Better Page 13

  The netting leaves little privacy to hide his shirtless frame from me. I’m mesmerized by the gentle rise and fall of his chest as he sleeps peacefully. Not wanting to be caught and not able to put off breakfast, I quietly pull his door back to its original cracked stance.

  I pad back to my room to slip on tennis shoes, and making sure I have a key card in my back pocket, I leave our room in search of food. The lodge is inclusive, so food and drinks are covered during our stay.

  We passed the dining room when we checked in last night, so it’s easy for me to find. I’m quickly seated and provided a menu that is thankfully in English. I order nshima, a simple sugared porridge with fruit on the side to go with my coffee.

  There’s an Australian family seated at the table next to me. When they see I’m alone, they convince our server to push our tables together, so I won’t have to eat alone. I try to stop them, to tell them I’m fine. It’s embarrassing the way the other diners stare as our tables are combined. I’m annoyed at their pushy friendliness until their son joins our table. Then, I’m quite grateful for their insistence.

  His name is Conner. He’s tall and fit in the way that if he lived in the States, I would assume he was a football quarterback. He’s twenty-five and easy to talk to. He explains this grand trip is an annual thing his folks have done ever since he was ten years old. This is their third time back to Victoria Falls. He pauses and looks behind me.

  “Why didn’t you wake me up?”

  I turn to see Adam glaring at me. “You looked comfortable, Adam.”

  I turn back toward Conner and his family to introduce them. Adam continues to fume while a waiter sets a place for him next to me.

  After he sits, I whisper, “Why are you acting so annoyed?”

  He ignores me, so I turn back to Conner and pick up where we left off. Conner’s mom is able to get Adam to stop pouting and talk. I already told them about our trip so far and where we’re headed. They’re curious, or at least seem to be, about his previous trips. While they speak, Conner asks if I’d like a tour of the grounds around the lodge. Adam’s head snaps in my direction when he hears me accept, and I excuse myself from the table.

  His hand rises to gently wrap around my wrist, stopping me. “Where are you going?”

  I stare down at his hand, his fingers hot against my skin. “Conner and his family have been here before. He offered to show me around.”

  He looks up at Conner, who seems equally interested in Adam’s grip on my wrist, before he opens his grasp, freeing me. Conner directs me to a side exit, his hand drifting to the small of my back. I turn to look over my shoulder before we pass through the door, and I lock eyes briefly with Adam. His eyes are hard as they hold mine until I pass through the doorway.

  “Are you two dating?”

  My attention flies back to Conner. When we were sitting, his height wasn’t as apparent. I have to crane my neck to look up at him.

  “Adam?” I ask, even though I knew that’s who he meant.

  “I don’t mean to pry. He just seems…” He pauses. “Possessive.”

  I fold my arms across my chest. “He thinks he’s my babysitter,” I grumble.

  Conner blinks. “I’m sorry. That wasn’t the impression I got from him.”

  I shake my head. “Trust me, he just enjoys bossing me around. I had to ditch him in London to go have fun.”

  He directs me over to a bench by one of the pristine swimming pools. “This I have to hear.”

  I sit next to him, our legs touching, and I grin. “I got a tattoo.”

  “Brilliant.” He laughs. “What did you get? Can I see it?”

  I turn, so my back is to him, and I pull at the neck of my shirt. “I’m not sure if you can see it.”

  He peers down the back of my shirt. “Is it a bird?”

  “They’re angel wings,” I whisper, thinking of Ally as I look back at him.

  The wind has picked up, and he tucks a strand of hair that is dancing wildly across my face behind my ear.

  “We’ll have to come up with something, so you can ditch him here as well.”

  I raise my brows. “What do you propose?”

  Once our plan is settled, Conner walks me back to my room.

  Adam is waiting, sitting on the sofa in the lounge. “Our tour to the falls leaves in thirty minutes,” he reminds me gruffly.

  “Geez, did you wake up on the wrong side of the bed or what?” I snap.

