Ryan
I sat at my desk and played solitaire on the computer, which was to say I randomly clicked cards around. I wasn’t paying the least bit of attention to the game. How could I, when everything in my world had fallen completely apart? I had gone into the office every day this week and sat in a space that used to remind me of success, wealth, and achievement. As the CEO of Solas Enterprises, my office was the largest room on the floor. It was at the end of the hall, so I had windows on two sides, floor to ceiling, overlooking the city. I was the epitome of success, and I usually looked the part.
My secretary had done a double take at me this morning; she tried to cover it, but I saw it all the same.
“I know, I look terrible,” I’d said.
“Can I get you anything?” she’d asked.
Part of the reason I’d hired her in the first place was her ability to be discreet and her ability to not give a shit about whether I showed up to work in the morning, or how I looked when I did. I’d intended that for any hangovers or injuries I might sustain during the Diamond Club’s activities.
“No, I’m fine. Hold my calls, though, please.”
“Certainly.”
A few minutes later she had knocked quietly on the door and, when I granted her entrance, she slipped in and wordlessly placed a cup of coffee on my desk.
I sipped the coffee and looked out the window. I hadn’t spoken to Justin, or anyone else from the Diamond Club, since that ridiculous night at the dance club. I had no idea what was in Justin’s head that he would try to hit on Alicia, and practically rape her, with both Tammy and me there. I shook my head. What a drunken asshole.
My door opened again and I turned, expecting to see my secretary again. But it was Roger. He tossed a greasy McDonald’s bag at me and I nearly dropped my coffee trying to catch it one-handed.
“What’s this?” I asked.
“Dude, you haven’t been eating for days; your secretary told me. So eat up, it’s your favorite. Well, actually, it’s my favorite, but you’re in no position to complain. Jesus, you look like you’ve lost ten pounds.”
I stretched my neck, set my coffee down, and then dumped the food out onto my desk: two sausage, egg, and cheese biscuits, four hash browns, and an apple pie. I looked up at Roger gratefully.
“I didn’t think you were talking to me. Aren’t you pissed at me? At Alicia?” I gestured for him to sit and slid two of the hash browns and a biscuit his way.
“Whatever, man. I kind of knew something was up from the start, you know, because she’s really, really not your type. Or, I guess I should say, not your old type, because I think that you two make a really great couple. Yeah, I thought that you paid her, but so what? We spend money on all sorts of stupid shit; it’s kind of what we do.”
“But her blog—”
Roger snorted. “I actually thought it was funny. I am a college dropout, no libel there,” he shrugged. “And Tammy is a bitch. I mean, it was actually kind of a smart, satirical commentary on the rich assholes of society. I was flattered to have made the cast.” He grinned and took a big bite out of his hash browns.
My relief that I still had at least one friend after the debacle stirred my appetite, and I took a bite of the sausage biscuit and smiled. “You’re a good friend, Rog.”
We ate in silence for a few minutes. I wanted to say something, but thoughts were flying around my brain, tripping over one another, each raising my anxiety levels higher. The Diamond Club was built on secrecy. What was a secret club if it wasn’t a secret anymore? Could the Diamond Club even continue to exist? And, if it did, could I still be a part of it if I didn’t have Alicia? And what about Justin and Tammy? Justin cheated on her, and I’d had to tear him off of Alicia.
And, all of that paled in comparison to the Solas Enterprises event coming up in just a few weeks. Things were such a mess. I’d banked on Alicia going with me as my date; what was I going to do? How was I going to get someone else to understand how much was riding on this event?
What I’d just said to Roger, that he was a good friend, it felt true. Would it feel true if I’d said it about anyone else in the Diamond Club? Reena, Dylan, yes. Lori, yes, although we weren’t super close. Justin…not anymore. It wasn’t just the thing with Alicia, although that was a huge part of it. We’d grown apart. And Tammy…I was through with her privileged, catty bullshit. She was never a friend to me. I was done being a friend to her. I needed real friends, friends who could see past the drama, who would still see me despite the drama. Roger was one of them, at least.
“What’s up, bro?” Roger asked, hearing my heavy sigh.
“I just…” I crumpled up my wrappers in the bag and tossed the bag in the trash. “Do you wanna go do something stupid?”
“I love stupid,” Roger said. “It’s my specialty. College dropout,” he pointed at himself and grinned.
“Perfect,” I said. “Let’s get the fuck out of here.”
“I’m game for anything, just as long as you remember that you can’t put your problems off forever. You’re going to have to face everything eventually.”
“Maybe,” I said, “but not today. Let’s go.”
* * * * *
“What do you want to do?” Roger asked as we drove out of the parking lot in my Jag.
“Let’s go skydiving. I want to escape the earth for a while.” I picked up my phone and made a reservation.
“Sweet. You know what we should do again?” Roger paused. “Well, however many of us there are…”
I gripped the wheel tighter. “What?”
“We need to do that volcano-boarding thing again. That was fucking amazing.”
