He nods and rests his back against the seat.
“Yeah, up until I took the bungee plunge off the Perrine Bridge in Twin Falls, five hundred feet above the river.”
My eyes grow wide in my face as he tells me this with too many scary details.
“I was sure I was gonna die that day,” he goes on. “But I was more tired of being afraid of everything than I was of dying. It was like I was already dead, letting fear ruin what life I had.” He shakes his head with disbelief as he recalls the memory. “I was afraid to ride the roller coaster when my parents took me to Six Flags. My brother—well, let’s just say I never heard the end of it. And I used to be afraid of camping.” He laughs at himself, as though looking back on it now, he finds it ridiculous.
“Camping?”
“Yeah. Camping—I had a bad experience on a camping trip with my dad when I was nine. Messed me up pretty bad.”
“What happened?”
With the back of his head resting against the seat, he leans it to one side to face me, sitting with his fingers interlocked over his stomach, his long, tanned legs fallen apart.
“I went out with my brother while my dad was fishing, and Landon got lost in the woods.” His smile fades as he recalls, and his head moves back so that he’s looking at the back of the seat in front of him rather than at me anymore. “Took two days to find him, but while I was sitting back with my mom watching the news about the lost seven-year-old boy in the forest, and listening to my mom cry, I thought for sure he was dead and it was my fault. Turned out that when they found Landon, he was perfectly fine. Said he wanted to see if he could survive alone in the woods. He did it on purpose—the asshole!” He laughs. “Landon always was the crazy one. The one not afraid to take risks even when he was a boy.”
He looks over at me again.
“But that one incident made me afraid of just about everything,” he says, and slowly his smile is beginning to resurface. “Camping. Heights. Every time my mom, my dad, or my brother would get into a car just to go up the street a few miles, I was so afraid they’d get into a wreck and die. It was all I could think about until they came home safely.”
Luke tries to laugh it off, make it seem like it was just something stupid and that he can’t believe he ever had these fears. But I’m not laughing, and I find them more heartbreaking than humorous.
“Landon got all the girls when we were growing up. He wasn’t afraid of anything.”
I allow my smile to return now that it feels the right time for it. My gaze sweeps over him suggestively when I say, “Well, if your brother got all the girls when you were growing up, he must look incredible to get more than you.” Wait. What? I can’t believe I went there! But for some reason I’m feeling good enough right now and comfortable enough with him that I’m not afraid of blatant flirting.
But when I see a sort of forced look in his eyes, something misplaced that he seems to be trying to hold down, I can’t figure out if he’s turned off by my open flirtation, or if something I said offended or hurt him.
I look away and toward the window that I’m sitting beside, and quietly shrink inside myself, hoping he doesn’t take notice.
Before the quiet moment turns irreversibly awkward, I try to save it.
“So jumping off a bridge with a giant rubber band around your leg cured you?”
“Pretty much,” he answers, his eyes clearing, and that charming smile is back in place
“And you think something like that’ll cure me, too?”
He grins mischievously. “It might.”
“No way.”
“We’ll see,” he says, and the grin deepens.
My mouth falls open and I nudge him in the ribs with my elbow. He does a half double-over, pretending that it actually hurt.
“No way in hell am I jumping off a cliff.”
TEN
Sienna
An hour later I’m standing on the edge of a cliff overlooking the ocean, my painted toenails like little blue people hanging on for dear life as I tower over them, looking down into the water as it taunts me.
“I can’t do it!” I take another step backward, trying not to let the vertigo cause me to stumble and fall off the edge anyway.
Luke’s hands hook about my sides, keeping me on my feet.
“You’ll be all right; I’m right here, and I won’t let anything happen to you,” he says, but I can’t open my eyes. “The fear is all in your head.”
I back a little farther away from the edge, not realizing at first that I’m pressing my body into his—I just want to get away from the danger zone. He doesn’t seem to mind, and his hands are still like permanent fixtures on my hips, which I don’t mind, either.
Luke takes my hand and walks with me a few feet to one side and we sit down together on a rock bathed by the bright sun. Just as we step out of the way, two darkly tanned guys make a short run for it and leap off the edge of the cliff at the same time. The one with short blond hair does a front flip into the water, and they land with a splash. My hands come up instinctively, the fingers of one hand dancing on my lips, the other hand touching my heart as it pounds furiously behind my rib cage.
I shake my head.
“I’m just too scared,” I tell Luke. “I’m sorry. I can’t do it.”
His hand tightens around mine and then he pats it, afterward releasing it softly on top of my knee.
“It’s all right,” he says. “Don’t worry about it.”
I feel like a baby, and it doesn’t help any that there are five other girls out here besides me, all jumping into the water without a fear or worry in the world. I feel weak and small and forgettable.