  He moves his computer from his lap to the coffee table in front of him. “Excuse me?”

  I shake my head. “Seriously, you were so rude at breakfast, and now, you’re all pissy here, too. Are you annoyed at me for something?”

  He stands, rubbing his face, as he walks over to me. “As much as it annoys you, I’m supposed to be looking out for you. When I wake up and you’re not here and there’s no note or anything explaining where you went, I get annoyed.”

  My mouth drops. “You, for real, want me to wake you up before I go eat?”

  He rolls his eyes, and I restrain the desire to stomp on his foot.

  “You could have left a note.”

  As annoying as he is, he does have a point there. I guess.

  “Well, what about when you saw that I was fine in the dining hall? Why were you still annoyed then and now?”

  He rubs both of his temples as though I’m causing him mental pain. “You just go off with random strangers. Do you get how dangerous that can be?”

  I move past him toward my room. “Do you think I’m an idiot? Conner is there with his family. Do you think he would do something to me after his mother watched us walk away together?”

  “What about Nigel?”

  I turn and glare at him. “Nigel didn’t do anything to me.”

  “He kissed you.”

  “This conversation is ridiculous. I’m done explaining myself to you!” I shout, slamming the door in his face.

  My heart is pounding as anger and annoyance seep from my pores. I storm around my room, throwing things in my cross-body bag. The moment my hand touches Ally’s ashes, I sink to the floor and cry, cradling the box in my arms. This trip isn’t about Adam or how much he annoys me. It’s about Ally and doing what she wasn’t able to do.

  I feel silly and childish. I need to focus on what’s important instead of letting him get under my skin.

  Now calm, anger banished, I carefully pack the smaller box with some of her ashes into my bag. Adam is waiting for me by the door. I don’t ignore him. I just nod in his direction as I move past him. That’s all the maturity I am able to currently summon.

  We are part of a group tour leaving from the lodge to the falls. A British explorer named the falls after Queen Victoria, but the locals still call them Mosi-oa-Tunya, which means smoke that thunders, and thunder it does. I’ve seen smaller waterfalls, but nothing could have prepared me for the roar of the falls as our van approaches them.

  I sit next to Conner. We speak until it becomes impossible. I slip my waterproof windbreaker out of my bag and put it on before we get out of the van. There are only ten of us in this group.

  Adam’s annoyance with me seems forgotten as he focuses on capturing as many images as he can. The falls are not the tallest or the widest in the world. Our guide explains though that its combined height and width make it the largest waterfall in the world. Islands dotting the river are close to the falls, so we can explore them with a different tour offered by the lodge if we want to.

  Depending on the time of year, there’s even a section of the falls that form a natural stone lip where people can swim since the threat of going over is smaller. It’s called the Devil’s Pool. As exciting as looking out over the edge of a waterfall would be, I just couldn’t picture myself actually doing it. While not deathly afraid of heights, I’m not a fan of them either.

  I spend most of our tour with Conner. It seems almost funny how annoyed Adam was, considering how uninterested in my whereabouts he currently is.

  Talking near the falls
is impossible over their roar. We’re on the side facing them when I get distracted and start to stumble. A hand reaches out to stop my fall. I assume it’s Conner, and I blush when I realize it’s Adam who steadies me. Maybe he isn’t as uninterested as I thought.

  He charges ahead and away from me while I form the words to thank him. He’s already too far away to hear them. Conner isn’t far from us and sees what happened. When his eyebrows rise, I shrug. There really is no explaining Adam.

  We stop for a picnic-style lunch, provided by the lodge, next to the falls. The main dish is fish. I fill my plate with cheese, bread, and fruit instead. There’s something that looks like beef jerky, but thinking it looks spicy, I avoid that as well.

  Adam sits on one side of me, and Conner is on the other. I glance at Conner before I yawn and admit a nap would be nice once we’re back at Royal Chundu. I peek at Adam, hoping he believes me.

  After our plates are cleared, I make my way closer to the best view of the falls, and I sit down on a large gray rock. A fine mist of spray reaches my face. I glance around me before slipping the container of Ally’s ashes from my bag.

