The Moment of Letting Go - J. A. Redmerski Page 0,103
we were all supposed to go to China. All of us, including me. We’d been planning this jump for three years.” My chest rises and falls heavily beneath the palm of Sienna’s hand, my heart beating to the rhythm of guilt underneath her soft cheek. “But I didn’t go with them. I stayed behind because I thought the business and the money were more important than being with my brother.” I pause, at war with myself internally. “We always checked each other’s packs,” I say with blame and quiet anger. “But I wasn’t there to check his that day and he died because of it.”
My body tenses next to hers. She lays the palm of her hand softly on my heart.
“Landon was on his way to becoming one of the best BASE jumpers in the world,” I go on, “and would’ve been if he hadn’t died so soon. He had more than six hundred jumps in fifteen countries under his belt, won competitions, had plenty of sponsors. But none of that stuff was what was most important to my brother. It was never about winning with him, or about being the best. He just wanted to drink the sky. He wanted to fly.”
Sienna raises her hand from my chest and wipes a tear from her cheek.
“I was so pissed at him,” I go on, reliving the events out of order, my body growing tenser against hers. “Landon had everything going for him. He could hack into any system, if he really wanted to. Our business never would’ve happened if it hadn’t been for the things he could do behind a computer. I hated him; I always loved him as my brother, of course, but I hated him for a while because here he was, intelligent beyond my understanding, scared of nothing, and I was afraid of everything and all I could do was paint.” I pause to catch my breath.
Sienna moves her hand closer to my heart, and my hand collapses around it, squeezing gently.
“But Landon, being the brother that he was, made it his priority to help me beat my fears. He practically kicked me out of my bed one morning and said, ‘Get up, big brother! I’ve got something to show you!’ He took me to Perrine Bridge that day, and after a long drive listening to Landon tell me everything I needed to hear about why I shouldn’t be afraid to live, it was enough to make me want to leap off that bridge that day. And I did. And I never looked back.”
“You’re like him in that way, you know,” Sienna says softly, her cheek pressed against my chest. “That drive and passion to help someone overcome.”
I squeeze her hand, acknowledging the meaning behind her comment.
“Sienna,” I say in a composed, purposeful voice, “when I met you out on the beach that day, do you remember what I said to you? When I told you that if you stayed longer I could show you how to let it go?”
“Yeah. How could I forget?” She raises her head from my chest and props it on her hand so she can see my eyes. “I didn’t understand it really, but that didn’t matter. I was intrigued by your weirdness.” She blushes a little.
I reach out and brush her short bangs with my fingers, the tips of them grazing her forehead.
“There was more to that,” I say, and drop my hand back on my chest, winding my fingers around hers. “You were upset that day, all stressed out because of your job. I had this ridiculous idea that I could somehow make you see what Landon tried to make me see.” I pause, thinking back on my motives that day. “You seemed to be drowning in some of the same shit I was drowning in before my brother died. And it wasn’t until after he died, after I lost the person in my life I loved more than anyone, that I realized everything Landon tried to make me see, all of the arguments we had about money—I finally understood what he was trying to tell me.”
“What was he trying to tell you?”
My eyes fall away from hers and I look toward the open window running horizontally along the wall above the bed. The rain is still falling outside, the waves still pushing against the shore, churned up by the weather. A gray light pours in through the screen on the window, bathing us in the overcast day, and somehow