by Swept Away
Jeremy purchased two paper cones of the spun-sugar confection, and handing her one, said, "You have to wonder just who thought up this stuff."
"It's awful," she said as nibbled.
"Umm. Disgusting." He agreed.
"It's so simmer," she sighed. "Cotton candy and boardwalk fudge."
"Saltwater taffy and snow cones."
"Boardwalk pizza."
"Boardwalk fries."
"With cheese."
"Uh- uh. Old Bay seasoning."
"Ooh, that sounds good, too."
"Maybe tomorrow night we should just do boardwalk for dinner," Jeremy said as they arrived back at the motel. "And later, we can take on the roller coaster."
"Not after a meal of boardwalk food."
"Hmm, good point."
"Oh, look. People are swimming in the pool there. Want to join them?"
He glanced at his watch.
"Not tonight," he told her. "I have to get up early tomorrow. And so do you."
"I do?" She frowned. "Why?"
"Because there's something we want to do."
"There is?"
He nodded.
"How early?"
Jeremy appeared to be calculating something.
"Well, if we want breakfast first, we should probably meet at the coffee shop here in the motel by about five."
"And if we don't want breakfast?"
"Five- thirty should do it."
"Are the whales up that early?"
"Whales? Oh, no, that's not whale-watching time. That'll be later in the day. This will be something else. Something special."
"What?"
"It's a surprise," he told her. "You'll just have to wait till the morning to find out."
They stopped in front of Jody's door and she handed him her key when he reached for it. He pushed open the door with one hand and turned on the lights for her.
"So. You game? Five A.M.?" He asked as he gathered her in his arms.
"Yes," she told him as his mouth lowered to meet hers. "I'm game."
He kissed her until something inside him told him he'd better stop while he still could.
"I'll see you at the coffee shop at five," he said, closing the door behind him.
Jody dropped her shoes on the floor and sat on the edge of the bed and held up her hand. The thin band of mystery metal on her middle finger gleamed like the finest gold. She lay back across the bed, dazzled from kisses she could still feel, right down to her toes, and wondering what incredible surprises tomorrow might bring.
Chapter 6
"Ah, there you are." Jeremy couldn't help but grin as Jody half stumbled into the lobby at 5:35 the next morning wearing gray shorts and a hooded sweatshirt of the same color.
"Here's part of me, anyway." She covered her mouth to yawn. "The rest of me is still sleeping peacefully back in room three seventeen."
He handed her a tall cardboard cup and said, "You'll be wide awake in a few minutes, I guarantee it."
"Is that coffee?" She sniffed and sighed. At that moment, it smelled like heaven. She could have wept. "Bless you. I need this. You're a prince, Jeremy Noble."
"I am indeed." He took her elbow and guided her through the door and into the parking lot.
"It's still dark out. You know, back at the inn, I'm up every day by at least this hour. But for some reason, I just haven't wanted to get out of bed all week."
"That's 'cause you know you're on vacation and you think you should be sleeping late. But trust me. This will be worth getting up early for." He opened the door to the Maxima and stepped back so that she could slide in.
She could have told him that she'd gladly get up at five any morning, just to look at him. Instead, she asked, "What's this'?'r
"You'll see." He grinned and turned on the ignition.
They drove through quiet streets, those same streets that just the night before had been teeming with life. Jody sipped at her coffee, grateful for his thoughtfulness, and tried to guess what surprise he might have come up with.
She hoped it wasn't deep-sea fishing.
"We're almost there." He glanced over and added, "You might need that hood. It might be a little cool."
"Give me a hint."
"Too late. We're there."
He rounded a deep bend in the road and pulled off to the side, to a clearing where several other cars were parked on a sandy lot lined with a narrow row of scrub pines.
"This way," Jeremy motioned to her, and in the growing light she could see that his eyes were dancing- with mischief or pleasure, she wasn't sure which.
Jody followed him down a path leading through the sparse stretch of trees, her curiosity piqued.
"I know. We're going to watch the sun rise." She caught up with him and tucked her arm through his, still holding her coffee cup in one hand.
"Yes." He grinned, and stopping at the end of the path, he pointed straight ahead. "From a slightly different vantage point."
Jody stopped, drop-jawed, in her tracks, and stared at the brightly colored balloon that rose fifty feet above her head.
"It's a… it's a…" she stuttered and pointed.
"Hot- air balloon," Jeremy grinned, taking her hand. "You said you wished you could see the entire island from up above. Well, this morning you'll get your wish."
