Saint Joseph School

It was supposed to be one dance in D. Instead, they danced alone on a patch of tree-dotted grass on top of a rock floating in a place outside of time itself if everything about it was to be believed. It was only one song, shared from his iPod with two sets of ear buds and a splitter.

When the chorus came, Jacob sang it softly. He could have just been singing along, but it felt like he was singing to her.

“And you can tell everybody, this is your song.”

This is so goofy.

“It may be quite simple, but now that it’s done.”

He’s actually singing it.

“I hope you don’t mind, I hope you don’t mind, that I put down in words…”

It’s goofy…

“How wonderful life is while you’re in the world.”

I love it.

She should have known what was coming by an uncertain look in his eyes. The song ended with a nervous kiss that seemed to last forever. Even when he stepped back, Ves kept her eyes closed for that extra moment, unwilling to let go of the feeling. It was totally unexpected, like the dance itself.

It was goofy. The song was… obvious. Who wouldn’t love that song?

It was magically romantic, the song, the dance, the otherworldliness of the place, water rushing over rock to fall into open air, a bluish moon on the horizon. It was easy to imagine they were the only two people in the whole world. It swept her off her feet in a way that she imagined must happen in fairy tales.

Long after Jacob said goodnight, Ves stood on the platform gazing after him. It might have been minutes or an hour before she left for Talos and flew to the top of one of her favorite buildings. The near zero-degree air of a Rhode Island night nearing winter stung her face and burned in her lungs, taking her breath away. From the edge, she looked down towards the street, to the grass beyond, and further still to the darkness that was the ocean.

The greatest rush in the world… To leap from one of those buildings and fall earthward, waiting for just the right moment to catch yourself and soar away before you reached the ground. Three times he had kissed her, once more several minutes later and a third time as he said goodnight. She touched her lips and thought of that first kiss, the one that came from nowhere that she should have seen coming. Ves walked away from the edge, then turned around and took a running leap from the roof of the skyscraper.

She arced away from the building just after passing the top of a tree, low enough that she could brush her fingers across the frigid top of a parked car. Ves swooped back upward over the grass, and hovered in mid-air as she looked back to the roofline barely visible against a night sky.

The greatest rush in the world? She shook her head.

Not even close.

"I love you... more than anything else I could ever imagine." Ves turned away from Jake long enough to look around at the group watching from behind her. His announcement, seemingly out of nowhere in front of a dozen or so people was a little startling.

"I was given something very special by my Mother... not my biological mom... my real mom who adopted me... she wanted me to have this when I talked to her about it... She… She wanted you to have it."

Before she even realized what was happening, he was down on one knee, with a box in his hand. A murmured chorus of "no way" floated from behind her. Ves felt like she was on top of that building in Talos, dozens of stories above the ground, cold wind carrying ocean-sprayed salt blowing across her face.

"Aleyne Kensington?" He opened the box to reveal the diamond solitaire she feared was there. "Will you marry me?"

This wasn't planned. This wasn't a running leap off the roof practiced so many times she could do it almost by rote with her eyes closed. This was more like being pushed, and somewhere, far below, there was solid ground.

She tried to say something, anything, but no words would come out. She knew what she had to say. She could stop the fall anytime. No. Or some variation of it. It would be clumsy, a sudden stop in the middle of open air, but she would have time to figure out what to do, to anticipate the leap. There were plenty of reasons, too. We're too young. We haven't been going out that long. I'm still in school. You've still got things to figure out. I've got plans. College. Maybe even a career eventually. There were plenty of reasons to pull up early, to play it safe, before the ground was anywhere near close.

There was only one reason not to…

"Yeah... Of course I will!" Ves nodded her acceptance, oblivious to the cheers and applause behind her. For a few moments, Jake held her captive in their own private universe as he took her hand and slid the ring on her finger. It wasn’t until he was spinning around with her in his arms that she remembered they had an audience.

Figuring out what to do when the ground came up would have to wait. For now, she would just enjoy the fall.