He wasn’t going to budge, she could tell. The man was confident. And sturdy. But she had just the thing for that.
She tilted her chin down, eyes up, and gave him her besthelpless damsel in distress. It was a good one, too, she could feel it, the muscles around her eyes having been warmed up a few minutes prior. He didn’t notice, however, not in the slightest, and even walked away to disinfect a pair of goggles. That left Wren batting her eyelashes at the clock on the wall.
Arthur made his move to pull her away, save her from any further embarrassment, but she dodged his attempt to grab her arm. Wren followed the instructor man down to the other end of the counter.
“Look, let me level with you,” she said. “We could argue back and forth all day about who’s pregnant and who’s not. But the truth is that it’s my constitutional right to jump out of an airplane if I choose to.”
“It’s not.”
“How do you know? You’re not even from here. I’m not trying to be xenophobic, but it’s the truth.”
He smirked, not taking this encounter seriously whatsoever, maybe even enjoying it. “You know two-thirds of Americans can’t even pass the citizenship test? I’ll put my civics knowledge against yours anytime.”
And he was on the move again, shuffling to the other end of the counter to grab a stack of what looked like release forms. Now she was staring at an empty patch of drywall.
Christ, this was humiliating. She knew damn well she couldn’t go skydiving. Or zip-lining. Or scuba diving or go-karting. She had even looked up hot-air ballooning, on a whim, but apparently even gently floating around in a large basket was too dangerous. Couldn’t jump off a diving board, couldn’t drink coffee, couldn’t take a hot bath. Absolutely anything to protect the baby. People wouldn’t even look her in the eyes anymore, would they? The first and only thing they saw was the belly, including Walmart Chris Hemsworth, currently smiling at her. He didn’t register her as attractive, or as young, or even as a woman, really. She was just a vessel, and she didn’t matter. It would only get worse after she gave birth, she knew that much. How was she supposed to be the best version of herself for this kid if she barely even qualified as an autonomous person anymore?
Wren was out of fight. Right then, she wished Charlie was here. Charlie was never out of fight. She would demand to know where the man kept the parachutes, might even force her way into the back to see them for herself. She would not take no for an answer.
Instead, Wren had Arthur, who was staring at a photo wall of Velocity customers smiling after successful dives and inching ever closer to the door. Wren felt an overwhelming sense of melancholy. She mourned the loss of an idea, of being free to fly like a bird and stare death in the face, to be weightless and unhindered by anything at all. It was a dream she’d had since she was a kid and it had slipped away. Yeah, she could come back in a few months, when her achy postpartum body was still attempting to realign itself. Or maybe in a fewyears when all the babysitting and school schedule stars aligned and she found herself with a free Saturday and a hankering to roll the dice with her life. Or maybe when she was ninety and it no longer mattered all that much if her chute failed to open. It all felt so hopeless.
And she was looking at Arthur, one toe on the threshold of the exit now, when she came up with an idea.
“Well, what about him?” Wren announced, pointing to Arthur.
“Me?”
“See,that’sno problem. You’re not pregnant, are you, mate?” The instructor winked.
Arthur went ghost white. He looked like he’d stumbled across a Tyrannosaurus rex and was trying to stay completely still to avoid its motion-activated vision. Wren approached him gently and grabbed his hand.
“What do you think?” she said.
“I don’t understand. It wasyourdream to do this,” he croaked, fighting through dry mouth. “Not mine.”
“Right. And I don’t know if I’ll ever get the chance. If I do, I don’t want to do it alone. So what do you say?”
It wasn’t really about the skydiving, not right here and right now. She just got to wondering. Would it always feel like this? Like she was the gas and he was the brakes? Would it always be her responsibility to bring the fun to their life together, to be the sole source of spontaneity? There would be times when she couldn’t. She wondered if he would ever be capable of surprising her.
There was something in his eyes as he thought it over. Terror, there was plenty of that. But also a slight flicker of light, a barely visible raise of the eyebrows, that had herthinking that he might actually say yes. He might conquer his fears, right here and right now, because she needed him to.
“I think,” he said quietly, finally, “we should talk about it at home.”
Wren sank. What surprised her was that, for a second, she really allowed herself to believe that Arthur might do something wildly out of character, simply because he loved her that much. It wasn’t a fair thought, she knew that, but it was there nonetheless.
9
Arthur:Buy My First House
Arthur stared at the slipof paper in disbelief. It was his own handwriting, that much was for sure. What shocked him was that there was ever a time he was naive enough to believe it would be possible. Own a home outright. As an English major. In a time when making scrambled eggs in his own kitchen was considered a luxury.
Of course, poor young Arthur wouldn’t have known anything about 2020 and what would happen after. How the chart of average sales prices for single-family homes would look like the initial lift hill on a towering roller coaster from that point forward, the big exciting drop never coming. Just up and up and up until everyone passed out and crapped themselves.
“As great as this would be, I don’t think it’s realistic.” He sighed, handing the bucket-list slip to Wren, as if officially resigning it. She pushed it back toward him, refusing to accept it.
“Why not?”
“Because we only have a few weeks left, max? It’s not the kind of decision you rush. And besides, I doubt we can afford anything half-decent.” He pushed the paper back to her.