"From the air," she whispered, horrified as she stumbled along behind him. "I'm not sure that I really meant that I wanted to see it from the air…"
He laughed and squeezed her hand.
"Alan Dember?" He called to the tall, thin man inside the balloon's basket
"Right." Busy checking something near the burner, the man responded without turning around.
"Your ad said first come, first served."
"You're the first," Dember called back over his shoulder. "Climb aboard."
"Climb aboard," Jody repeated dumbly.
"Just swing your leg over. Here, like this," Jeremy demonstrated and helped her over the side.
"We'll be ready for takeoff in just a few," Dember told them.
"You're the pilot?" Jody asked anxiously. "Are you certified or whatever it is you have to be to fly one of these things?"
Dember laughed. "Certified by the FAA, just like an airplane pilot. The balloon is regulated by the FAA, too, so it's subject to inspections and has to meet certain standards, just like a commercial jet. That make you feel any better?"
"Not really," she said under her breath.
"Well, then, if you're ready, I'm ready," the pilot told them, a bit too cheerfully, Jody thought.
How could anyone be that cheerful about going up into the air in a basket held aloft by a balloon?
Jody looked up above her head to where the enormous balloon seemed to fill the sky. It looked like a party balloon. A very large party balloon, but a party balloon all the same. She was just about to tell Jeremy that she'd wait for him on the ground when Dember yelled to the crew, "Untie her. We're going up."
"We're going up." Jody clutc
hed at Jeremy's arm.
"Wait till you see the sun coming up over the water, Jody. It's like nothing you've ever seen, I promise."
"I've seen it from the beach," she said. "I liked it from there."
There was a whooshing sound from the burner, and she felt the basket begin to rise slowly. Panic began to overtake her, and she grabbed the edge of the basket, then made the mistake of looking down, rather than out or up. Below her feet, she could see lights from the cars below.
"Jeremy, we're in a basket," she told him. "You can see through it."
"It's okay, Jody, it's perfectly safe."
"Baskets are for flowers, Jeremy. Potted plants. Newspapers and magazines. Baskets are not for climbing into and flying over the ocean." Jody's eyes were closed, her hands clammy with fear, and it was then that Jeremy realized she was truly afraid.
It had never occurred to him that she might be afraid. He put one arm around her and drew her to him, and with the other brushed her hair back from her face.
"Jody, it's okay. It's safe, I promise."
"Where exactly are we going?" She asked, still not looking beyond Jeremy's chest.
"Wherever the wind takes us," the pilot nodded happily.
"Any idea where that might be?"
Dember laughed. "It isn't quite as random as you think. I get reports on wind speed and direction before each flight."
"Wind direction. Speed. Can't those things change?" she muttered.
Their pilot nodded. "They can. They do, at varying altitudes."
"How do you control this thing?"
"By adjusting the altitude of the balloon," he told her, and realizing that his passenger was more than just a little scared, took her arm and turned her to the burner. "Now, if we need to rise above an air layer, we heat the air inside the balloon a little. If we want to come beneath a layer of air, we vent it, let a little of the air out to drop the balloon. We use liquid propane gas, by the way, just like a barbecue. It burns quickly, to heat the air inside the balloon quickly, which allows me to make it ascend or descend as quickly as I need it to go. It's safe, I promise. I do this every day. I've never lost a passenger yet."
"That's reassuring." She nodded.
"Here now, hold on. We're going up just a little higher."
"More good news…" Jody squeezed her eyes dosed.
"Jody, look," Jeremy said gently. "Look at the sky. Did you ever see anything more beautiful? Colors more glorious?"
She peeked out around his shoulder, and in spite of herself, an "Oh!" escaped her lips.
"It's… it's like floating up into heaven," she exclaimed. "Oh, Jeremy, look at the clouds. And the ocean looks so blue. It looks bluer from here. And look at the boats out there… oh, it's amazing."
Jeremy smiled. He'd hoped that one look would make her forget her fear, and it had.
"And look down there, at the way the waves curl toward the shore…"
Jody was really loosening up.
"Can we go back over the town, over Ocean Point?" She asked the pilot.
"We will, on our way back to the launch pad. My intention is to go on down to the end of the island, then swing back inland a bit, then try to get back to where we started. If the wind cooperates, that's what we'll do. If it doesn't, then our chase crew will meet up with us at another landing site."
"How will they know where to find us?" She frowned.
"Radio," he pointed to the floor where the radio sat between his feet "But so far, the winds have been good. Spectacular sunrise, would you say?"
"Definitely," she sighed.
"Feeling better?" Jeremy asked softly.
