Page 54 of One Night in Paris

I’d gladly accept all prayers, good wishes, fingers crossed, lucks of the Irish, good vibes, and anything else coming my way to keep me from dying.

The instructor in charge of pushing us out of the plane—or telling us it was our time to jump, however you wanted to look at it—started shouting at the people in the front of the line that it was time. The first guy to jump didn’t even look old enough to do so, but when he leaped out of the plane, he screamed loudly with joy.

One by one, the people shot out of the door, all of them thrilled. As the line scooted up, I felt more and more like everything I’d ever eaten in my life was about to spew itself out of my body.

Feeling a hand on my shoulder, I turned around. Logan mouthed, “You’ve got this!”

Though his voice never reached my ears, I could hear it in my head. He was right. I could do this.

Kylee jumped out with a shrill scream. Then, Trevor followed her, and then it was my turn.

“Come on, Harper!” Jeff shouted. “Let’s go for a ride!”

“Okaaaaay!” I screamed back as I forced myself to do as the instructor at the door said and leaped out.

Immediately, I regretted my decision.

Wind rushed up at me, so sharp, I felt like my face was going to come off and flutter away. Beneath me, all I saw was endlesswhite. I was a projectile, hurling through the clouds, daring the earth to suck me in and shatter my body into a million pieces.

“What the fuck was I thinking?” I screamed.

Jeff laughed. “You’re fine, Harper. Try to enjoy it. Pretend you’re a bird. Or Superwoman.”

“Or a bug who has a date with a windshield!” I wasn’t sure if he even heard me, we were falling so fast.

In an instant, the clouds beneath us broke up, and I could see the ground. Patches of green and brown, with the occasional snake of blue—at first I couldn’t see much of anything but colors. Within seconds, though, other things began to come into focus. Buildings, cars, groups of trees.

The next thing I knew, our freefall was interrupted. It felt like I was being jerked back up into the sky as the parachute opened above us. Looking up, I checked to make sure it looked like it should—like a fucking parachute full of air.

It did! It had opened. Thank whoever I’d been praying to earlier for not letting me die.

That was when I noticed another parachute up and to my left. I realized that was Logan. Waving at him, I found it within me to smile. He waved back and gave me a thumbs-up. I returned the gesture, even though I really didn’t think everything was okay.

But now that I could relax a little bit, it was nice to look around and enjoy the view. The vibrant blue sky was dotted heavily with white fluffy clouds, and the emerald green grass in the distance looked nice and soft like velvet. Hopefully, it felt that way, too. I’d be finding out in a moment.

Jeff started doing something to make sure he had control of the parachute as the groups of trees I’d seen before became actual individual trees. I could even see Trevor beneath me and to my right as he made his landing. Kylee was over there, too, jumping up and down, laughing.

Expecting a hard landing, I braced myself, but then I remembered what Jeff had said and tried to relax so as not to hurt my legs. Mimicking the same motion he’d shown me, and I’d practiced, I waited for the ground to come up to greet me.

We touched down much more softly than I would’ve imagined possible. Letting out the lungful of air I’d been holding, I tumbled to the ground with Jeff still behind me. I was back on the ground. I was alive.

“You did it!” Jeff said. “I knew you could.”

“Thanks to you,” I reminded him. “I couldn’t have done this without you.”

Jeff only laughed and unbuckled me so I could get up. I got to my feet just in time to see Logan touch down safely not too far away. We’d all managed to make it down safely.

As soon as Logan was free of his parachute, he came running toward me. I ran to him as well, thinking we must look like a scene out of a movie. When we met, he pulled me to him and kissed me deeply before breaking away and saying, “You’re amazing, Harper! I knew you could do that! Wanna do it again?”

The only word I could think to say to him was, “Never.”

29

LOGAN

The drive to Trevor’s house to drop him off was full of all of us congratulating each other on jumping out of an airplane and not dying. All of us were stoked that the jump had gone as well as it could, but Harper was quiet. I could tell by her expression that she was still going over everything in her head, trying to make sense of her fear and the fact that she’d actually successfully completed what was likely one of the most challenging tasks of her life.

I pulled up to Trevor’s front door and shifted into park because he was still talking to Kylee, and I didn’t want to rush him. Right before he opened the door, he asked her, “Can I get your digits?”