Upon opening my eyes, I still held a tarantula. Who would’ve thunk? Tarantulas tasted like crab. Len captured me devouring every bite on camera to post for my followers.

  “You have to try this,” I said to him, taking another bite without being prodded into it. Pretty much the only thing I didn’t go back for was the grubs. I left those to Len.

  What does one get to follow up a dinner of insects?

  Frozen yogurt.

  He took me to his favorite frozen yogurt shop afterward. We built our sundaes and went for a stroll outside. The balmy night made for a wonderful backdrop, with the man whom I loved at my side.

  “Can you even believe that things we did today?” I postulated.

  “Absolutely. I knew you had it in you, Kam. You’re my fearless girl now. Unstoppable.”

  “You think?”

  “What I think is that you’re ready.”

  I shoveled another spoonful of cheesecake frozen yogurt and a fat blackberry into my mouth. “Ready?”

  “Jump with me. Tomorrow. I’ll be next to you the whole time. What do you say?”

  “Seriously, do you really think I’m ready?”

  “I’ve never met a woman readier to take that plunge. C’mon, baby. Say you’ll do it.”

  I thought about it for all of a minute. “Okay, you’re right. I’ll do it.”

  For my reward, I got Len kisses. Lots and lots of Len kisses. Yes, in public. It wasn’t like he shoved his tongue down my throat.

  That would come later.

  The Fall

  Sixteen:

  “I can’t do it!” I yelled against the rushing air, making it hard to hear myself, let alone for Len to hear me. The roar rumbled through my entire body, vibrating down to the tips of my booted toes.

  “Yes, you can,” Len yelled back. “You’re fearless now.”

  “Maybe she can’t,” Lacy, my former jump instructor, yelled to him.

  “She can,” Len insisted. “You can, Kam.”

  We stood in the open doorway, Len and I hooked together fourteen thousand feet up in the sky. He had one hand braced to the top roller and the other to the door pushed open as far as it could go.

  How dare she have so little faith in me? Lacy had been the one to dump me as her jump trainee in the first place.