"Much," she nodded, and turned in his arms to look into his eyes. "Thank you. This was a wonderful surprise."
"I'm sorry that you had a few bad moments there. I should have asked you first how you felt about hot-air balloons."
"I'm glad you didn't ask. I'd have said no and I would have missed this and I'd never have known what it felt like to watch the dawn over the ocean from the air. It's glorious, Jeremy. Everyone should see this, just once. Thank you so much for sharing this with me."
"You're welcome." He slipped both arms around her and nudged her into leaning against him, thinking that there was so much more he wanted to share with her. So much more he would share with her.
"And over there, off to the left, you can see all those trees there," their pilot was saying above the whoosh of the burner. "That's the start of the Pine Barrens. Of course, most folks around here call it the Pinelands, or just the Pines, since they know there's nothing barren about the area, which covers over a million acres. In 1983, the United Nations designated the Pines as an International Biosphere Reserve, 'cause there are species of plants back in there that are endangered or extinct every place but here. If we were to get close enough, you'd be able to see that the Pines are crisscrossed with a number of slow-moving streams of fresh water. You have your swamps back in there-cedar swamps, mostly American white cedar. Water the color of tea. Sphagnum moss everywhere. It used to be a big business, gathering sphagnum moss to sell. Still is, in some parts."
"You know a lot about the area," Jody turned to the pilot.
"My mother was a Piney," he told them. "Used to be a certain stigma attached to the word Piney, but these days, people are more proud than ashamed of the term."
''Why's that?" She asked.
"I suspect it's just a matter of coming to understand and appreciate the culture for what it is. Ethnically, the people here are a wonderful mix. German, Scottish, Irish, Swedish. Some Quaker, some Catholic. Russians. New England fishermen who came south to follow the whales before New Jersey was even a colony. I've heard even Hessian mercenaries who deserted after the Battle of Trenton came to lose themselves in the wilderness. Some still speak the dialect, back in there." Dember turned to Jeremy, who had been silent during the pilot's recitation, and asked, "You ever been?"
Jeremy had not expected the question, and his eyes drifted over the endless acres of green that now spread out below them like a fan. "Yes. Yes, I have. But not in a very long time."
"Beautiful, don't you think?" Dember's eyes were shining. "It's still wild. People too often think of New Jersey as being, you know, one overpopulated, polluted city after another. If they could only see this, the miles of forest…"
The pilot's voice droned on and on, extolling the virtues of the Pines and its history. And all the while, Jody was watching Jeremy's face.
His eyes followed the sea of green below even when Dember had switched course and had headed back toward the island. His face seemed touched by melancholy, his smile gone, his mouth taut, and he was, for an instant, a million miles-or a million acres-away.
"… but right now, we're over the bridge leading to Ocean Point. You see the bay there, and off to the left you can see the yacht club, the marinas…"
"Jeremy," Jody tugged on his sleeve,
"where did you go?"
He looked down at her, a sadness in his gray eyes, and said simply, "Home, Jody. Just for a minute, I went home."
She wanted to ask him where home might be and why the thought of it disturbed him so. Maybe, before the week had ended, she might learn.
"Now, right there's the park…"
"Oh, and Jeremy, look! Down there. Right down there. There's the street where our old rental house was. The third street in from the bay! The house was right in the middle of the block, the seventh one… She counted the rooftops. "There! That one! Back then, the roof wasn't blue…" She tried to bring him back. "Do you see?"
"Yes," he nodded idly, still looking back over his shoulder to the blur of green that was diminishing in size as the balloon headed in the opposite direction.
Later, when the balloon had landed and they had thanked their pilot for a wonderful ride, as they sat in a diner-all chrome and glass-and waited for their breakfast to be served, Jody sensed that he was still not completely with her.
"Seeing the sun over the ocean like that, the colors… that may have been the most unforgettable moment of my life," she said, hoping to draw him back.
He nodded and said, "Good."
"What was yours?"
"My what?"
"Most unforgettable moment."
He stared at her for a very long time, and she began to regret having asked the question when he replied quietly, "I'm hoping it hasn't happened yet."
Jeremy leaned back as the waitress set down a white plate from which an enormous omelet threatened to overflow. "Maybe it will be this afternoon. You up for a little whale watching?"
And just that quickly, he had put it aside-whatever it was-and kept it hidden through the rest of the afternoon.
"This is incredible!" Jody shouted to Jeremy above the loud hum of the boat's engine. "It's been so long since I've been out on the ocean, I'd forgotten how much I used to love it."