Me:Are you sure this isn’t a typo?! It seems too good to be true.
Harley:haha, not a typo. It’s yours if you want it. I know the owner and he just wants it gone. It’s been sitting empty for too long.
Me:I’ll take it. How can I thank you? Can I have you over for dinner like I promised?
Me: And Bea and Laney too, of course.
Harley hasn’t given me any reason to think he wants anything romantic with me, but I had to send that last text just to make sure he didn’t think dinner would be anything more than it was.
A thank you.
Waiting for his reply, I anxiously bite my nails in anticipation, staring at the little grey dots that appear on my screen.
Harley:I think it’s time you jump into the creek, Herring.
Harley:But I’ll take you up on your dinner offer, too.
Me:It turns out I don’t need the apartment after all!!Tell the owner I said thank you, but no thank you.
Harley:I’ll be there to catch you.
I pause. To really consider what he’s asking me to do.
I never could jump off the rock cliff into the creek. It’s always been my biggest fear.
Could Harley Wingrove really be the one to help me face it and…take the leap?
Me: Promise?
Harley: Promise.
Regret.
Regret.
Regret.
Why did I just agree to do the Grangewood Creek infamous cliff jump?
Do I have a fucking death wish?
I don’t reply because I’m not actually going to follow through with this silly idea of his, and I hope that if I ignore him, he’ll forget and it’ll just magically go away.
Dinner is much more my style. Something that I genuinely want to do to show my gratitude toward him. It’ll be a nice way to get to know Laney, too.Jumping into the creek was so far off my radar, it never even crossed my mind that he would have suggested it.
But I should have known.
Austin, Bea, and Harley would do the jump into the water every weekend in the summer.
They’d flip, dive, or bomb so seamlessly, while I stayed with our belongings.My feet rarely even touched the water.
I was the only kid in school who never made the leap.
It was almost like a rite of passage here in Grangewood, yet, I never found the courage.
"Come on, babe. You can do it," Bea shouts, cheering me on from down below.
"I don’t think I can," I yell back to her and Austin, who were both waiting, treading water.