  This waterfall represents so many things Ally loved—nature, the idea of feeling so small in such a big world, and the flow of life. The water moves across its course. It does not hesitate as it breaches the unknown and flows freely to the pool below. Making sure her ashes don’t get caught in the breeze, I tap them out onto the ground in front of the rock I’m sitting on.

  I don’t cover them with earth as I did in England and Belgium. I’m comforted by the thought of the mist of the mighty falls reaching her. She would have loved to feel it if she were here, but this is as good as I can do.

  I slip the container back into my bag and lean back on my palms to take in the overwhelming magnificence of the sight before me. Only this time, I feel her with me. I watch the flight of a small bird cross over the rushing water to land in the trees of one of the islands hugging the edge of the falls.

  A tap on my shoulder breaks the spell I’m under. It’s Conner. I follow the direction of his hand as he points to the van that brought us here. I watch as Adam climbs into it before I stand and walk over with Conner.

  Adam is sitting in the back row, his face focused downward, as he scrolls through the pictures he took. When we get back to the lodge, he follows me at a distance to our suite.

  “I’m going to take a nap,” I inform him once he walks into the lounge.

  He nods, walking over to the sofa to upload his pictures from the day.

  I lock my door and slip over to the door to my balcony. Stepping out onto it, I see Conner already waiting for me by the pool. I hold my finger to my lips to keep him from saying anything.

  After double-checking my bag to make sure I have my phone, wallet, and room key card, I carefully hug the pillar connecting my balcony to the first floor patio below it. Conner is there, his hands gripping my waist, as he eases me the rest of the way till my feet touch the ground.

  “Are you sure about this?” he whispers, glancing up to my balcony.

  “As I’ll ever be.” I grin, grabbing his hand and pulling him toward the main entrance.

  A car is waiting for us to take us back to the falls and the Victoria Falls Border Bridge. We have day visas issued to make our way onto the bridge. We aren’t going to Zimbabwe, but the bridge is considered a neutral zone between their borders.

  “Do you want me to go with you?” Conner asks as we near the platform.

  I shake my head. “I want to do this by myself.”

  He drapes his arm across my shoulders. “You’ll be great. I’ll take a bunch of pictures.”

  When we get to the platform, we get registered. The two young men working tell me to take off my jewelry, so I slip my earrings, giant watch, and charm bracelet into my bag. Conner holds it for me as I go first.

  I have a momentary panic attack once I’m on the ledge. What if the cord breaks? What if I get hurt? I’m so scared that I can barely move. Arthur, our bungee jump assistant/psychiatrist, has clearly been in this situation before.

  “You don’t have to do this if you don’t want to,” Arthur calmly assures me, his hands covering the death grip I have on the railing.

  I whimper. I want to do this. I just might cry while I do it.

  From his experience, he must know my whimper means I still want to jump. He helps me to the edge of the platform and reminds me of what we covered during registration, or at least the highlights.

  I glance back at Conner once I’m on the edge of the platform. He snaps a picture of what I’m certain will not show any type of game face. I have personally never considered bungee jumping in my bucket list of things I wanted to do. I’m here for Ally. This is something she talked about wanting to try.

  I think back to the bird crossing the falls this morning before I spread my own wings and leap. For a whole two seconds, my momentum takes me outward over the Zambezi River. I’m weightless. I’m free.

  Then, I’m screaming my head off as I fall. Screaming is pointless as air rushes upward into my mouth before I clamp it shut. Having never fallen from such a height before, I am unprepared for how fast I fall. My eyes fail at absorbing the blur of the falls and foliage as I fall toward the rushing river. When I reach the full stretch of the bungee, I feel my body jerk upward, only for gravity to pull me down again.

  The upward and downward jerk of the bungee is making me feel nauseous. As proud as I feel that I have done it and how close to Ally I feel in that moment, all I want to do is get back onto the bridge before I throw up into the river.

