Since it’s Wanda’s show, we motion her ahead first, and the crew starts securing her to her instructor. It’s awkward being belted to other people, like giant infants in chest carriers, and we get the giggles.
We don’t stop grinning and poking fun at each other until the opening of the door steals our laughter and our breath.
Then suddenly Grandma Helen lunges at me, dragging her instructor forward half a foot or so, and I’m thinking this is one of those “decisions of other participants” situations the release form warned me about.
“Promise you’ll take time to relax and to play,” she yells over the noise, hugging me the best she can with all our extra contraptions, her instructor so blasé, looking like this happens on the daily, and I suppose it does, “and that it won’t be so long between visits from now on.”
Easy, and so she sees how sincerely I mean it, I stare her straight in the eye. “I promise.”
Wanda’s up to jump, so Grandma Helen and I clasp hands, gripping hard enough to cut off circulation as we watch her and her instructor leap through the open door and disappear.
My stomach goes the opposite direction, attempting to flee via my throat.
“See you on the ground, dear girl,” my grandmother calls, and then she and her instructor are gone.
Mere seconds later, it’s my turn.
The lad I’m strapped to asks if I’m ready and no, not in a million years.
Thelma and Louise and their infallible friendship come to my mind again, and I smile as I recall Wanda saying she’ll miss their third musketeer. I guess when it comes down to it, what matters more than planning every possible pathway is who’s willing to take the big leaps with you.
It’s definitely why, even though I can’t feel any of my limbs, excitement strikes me like lightning. “Ready,” I shout, and then I’m freefalling through the air, a thrill in my belly and grinning cheeks plastered to my eyebrows.
Chapter Thirty-Five
Over the past three months in Miami, I’ve regained my footing and settled into a life more normal—if not a bit hectic and faster paced—for a person my age.
I look away from the article slated to run onmy client and rub gritty eyes that refuse to sharpen and focus. My gaze snags on the picture tacked to my gray cubicle wall with neon pushpins, and then I’m flooded with a tug-of-war mixture of joy and grief.
I purchased a copy of our video-recorded skydiving session once we survived and have watched it countless times since returning to this side of Florida’s dick. There’s nothing better to remind me I’m brave, capable, and I can roll with some seriously bizarre ideas and still come out on top.
After stepping out of all the extra gear and harnesses, Wanda, Grandma Helen, and I returned to Lakeview to break the news of my departure to the rest of the gang, and that’s the evening we took the happy snapshot.
We’re frozen in a giant group hug, arms slung around waists and shoulders. Grinning and laughing, faces radiating the love and affection they poured into me this past summer.
While I pulled a strained smile for the camera, I’m doing what sensitive people like me often do when they have to say goodbye: I’m crying.
Not, like, delicate tears that slip prettily down ladies’ cheeks in the movies, either. We’re talking splotchy red skin, eyelids puffy and swollen.
Family, for me, has always included Grandma Helen and Wanda, but it’s grown to encompass Tia Rita, Vonetta and Gertie Harris-Wagner, Bubbies Leora, Ruth, and Bette, along with Nonna Sophia and Arlene. Not only had our newest member discovered how much fun dating in her sunset years can be, when Wayne of Shady Tree Lane wanted to lock it down and stop sharing her with Bruce, she replied she planned to remain unattached for a while.
Noah called to relay her decision, teasingly accusing me and the rest of her friends for being bad examples, grumbling about how he’d be playing bouncer to grandparents forever.
And just like that, my mood morphs into that heavy-heartedness of missing him so badly it sometimes makes it hard to breathe.
I was fine, I was fine, crushing it at work and enjoying my fancy miel latte with oat milk and a double shot of espresso. Then bam, out of nowhere, memories and moments would hit me. Finding Noah in the dirt planting flowers and his wry sense of humor; the night at the comedy club when our chemistry sparked hot and irresistible; him taking me in his bedroom, demonstrating how sensual of a person I could be; and how he showed up again and again.
Around the one-month mark at my current position, I discovered Idoactually get homesick. Just not for the city and coast I fought so hard to return to, and it’s not so much ironic as incredibly frustrating and bad for my second-guessing nature.
But as I’ve reminded myself repeatedly, my summer in Lakeview Retirement Village was basically a vacation from the real world. Part temp job and part puzzle, the position provided a necessary lull after years spent hustling and grinding in the cutthroat world of PR.
Acclimating to the rush of the big city again felt more brutal after my previous cushy living situation, and admittedly, searching for an apartment took some of the shine off Miami at the very beginning.
I missed having Grandma and Wanda to run ideas by and talk to. And Fifi, whose companionship I missed even more during late night work sessions. I no longer took much of a lunch break and couldn’t pound out any bewildering emotions on the piano because I didn’t have access to one.
By the time I left Lakeview, I could play “Champagne Problems”and “Long Live”with hardly any pauses or wrong notes, and now nothing keeps me company besides my laptop and to-do list. Loneliness felt so much more desolate under the darkness of night, the quiet too damn loud.
But as I continue to assure myself with each passing day, I obviously need longer to rebuild a social life—I promised my grandmas I would, after all.
