For Every Missing Shade

Entry 33

I laughed. "I'm glad it went well."

"Me too, but there's one more thing. I asked her out to lunch tomorrow with us both. Are you okay with that?"

"Absolutely!"

On the outside, excitement. On the inside, paralysis.

"Really? You want to do it? I didn't know if you harbored any harsh feelings with what I've told you about my life and everything."

"No, really," I said as I grabbed her hand on the dash. "I would love to have lunch with you two. At the very least, it would give me something to do that's not an aquarium."

"You didn't like the aquarium? I thought I was really going to entertain you with that one."

"Well there's going to an aquarium for fun, and then there's going to an aquarium so that your girlfriend can have her first real interaction with her birth mother. The latter, although much more exciting, doesn't really make me wanna learn about fish."

"Duly noted. You will have to find something to do, though, because after lunch my parents are taking my other parent out to dinner, just the four of us. And, as much as I'd like you to be there, it's closed-door."

"I'm sure I can find something to take my mind off things. I'd probably get too nervous anyway and end up saying a lot of stupid things."

"Well at least you're aware of all the stupid things you say," she said back.

"Rude," I said with fake anger in my voice.

"Okay, well let's keep this rollercoaster of emotions going, shall we?"

"Where's the next destination?" I asked.

"It's time to cross another thing off of the list."

She plugged an address into her GPS and we set off on our course. We winded through city streets until we eventually left them behind. I tried to think back on what things on the list we still had to cross off, but once I realized what signs we were following it became clear. We were headed to the airport.

"Oh, son of a bitch," I said, remembering the only thing on her list that involved an airplane.

She laughed at my pale face. "Well look who's becoming a little detective!"

"If I piss myself while this happens, it's on your conscience."

"I think you're greatly underestimating how much I want that on my conscience."

We pulled into the airport and I followed signs to a private hanger. Once we reached it, there was a small crowd of six people already in jumpsuits, listening to two guys in their mid-twenties point at a whiteboard.

"... So your backpack is going to have multiple fail-safes, so you don't need to worry about the parachute mechanism failing," one said to a pale-faced woman nodding her head quickly.

"There they are!" the other man said upon seeing us two walking towards them. They both had a "surfer dude" accent as if they both flew from Venice Beach to teach this course.

"Did we miss too much?" Emma asked.

"You're about a half-hour late, so we're almost done here," the other man said happily. "But you two are matched with us for partners so we can give you the scoop as we head up in the plane."

We nodded in unison and they handed us our jumpsuits and backpacks. We struggled with them over our clothes as they continued to take more questions. It looked like the only other people in the group were a family of three along with their own instructor partners.