  I try to push that feeling aside, to physically make myself be present in the beauty surrounding me. Taking as many mental pictures as I can, I feel the tug of being pulled back up to the platform.

  “You did great.” Conner congratulates me once I’m safely away from the edge.

  He passes me my bag and asks if I can take some pictures of his jump. This is not his first time. There’s no whimpering and no hesitation when Arthur gives him the go-ahead to jump.

  His initial leap is breathtaking. I snap picture after picture of his outstretched arms as his muscular legs propel him off the bridge. His face isn’t always facing my direction as he falls, but I think I’m able to capture at least one shot of his expression. It’s an expression of pure joy. I’m pretty sure he doesn’t feel like throwing up.

  Once he’s back on the bridge, the first words out of his mouth are, “Want to go again?”

  I can’t help but grin. “Never again.”

  He holds my hand as we walk back to the Zambian border together. There’s nothing romantic in the gesture. I just know, no matter where Conner and I end up in the world, I made a lifelong friend today.

  Once we’re on our way back to the lodge, Conner turns to me. “Think he knows you’re gone yet?”

  I cringe. “We’ll find out soon enough.”

  His hand finds mine again as we make our way back into Royal Chundu.

  Adam’s back is to us as he is frantically speaking to someone at the front desk. The attendant, seeing us walking in, points in our direction.

  Adam spins to face us, his eyes first finding mine before coming to rest on my hand in Conner’s. “Where the fuck were you?”

  Conner starts to say something, but Adam cuts him off. “I was asking Aubrey.”

  I straighten my shoulders and meet his gaze head-on. “I went bungee jumping.”

  Adam tilts his head to the side and blinks. The three of us stand there in an awkward standoff while Conner and I wait for Alex to respond. All he does is nod his head before turning on his heel and leaving Conner and me standing there.

  I squeeze Conner’s hand before dropping it to chase after Adam. I have to dig in my bag to find my key card.

  “Aren’t you going to say anything?” I glance around our lounge before marching into his room.

  He’s sitting on his bed with his back to me. His voice is low when he asks, “Do you have a death wish?�
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  I’m not sure if he means by bungee jumping or following him. “No.”

  He turns to look at me. “Why would you run off like that? In a foreign country? Do you even know if that place was safe?”

  I sink into an armchair by his door. “Would you have let me go if I asked you?”

  His shoulders sag. “I don’t know. Maybe not.”

  When he drops his face into his hands, I jump up and rush over to him. I kneel in front of him and pull his hands down, so I can see his face. The look in his eyes haunts me.

  “I didn’t know where you were.”

  Whatever fun I originally convinced myself giving him the slip would be is gone now. I feel awful, knowing that I scared him. It was one thing in London. I was so annoyed at him, not that I haven’t been annoyed at him since. It’s just that I know he has my safety as his main concern.

  “I won’t do it again. I’m sorry. I just—”

  He lifts me up into his lap and buries his face in my neck, effectively cutting me off. I have known him for only ten days. I don’t know how to rest in his arms, his breath hot against my skin. The whiplash of emotions from him has rendered me incapable of understanding what I should do.

  His breathing calms as he clings to me. When his breath becomes a soft tickle on my throat and not a hot gust, his arms loosen. I move to slip free from his grasp, resting my hand on his shoulder to steady myself. His hand reaches up to cover mine.

  “Are you still upset with me?” I ask, standing between his legs.

  He looks up at me, brown hair falling into his eyes, and he shakes his head. “Just promise me you’ll talk to me before you go off on some dangerous date again.”

  “It wasn’t a date,” I argue.

  He smirks at me, so I repeat myself.

  “It wasn’t a date.”

  He drops his hand from mine and puts his hands on my hips, gently pushing me a step backward, so he can stand. “I saw you two holding hands.”

  “He was just being supportive. It’s not what you think.”

  He pushes his hair out of his eyes and looks at me, almost as though he’s deciding whether to trust me or not. After today, I know I have given him no reason to trust me ever again.