DYLAN—BEFORE
“There is no way I’m jumping off here.” Dylan inched toward the side of the bridge, feeling woozy just staring at the freshwater pool at least fifty feet below.
“If you guys aren’t going to jump, do you mind?” A young man, maybe eighteen, with deep-brown skin and a shark tooth necklace, motioned toward the edge, giving them a look that said, What are you doing up here anyway? Aren’t you too old to be jumping off this bridge?
Yes, we are, or at least he is, Dylan thought, looking at James, taking in the occasional silver thread that wove its way through his light brown hair.
“You live here?” James asked the boy.
“Born and raised.”
“How deep is it?”
“That one, it’s maybe twenty feet, but you have to hit it just right because it’s shallower on the sides. You really thinking about doing it?” He widened his big brown eyes at James. “We get a lot of people who chicken out once they stand up on the edge.”
“Not me. I’m doing it. I want to jump and then swim in the seven pools. Like they say you should.”
“Hey, brah, this ‘they’ you’re talking about is some dude who made it up to help with tourism. There are way more than seven pools, and I’m not sure how much closer to heaven you’ll be if you get your skin wet in all of them.”
James looked over the edge. “Doesn’t matter to me—the jump is what I really want anyway. That feeling. That rush!”
“It’s like nothing else. But you’d better be quick. The park rangers will get pissed if they see you. You guys aren’t even supposed to have parked your Jeep over there.” The boy looked up the road to a curve where they’d stopped. “That’s yours, right?”
Dylan and James nodded.
“After you,” James said, and he and Dylan silently stepped aside and watched as the boy got up on the edge and jumped, grabbing his knees to his chest and letting out a high-pitched scream all the way down. He plunged under the water, and when he came up, a group of his friends whistled and clapped. And Dylan released the breath she’d been holding. She didn’t even know the boy and she’d been worried about him.
“I’m going for it,” James said, taking his shirt off. “Will you hold this? Just take the Jeep after I jump and enter the park, which should be another quarter-mile or so down the road. I’ll meet you down at the water.”
“James—” Dylan thought of what the boy had said. That he had to hit it just right. What if he wasn’t as lucky as the boy they’d just watched? She looked over the bridge again, five of the pools separated by small waterfalls stretched out before her. In the distance, she could see people on the rocks surrounding the pools or swimming in them. But they’d probably arrived there the right way. Through the park. Not by jumping off this bridge.
James tossed the black T-shirt he’d purchased yesterday—with Maui Locos printed on the front in big white block letters—onto the ground when Dylan wouldn’t take it. “What?” he said as he stood up on the bridge and put his arms out to the sides like Leonardo DiCaprio in Titanic.
Two days ago, she’d been swimming with a two-hundred-pound sea turtle named Bob Marley in open water, and now that her pregnancy suspicions had been confirmed, she was frightened to put one foot in front of the other. When James had first brought up jumping off the bridge after he’d convinced her to consider driving the back side of the mountain, she hadn’t said anything to him, but just the thought of him doing it scared the shit out of her. He kept piling on the risks, and she wondered why. She’d tried to push away the idea of him getting hurt—or worse—but it kept chipping away at her insides. And now it was pounding inside her head.
“Don’t do it.” She grabbed James’s hand and pulled him back down to the ground. “Let’s go have that picnic you talked about. A little salami, a little cheese. I’ll even take a sip of that wine.” She nuzzled against his bare chest, surprised by how fast his heart was beating.
James pulled back. “You know I can’t wait to feed you banana bread and drink that pinot noir. But first I jump. It’s perfectly safe. If he can do it, so can I.” He pointed to the boy sitting with his friends on the rocks below. They were all yelling for James to jump.
Dylan was reminded of when she was a teenager, begging to do the same things her friends were. Their parents let them stay out past midnight. Their parents give them money for the movies. Their parents don’t rag on them. Her mom would fixate her deep-blue eyes on Dylan and say what she always did: If so-and-so jumped off a bridge, would you do it too?
Apparently James would.
Dylan felt her arms prick with goose bumps even though it was at least eighty degrees. “I just don’t want anything to happen to you.”
“You’re being ridiculous. Nothing is going to happen to me. I promise.” He punched his arms in the air. “I’m invincible, baby!”
Dylan studied his eyes—wide and dancing with impulse. She wondered what was going on inside his head. He rarely opened up about anything serious. She knew he had a brother who died young, but that was only because he’d slipped and said something while he was drinking. When she’d asked more about it, he wouldn’t get into the details. Did he want to try to defy death because his brother couldn’t?
“Are you okay? Is this about your—”
James shot her a look, and she thought better of finishing her sentence.
“Come on, Dyl, this isn’t really going to be a problem for you, is it? Because I can’t have, you know, another person nagging me. Being all wifelike.”
“Wifelike?” Dylan pressed her hands firmly into her sides. “You cannot be serious.” James looked like himself. His bare torso showing the hard work he put in at the gym, his stubble-lined jaw showing the hours that had passed since he shaved this morning. But he still didn’t seem like himself—at all. Once, he’d told her that he wasn’t a very good husband. That he could be a real ass. At the time she’d giggled. There was no way James could ever be an ass. Now she saw glimpses that his words had probably been a confession, not a joke.
“I’m as serious as a heart attack,” James said, refusing to break eye contact with her. She flashed back to the Huelo lookout point, where they’d stopped a couple of hours ago. It was a romantic spot, and they’d walked down steep concrete steps to gaze at the ocean through a sea of lush palms. James had grabbed Dylan by the waist, pointing at a string of hand-painted coconut bras that were hanging on a line. Dylan hadn’t wanted James to buy her one, but he had insisted. Finally she relented, knowing full well she would never wear it. But it was so hard to say no to James.
Even in an affair, there’s a honeymoon period, Dylan thought. And then it expires, just like in a regular relationship. Just like it had with Nick. She knew she was being tested in this moment. If she kept pressing him not to jump, she could tell they would probably end up in a fight. She’d looked forward to having all this uninterrupted time with him—to know what it felt like to share both the sunrise and sunset on the same day. To not feel like their precious moments were slipping away like sand through her fingertips. To believe that the life they had together was real. And she had done those things and enjoyed them. But she’d also seen behind the sheen of his eyes, where the other side of his personality lived. Dylan understood, of course, that James wasn’t perfect. But now that she knew about the baby, she was questioning everything.
“Dylan, come on,” she heard him saying. “Where’s my belleza?”
“I’m right here,” she said, and stood stiffly.
He scoffed. And even after he closed his mouth, she could see his jaw tighten, his teeth grinding. “No, she’s not. I’m looking for the woman who doesn’t take my shit, but who also doesn’t give me any either.”
This was giving him shit? Caring if he lived or died?