Duke’s laughter when we surfaced failed to calm me.
“You need to trust me,” he said.
“Maybe your Idaho muscles have grown soft,” I retorted.
Did I not trust him? Why did those words ring both true and false?
“The balance of our lift comes from you. I can support you, but you’re the one who has to let go of my shoulders and let yourself fly. Without that, we’re going to fall every time.”
Duke released me and moved my body into position once more. We tried again. The first time, I ignored his advice, and it backfired immediately—to my utter annoyance. The second time, I did try to remove my hands from his shoulders but began internally freaking out, and we dropped yet again.
“This is a really stupid thing for a bucket list,” I said, defeat lacing my words with frustration. His hands were on my hips again, feeling much more at home there now.
He scoffed in jest. “You can’t judge what’s on somebody else’s list.”
“It wasn’t really on your list and you know it.” I yelped again as another weed brushed my calf. “Things are touching my legs right now. Consider yourself judged.”
“It’s probably just the snakes,” he said calmly.
Welp.
That was the wrong thing to say.
I didn’t wait for the countdown. I didn’t bend my knees. But I did fully launch myself at Duke. If I had been jumping upward instead of outward, we might have pulled the whole thing off—that is, if he’d had any sort of warning. My arms clung to his neck while my legs encircled his waist.
Duke fell back into the water. His hands held me fast as I screamed the whole way down until the water silenced my cries. Duke came up, laughing and wheezing, while I continued using him as my own personal ladder. Whatever issues I may have had with touching and boundaries had suddenly vanished.
It took a while for our laughter to die down. And when it did, Duke held me cradled in his arms, the water hitting him at his chest and cocooning me in an embrace of safety and Idaho muscles.
“Probably a good time to tell you that I hate snakes,” I whispered. “Like a completely irrational fear of them.”
“So I gathered.”
He was so close. His jaw clenched, and water droplets fell in a haphazard line down his face. His eyes scanned my face, coming to a stop at my lips before he swallowed. My breathing came out in a deep, panting breath that refused to slow. I needed to get down, though with his tight hold, it would take a joint effort to release me.
“This goes against everything inside of me right now,” he mumbled, “but I’ve actually never seen snakes here, and it was probably just a weed.”
Relief poured into my nerves but also something else. Disappointment flared as he helped me down, the splash of water spraying my already soaked shirt once more.
“If you’re wrong, you’ll regret it.”
He took my arm and led me into position. My shorts felt heavy again, and I took a second to tighten the cinch.
“Alright,” Duke began. “I have a good feeling about this one.”
It was sweet of him to think so. But as we fell time and time again, our laughs were fewer and fewer as determination began etching its way onto our faces. The problem was me. Duke was right—once he got me past his shoulders, I was the one in control. I had to hold out my arms in a Superman position, locking my body to keep it as stiff and as still as possible, while he held me over his head. Even though the water was there to catch me, something inside of me panicked each time I passed his shoulders. Instead of straightening and locking my body, I’d curl, sending us both backward into the water.
“Should we just count it?” I begged after the fifteenth attempt, spitting out another mouthful of water, no doubt infested with parasites. “You got me up pretty high.”
A water-logged Duke stood before me, hands on his hips, breathing heavily. I followed the motion of his stomach and chest for a long moment before recollecting myself.
“Nora.” He bent down to my eye level. “We can do this. I promise I can hold you up there. Is it really that scary letting go?”
“Um. Yeah. It is. Hella scary.” My hands were at my hips now, annoyed that his dumb bucket list required so much of me.
Amusement lit his face but I held my ground and tried my best to look stern.
His gaze softened as he took me in, sweeping over every detail.
