Flash Fiction: Jump

“It’s not too late.”

We squat by the open door as wind barrels through into the metal cavern.  My face burns, and I pull my purple knit hat further over my ears to protect them from the harsh wind and the overwhelming noise of propellers. 

“Think of this as a leap of faith.”

We make eye contact, blue clashing with brown; you sigh heavily, tugging on thick gloves.  I try not to take notice that adrenaline has heightened the color in your cheeks or that those are the first words you’ve said to me since we got out of the car an hour ago.

“I’m not interested.”

This is your life, your hobby, your passion.  Within thirty minutes of meeting you a year ago, you made me fully aware that this was your life—it was your full-time job, you explained, with a nonplussed shrug of your broad shoulders. 

But it’s not my passion.  Funny that you are my life, my hobby, my passion.  It’s always seemed strange to me that you could be so attached to an activity.  Some people obsess with cars or jewelry or technology, but not you.  You don’t even have the decency to be tied to an object like everyone else, but to a feeling, to the excitement of it all.  I wonder if the thrill is something you could live without.  

“You agreed to this.”  You pull on goggles, tightening the straps that crisscross over the back of your head, and hand over a separate pair.  “Put those on.”

My hands clam up and I inhale a sharp breath through my nose.  You catch my unease and, behind the clear lens of the goggles, your blue gaze softens.  “I get the ceremony in the air,” you say quietly, huskily, “and you get the big reception at the Pavilion.  We agreed to this, baby.”

The wind howls louder.  I ignore the pair of goggles that dangles from your index finger.  In the span of a moment, I realize that I can’t do this.  Almost immediately the crooked smile on your face falls and you retract your gloved hand.  There will be no marriage, no extreme skydiving wedding.  You are always so quick to compromise, but you overlook the very center of it all: your passion and my passion do not coincide.  Whether it is my fear of heights or my fear that eventually you will grow tired of me, I don’t know, but I shake my head and sink further back into the plane.

Your lips flatten into a harsh line.  Without a word, you turn and jump, taking a leap of faith alone. 

Flash Fiction: Liquid

She is fluidity—it’s there, in the roll of her hips and the flick of her wrists.  He shifts closer, closer, closer until his nose brushes the cold glass pane.  He’ll leave a stain there, a memory.  Hand to the window: fingertips.  Another memory, another signal of his devotion.  More discreet than the flowers he delivers to the studio every week.  She’s allergic to daisies, so he chose roses on Monday.  He personally plucked them from the garden in her front yard, careful to snip off thorns. 

His eyes skim the room.  No one matches her skill.  No one moves so weightlessly.  Her gossamer skirt wraps around her hips when she dips and turns.  He stands, memorized, in the face of her beauty.  She straightens her right leg, strikes out, tangles amid her voluminous skirt.  She trips, falling to the ground with a sheepish expression.  One of the male dancers glides over and draws her up against his thin body.

No.

He meets her gaze over the shoulder of the dancer; her lips tip in an uncertain smile.  He’s waited over a year for the recognition in her eyes. . . But this is not the time. 

He’ll possess her one day.   There must never be a distance—his father taught him that.  His relationship with her now does not suggest intimacy, a tendril of connection that sways with the circumstances but never severs, because it is too early still.  He must continue to woo her.

He knows the exact moment she sees his present by the front door.  A bouquet of roses, freshly picked that morning, tied with a white satin bow.  Her hand steals over the flower, stroking her fingers against the soft petal.  She never suspects.

He turns on his heel.  He has many things to do today, starting with the preparation of her dinner in her apartment, 3B. 

Being her landlord has a multitude of perks, but this, this fascination with her is certainly the most thrilling.