"Whoa," Daphne says as we step out of the treeline.
Whoa is right. I was so busy talking that I didn't realize we were walking at a slight uphill, but we must've driven most of the incline.
The line of trees ends where we emerge, and the rest is open ground until it suddenly ends. I'm standing too far from the edge to get an accurate view of how far up we are, but the blue water that I can see from here looks calm. It's not an ocean, we don't have one of those in Ontario, but rather a decent-sized swimming hole, surrounded by tall cliffs. On the opposite side of the quarry, far from where we are, there's a small waterfall that even I must admit is pretty. The breeze is colder here, even if it is an incredibly warm May evening, but it still brings a fresh, calming scent.
The guy from earlier is here with his friends, as well as a bunch of other people, all in swim gear, which is odd because we're nowhere near the water. People send Kalani, Emmett and I weird looks, but no one says anything like pink shorts did.
"Hey, Ralph!" Emi unlinks her arm from mine and leads us toward a tall white guy wearing an ugly open button-up shirt decorated with random shapes and patterns.
"Hey, Emi! Daphne!" he greets with a bright smile. "Glad you made it!" His eyes rake over me, Daphne, and Kalani, before resting on me. There's a gleam in his eye, and his voice seems to deepen. "Hi there. That's a bold outfit choice for cliff jumping."
"Cliff jumping?!" Kalani and I exclaim at the same time.
As if in answer to us, we hear a yell, and a few moments later, an answering splash. The people standing on top of the cliff cheer as they look down at whoever just jumped. A girl backs up a few feet before running and catapulting herself off the edge. My heart stops until I hear a splash and her calling up that she made it.
Cliff jumping? This is what I'm supposed to be doing today?
"You look a little pale, Princess," comes a deep voice I've already come to recognize. Pink shorts guy. I force myself not to notice his muscled chest, or his abs, or his arms as he reaches into a cooler and pulls out a beer.
Drinking and cliff jumping?! That doesn't seem responsible at all!
"Should you be drinking that if you're about to plummet to your death?" I ask, mentally cursing myself for breaking my promise to ignore him when I saw him.
A corner of his lip turns up. "No one's plummeting to their death."
"How far up are we?" I might not like him, but I might as well satisfy my curiosity while I'm not ignoring him.
Creeping closer to the end of the cliff, I peer down. The drop seems bottomless, and the longer I look, the farther and farther up I feel, as if the cliff is moving and stretching up toward the clouds. I scoot away from the edge immediately.
Pink Shorts pops open the tab on the beer. "Only about sixty feet, give or take."
Only sixty feet? I'm dizzy. Emmett appears beside me and places a steadying hand on my shoulder. "You alright, Carina?"
Pink Shorts looks between me and Emmett. He shakes his head, though there's a smirk plastered on his face. "Knew you didn't belong here." He turns his back on us and joins his friends, hands one of them his beer, then runs to the edge of the cliff and throws himself off it.
Before I can help myself, I race to the edge to witness his drop, and he falls more gracefully than anyone has any business doing. He performs two flips before landing in the water. Holding my breath, I count four whole painfully long Mississippi's before his head emerges, and everyone cheers.
Rushing away from the edge as fast as my numb legs can take me, I rejoin my friends. Someone else yells out, "I can top that!" but I force myself not to watch them jump off.
"Do you not like heights, Carina?" Daphne asks gently, not at all condescendingly like Pink Shorts.
"Me? No, no. I'm fine. Totally fine." Lies. I'm not totally fine. I want to hug a tree in case the wind throws me off balance and I plummet to my death.
"You know how Carina gets with heights, Emi," Kalani reprimands. "And you didn't tell me to bring my swimsuit! You know I can't swim, but I could've at least tanned."
"Shit, I'm sorry Carina. I totally forgot," Emi says, her shoulders slumping.
"It's okay, really!" I rush out. They're already including me in nights out, so the last thing I want to do is complain about the activities they've picked. All I want to do is hang out with my friends and get in as much quality time with them as I can, especially before we head off in different directions of the country. "You guys go... jump... or whatever," I can barely even say the word. "I'll hang here."
A log is nearby, and it doesn't seem dirty or anything, so I lay my jacket on it and sit. Ralph grabs a beer from his cooler and offers it to me, but I shake my head. "Driving, but thanks anyway."
He shrugs and removes his hideous shirt, handing it to me for some reason. I drop it on the log beside me.
"Let's go then!" he says, calling over to his other friends. "Emi, Daph, ready?"
"Hell yes!" Emi chucks off her leather jacket and jean shorts, tossing them to the ground. I wonder what she did with the car keys? Daphne removes her white dress but is more hesitant than Emi.
"I'll stay with Carina," Emmett says, sitting down beside me on the log, and my stomach tightens. If I look at him, they'll all see the adoration in my eyes, so I stare at Ralph's ugly shirt, trying to find a discernable pattern. "That doesn't look safe, anyway. Are there rocks under the water?" Emmett asks.
Ralph shrugs, not bothered, and Kalani huffs. "Pass me a beer."
She sits beside Emmett as Ralph gives her a beer and then introduces Emi and Daphne to some of his friends. This whole time, others have been jumping, but I've forced myself not to pay attention, not to count the seconds between the yells and the splashes, not to listen to them cheering when they emerge from the water. I've been failing.
A few people who've jumped have come back to the top following some path, plopping down to drink, and I can't help the nagging voice in my head saying you shouldn't drink and swim. My leg hasn't stopped bouncing, and my skin feels itchy. Some people engage Kalani and Emmett in conversation, but I'm too busy staring at Emi and Daphne.
