“Yes,” she replied with a tight smile.
“We need the fastest way to Terminal 2F.”
She rattled off directions in heavily accented English. I caught most of it—down one level, through security, take the shuttle.
“What’s she saying?” Ray demanded.
“Trust me,” I said, and took off running again.
Behind us, I heard Desiree and Cherisse shouting as they spotted us. If we missed this flight, we’d be stuck here for hours. The next one was two hours later.
At security, Ray started unloading his pockets, methodically placing everything in the bins.
“Hurry!” I urged.
“Don’t rush me,” he snapped. “I know what I’m doing.”
Just like at home—he had to do everything his way, in his time. But this wasn’t home. This was The Big Race, and suddenly all our problems felt magnified under the fluorescent airport lights.
The security agent waved me through. I grabbed my backpack and looked back at Ray, still fumbling with his shoes.
“Go,” he said. “I’ll catch up.”
“You don’t know where you’re going!”
“Then wait for me! Jesus, Jeffrey, stop trying to control everything!”
Brandon and Tyler were at the security entrance now. If we missed this flight because Ray was too stubborn to hurry...
But I waited. What else could I do? We were partners in this race, just like we were supposed to be partners in life.
We managed to be the last team to make it onto the flight. Before we took off, Ray borrowed a cell phone from the woman next to him and checked the weather. “Holy wow,” he said. “Thunderstorms in Madrid. The airport closed for an hour, and every flight out of there is running behind.”
He handed the phone back to the woman. “We might have a chance after all.”
We landed in Nice in the middle of the afternoon, with the other two teams. We had no idea how long the first six teams were delayed on the flight from Madrid.
Ray and I thought we would have an advantage, because I spoke French, and it did get us through the airport first and into a taxi headed for the Promenade des Anglais, the boardwalk that runs along the pebbled beach. It was a gorgeous day, the sky a bright blue, palm trees waving in a light breeze.
We were looking for a place called Nice Voile. I knew thatvoilemeant sail. “I think we might be going parasailing,” I said in the taxi. Looking out as we approached the center of town along the road from the airport, I saw a huge red parachute soaring over the ocean and pointed the driver there.
“If it’s a driver switch, I’ll do it,” Ray said. “I know how much you hate heights.”
“I want to do it,” I said, surprising myself. Partly, I know, I just wanted to do it because Ray wanted to, and I was still mad at him. But I thought it would be good for me to break myself of that fear forever, and I couldn’t think of a more beautiful way to do it than sailing over the Mediterranean.
Ray started to argue, but I looked at him. It was as if he understood without my saying anything else. I guess twenty-five years together will do that to you.
We were the first at the parasail place, and sure enough, it was a driver switch—where only one person could do the task. “C’est moi,” I said to the tanned young Frenchman manning the operation, pointing to myself. Before I could think myself out of it, I let myself get strapped into the apparatus, and once again I had a camera attached to my head.
The speedboat took off with a roar that I felt in my chest, and suddenly the wind caught the parasail. For a terrifying moment,I was suspended between the boat and the sky, my feet dangling over the churning wake. Then the sail filled completely, and I rose into the air like some kind of improbable bird.
Oh God, oh God, oh God,was my first coherent thought as I looked down at the rapidly shrinking boat. Ray was a tiny figure on the deck, one hand shading his eyes as he craned his neck to watch me. Cody was beside him, camera aimed at the sky. The Mediterranean stretched endlessly in all directions, its surface a brilliant blue that hurt to look at directly.
My heart hammered against my ribs for the first few seconds. Heights had always been my nemesis—that primal fear of falling, of having nothing solid beneath my feet. But as the parasail found its rhythm, swaying gently in the offshore breeze, something shifted inside me.
I’m flying,I realized with wonder.I’m actually flying.
The fear didn’t disappear entirely, but it transformed into something else, an exhilaration mixed with a profound sense of freedom I hadn’t felt in years. Maybe decades. When was the last time I’d done something purely for the joy of it, without calculating risks or analyzing outcomes? This was even better than the bungee jump because I was moving forward rather than down.
