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Luke gets up from the table and takes my hand, walking with me into the living room. Mild excitement has filled his mood, a permanent smile at rest on his face. Just seeing him like this makes me smile too, and I can’t help but make note of how devastatingly gorgeous he is, even more so when he’s happy.
He guides me to have a seat on the couch and then goes over and crouches down in front of the television. He switches off the stereo.
“We recorded a lot of our jumps,” he says, looking through a pile of DVDs, reading the words scribbled across the front in black Sharpie until he finds one he’s looking for. “This one was a blast. After the jump, the ten of us camped out on the site. Landon got kind of drunk and …” Luke’s words fade into the DVD.
“No, man, Kendra gets first jump this time,” a guy same height as Luke, same hazel eyes and tanned skin and dazzling white smile, says, standing next to Kendra.
Landon had longer hair than Luke, but not too long, and it was done up in dreadlocks that he kept pulled back behind him.
There were several people standing on top of a cliff in a desert, all wearing thick black harness straps over their shoulders, across their chests, and between their legs, bunching the fabric of their jackets. Packs were mounted on their backs, containing their parachutes. Helmets on their heads, some with built-in cameras mounted on the front. Landon’s dreadlocks poked out from beneath his helmet.
I never considered dreadlocks attractive on a guy before, but Landon Everett owned the look and I can’t help but find him as gorgeous as his brother. Luke sits down next to me on the couch with the remote in one hand, his eyes fixed on the flat-screen where his brother still lives and breathes and smiles and jokes around like they had always done.
“All right,” Luke says. “I guess we have to give her one on account that she’s a girl!”
“Hey! Shut the fuck up, Skywalker!” Kendra says.
“Control your girl, bro,” Luke tells Landon, grinning.
Landon puts up his hands. “Hey, I don’t control her. If anything, it’s the other way around!”
“WHIPPED!” Seth yells from the side.
“WHOOP!” some other guy shouts.
Landon laughs when Kendra play-punches Seth on the shoulder.
“Hey! No abuse until after the jump!” Luke says as he straps on his helmet.
The jumpy video went on for a few minutes while all of them checked each other’s packs and hardware and things I couldn’t begin to name or understand what function they serve. There was a lot of laughter and Luke and Landon were exactly like I always imagined close brothers would be. And although Luke was right about him and his brother looking and being so much alike, it’s a surreal and heart-wrenching experience to finally place the face with the name of Landon Everett, who I’ve heard so much about and who has been such a force in all their lives.
Kendra jumps off the edge of the cliff and I absently dig my fingers into the sofa cushion.
And then Landon jumps and my heart sinks into my toes when the edited video switches to his head cam and shows how fast he’s free-falling toward the desert landscape below.
And then Seth jumps and does a front flip on his way down; his camera view seems so close to the sheer rock wall that my hands begin to shake.
And then Luke jumps …
My stomach swirls with panic as the ground comes up so fast toward him. He’s shouting his excitement all the way down, and all I can think is, Please pull the parachute, please pull the parachute, hurry and pull the parachute, and, I hope the parachute opens, even though Luke is sitting right next to me, alive, and this video is old. As I watch him fall to the earth and the blue sky spin around his body, I can’t help but be terrified he won’t make it.
Then Luke pulls his chute and the canopy opens up above him with a snapping sound that fills my heart with relief. He hits the ground softly, on his feet as if he’d just walked right out of the sky, and the camera wobbles and jumps until he comes to a stop. The bright yellow canopy falls like a giant windblown blanket off to the side of him.
Luke shows me several of these videos, and I can’t understand how I can feel so afraid and inspired at the same time. I can see how Luke can say that BASE jumping is the most freeing experience, just by watching them do it. A part of me, a part so small yet so powerful wishes I were that brave, because I’d love to drink the sky and feel what they feel, but I know I never could.
“No disappointment,” Luke says beside me.
“Huh?” I glance over, snapping out of my spinning thoughts and back into the moment.
“Kendra”—he reaches out and presses stop on the DVD—“there’s no disappointment in that girl after any of those jumps.”
“Definitely not,” I say. “She seemed as happy as the rest of you.”
Seth’s bad brakes whine briefly, sharply, as his Jeep pulls into the drive out front.
Luke turns the television off.
“Don’t say anything about those videos with Kendra here,” he suggests. “She’ll want to watch them. I told her I got rid of them.” He crouches in front of the television again and puts the DVDs away, sliding them back in between other clear, square jewel cases.