I grinned at the memories of us all cruising down the side of a volcano at warp speed, laughing, screaming, and trying to knock each other off our boards. “Yeah, that was a great day. I would totally dig doing that again. Even if there’s no Club, you and I should still go. No reason we can’t.”
Roger agreed, even though I was sure the idea of doing something without the rest of the guys probably seemed as strange to him as it did to me.
“I was thinking of something else crazy for today,” I said.
“Yeah?”
“I’m going to wait before pulling the rip cord. Just a tiny bit longer. I want to feel the fall at the end.”
Roger’s face broke into a huge smile. “You’re fuckin’ crazy, man. All right, I’m in.”
I drove the rest of the way in silence, lost in my thoughts about Alicia and the Club. Roger turned the radio up and, between the music and the wind blowing through the open windows, we couldn’t have talked much anyway.
When we arrived at the skydiving range, the helicopter was waiting for us. Most people who skydive do it out of an airplane, but the Club found a few years ago that skydiving out of a helicopter was a completely different, extraordinary experience. Roger and I suited up and talked to the pilot, our regular guy. He didn’t have any questions about why it was just the two of us, and I was grateful. I put my helmet on and my headphones, and Roger did the same, and we climbed into the chopper.
A helicopter can’t fly as high as a plane, so the timing is much riskier. The skydiver has less time to pull the parachute, less time to react if something goes wrong, and the whole thing is a complete rush. We climbed to the usual height, and I readied myself for the jump.
“See you back on earth!” I signaled Roger with our hand code created for just this type of occasion, and I jumped.
The wind caught me immediately and I jettisoned toward the ground. I felt my problems, all the stress, everything tear off of me. The rush of air in my ears, my teeth, and on my clothes pressed at my heart, and I smiled as much as I could.
Roger wasn’t too far from me. We reached the point where we were supposed to pull the cord, but I waved at him instead. He waved back, and even though I couldn’t see his face clearly, I knew he was grinning like an idiot just like I was. This was the best.
The ground was far away, but it felt like it was getting closer way too fast. I yanked at my rip cord and saw Roger do the same. His parachute billowed out above him and it looked like he was jerked upward.
My parachute didn’t open. Fuck. I yanked the cord again, but nothing happened. The field below was rushing toward me, and all I could see was a vision of my body splattered over the grass, and then my thoughts turned to Alicia and what she’d think, how she’d feel about my death. She’d be pissed. She’d think I was still an immature idiot, fucking around for thrills and shallow, meaningless adrenaline rushes. When instead I could have been living a life of real happiness, in her arms.
Alicia’s face floated into my mind and I closed my eyes, willing her image to go away. But my thoughts of her were as stubborn as the woman herself, and I couldn’t shake her image. I thought about her eyes, her beautiful hair, her lips, kissing her, touching her warm, soft skin. Her laugh when something caught her off-guard, and her sarcastic response when people asked her incredibly stupid questions. She was spunky, gorgeous, intelligent, ambitious, and she had been mine. And I’d lost her.
And for what—because she published a stupid blog? Like no one else has ever said anything negative about me? I hadn’t made millions in this world with a thin skin. Why had I suddenly acted like a petulant child when she came downstairs that morning? The things I said…I shook my head, embarrassed at my behavior. She’d made a mistake, sure, but jumping out of a helicopter was nothing compared to being with her.
And then I realized it.
With Alicia, anything and everything we did seemed like an adventure, a risk-taking affair that the Diamond Club hadn’t yet thought of. It didn’t matter if we were making dinner, making camp, or making love. Everything with her was exciting and dangerous and thrilling. And I wanted her back.
I couldn’t get her back if I was splattered all over the ground. I didn’t know what else to do, so I yanked the cord again. Suddenly, my parachute and the pack on my back opened. I braced myself. I heard the boom of the parachute as it fully opened a split second before it pulled me back up into the air; the breathless sensation of flying through the air was indescribable. Then it leveled off and I was floating, able to breathe, and watching the earth rising toward me, not nearly as quickly as it had been a second ago.
The ride to the ground seemed to finish in slow motion. I tried to run as I landed, to take the impact off my legs. When my feet crashed to the ground, I felt my knees buckle. I could walk, though; it didn’t feel like there was any lasting damage. I ripped off my gear as fast as I could. Roger was behind me in the jump but he weighed more than I did, so he landed fairly soon after me.
“What the fuck!” he yelled, pulling his helmet off. “I thought you were going to die!”
“Me too,” I said, shaking my hair out. “My parachute didn’t open at first.”
“Holy shit. Ho-ly shit.” Then he laughed and pulled me into a hug. I froze for a second. We were best friends, yeah, but we’d never hugged each other.
He rumpled my hair before popping me on the back of the head. “Wanna go again?”
“Can’t, dude. We gotta get back to the city right now. Get your stuff and get in the car!” I yelled. “I’m going back to get my girl.”