Parallel Universe — Fast Falling

“This is a lot more frightening than I had quite realised,” I whispered.

My knees were trembling, buckling, hanging limp beneath my body. If there was anywhere to run at that point, I couldn’t have.

Michael was sat about four metres away from me, face awash we glee. I hated him a little more than I should’ve in that moment, because he was not filled with crippling fear, he was not wincing at the mere view before us, he was not, well, terrified. And I was jealous.

He had always been a bit of an adrenaline-junkie, really. His days were spent jumping off things you just should not jump off, running to places you would normally want to run from, and exploding in little pieces of danger and magic all over his adventure filled pages.

Me? I was definitely more of a cup-of-tea-by-the-fire-book-in-hand kind of girl, the most thrill I would get in one go was if I took a sip of my tea too soon and it burnt my tongue. Wild.

And yet, somehow, I found myself up there with Michael, only ten seconds away from something completely new, something completely unknown and (in case you hadn’t already noticed) something completely scary. I just agreed to it on a whim, too lost in Michael’s endless blue eyes to really comprehend what I had just promised. But now that I was up there, the whole world lay out before me like a map imprinted on the ground, I was excruciatingly aware of where I was and, more importantly, what I was about to do.

But, as Michael turned to me during the last four seconds and said, “this is how you fall in love,” I was suddenly lost in the moment. I was drawn out from the terror and placed softly into Michael’s heart and I realised that no amount of adrenaline could replace the feelings we shared for each other. And perhaps that was why I agreed to it, because any kind of happiness that I could give to him was worth all the freaked out butterflies in my stomach.

Michael was worth the fall.

Four, three, two, one.

All I could feel was the wind slapping against my cheeks and we headed for the hills. The zip-wires were whirring and yet everything seemed so quiet. It was like, for a sweet sweet minute, Michael and I were the only ones left in the world, free to roam, free to become, free to fall.

And Michael certainly got one thing right — as we were whisked towards the ground, only the air to accompany us — it was definitely a magical way to fall in love.

Headed for the ground, dreaming of the skies, falling fast and hard and beautifully.