They hold hands, and before I can even blink, they run and launch themselves off the cliff. My heart stops. I scramble to the ledge, landing on my hands and knees, and peer down just in time to watch them splash into the water. I hold my breath the entire time, frantically scanning the water. It's been five tortuous Mississippi's and still no sign. Where are they?! On seven Mississippi's, Daphne's head emerges, followed shortly by Emi a few feet away. She spits out water and I finally exhale.
"That was awesome! Carina! Come on! Just do it!" Emi calls up to me, and now that my fear of Emi dying isn't occupying my mind, my fear of heights comes back tenfold. I'm on my hands and knees, with the top half of my body suspended over nothing. My vision blurs, my arms turn to jelly. This is it. This is how I'm going to die: fainting over the side of a cliff. The world spins, and before my arms give out, large hands grab me by the waist and haul me up and away from the edge.
Emmett, my hero, as always. Leaning against him while I wait for the world to stop spinning, I register that Emmett feels more toned than he looks, that his body against mine feels better than I could've imagined. With my back pressed against his front, his hands still on my waist holding me steady, I'm in heaven, but I'm also a terrible friend. Now that my legs don't feel like cooked spaghetti and I can stand on my own, I move off him before I get any ideas, and turn around to thank him for quite literally saving my life.
I freeze. It's not Emmett. It's Pink Shorts, and he's looking at me with an annoyed frown. I step away from him, surprised at how much I enjoyed his touch.
"You obviously don't want to be here and hate heights, but you keep looking over the edge," he states, his eyebrows furrowing.
Did he know I waited for him to break the water's surface too? I say nothing, instead just staring up at him. His eyes are dark, and his hair is shaved close to his head. He's got a nice jawline, nicer than Emmett's even, but I shove that thought down.
"Thank you?" he says, but it comes out like a question.
Oh shit, did I speak out loud? No, I'm sure I didn't. "For what?"
He takes a deep breath as if asking a higher power for patience. "I meant you should say thank you. You know, since I just stopped you from plummeting into the water after hitting your head on every rock on the way down."
I'm struck into silence as the horrible truth sinks in. He's right.
My dumb silence only makes him angrier. He shakes his head. "God, the second I spotted you, I knew you didn't belong here."
His words are a punch to the stomach. Of course I don't belong here, I'm crashing my friends' date night and they're only keeping me around because they feel bad not inviting me. I really am pathetic. A bigger person would tell them to enjoy their date night, but if I keep saying no, they'll stop inviting me.
Tears well in my eye, but I blink them away before he notices. I won't let him think he made me cry. He didn't make me cry, my own patheticness did. But he does make me angry. Everything about him does. From his stupidly tall height, to his annoyingly broad shoulders, to his deep voice which I've only heard laced with irritation.
"No one asked you to grab me," I huff, crossing my arms across my chest.
"So you'd rather I let you fall?" he deadpans.
"If it meant I wouldn't have to sit here and talk to you, then yes."
There's a hard set in his jaw, then he straightens up. "Fine," he says, then bends down and sweeps me off my feet. I land in his arms, bridal style, as he holds me against his chest.
"What are you doing! Put me down!" I squirm, trying to push off him, but his grip on me only tightens. He walks toward the ledge.
"You'd rather go off the cliff than talk to me? Fine. Your wish is my command, Princess."
Pure terror claws at my chest as his words sink in. He's going to throw me off the cliff. Now I cling to him instead of pushing him away, my arms wrapping around his neck, clutching him as close to me as humanly possible.
"No! Stop! Put me down! Right now!" Even I can hear the fear in my voice, the shakiness of my words.
He ignores me and continues walking. "Are you sure? You seemed so determined before."
My breathing is shallow in my ears and my entire body tenses. "Put me down!" I yell. "Put me down put me down put me DOWN!"
My shaking hands are gripping onto him for dear life as he stops at the edge of the cliff. The wind whips at my hair.
"So you don't want to fall?"
"NO!" I yell.
He's going to throw me.
I don't want to look down, but I have to. As soon as I do, my stomach drops, as does the distance to the water. It stretches farther and farther away from me, and my vision swims.
"So you're telling me," he continues, his deep voice calm, "that you actually didn't want to fall before, and that it's a good thing I pulled you back?"
"Yes, yes! You've proved your point! Put me down!"
He takes a few steps backward, away from the ledge of the cliff, and sets me down on my feet. I scramble all the way to the tree line on shaky legs and brace a hand against a sturdy tree trunk, letting my breath come back to me. I cannot believe he just did that.
He comes to a stop in front of me, and I realize that everyone is staring at us. Everyone. Kalani and Emmett march over to us, but I'm busy staring off with Pink Shorts.
"See. Was that so hard to admit?" He lifts an eyebrow, and it hits me: he was never going to throw me off, and I just embarrassed myself in front of everyone.
"Rot in hell," my voice shakes a little. I turn and stomp away before he can say another word, the small rocks and dirt stinging my bare feet, but I don't care. I don't even know his name, but I know I hate him; I hate him like I've never hated anyone before. I can feel it in my chest, tightening and hardening and vowing to never see him again.
"Carina!" Emmett and Kalani are right beside me. We've put enough distance between us and Pink Shorts that I can't see anyone through the trees, so I stop walking.
"Are you alright?" Emmett asks me, and now I'm doubly embarrassed because Emmett had to witness me being all crazy.
My cheeks heat. "Yeah, that guy's just a jerk. Do you mind if we go now, though?"
Kalani and Emmett glance at each other.
"Actually," Emmett starts, "I'm kind of worried about Emi. She just left all her stuff at the top of a cliff, including her car keys, with a bunch of people she barely knows. And you know how she gets with alcohol around..." he drifts off, leaving me to fill in the rest. Emi's not the most responsible person we know, and I've had to cover for her more than once.
I should stay here with Emi, but can I really face all those people again? Can I really deal with Pink Shorts' intimidating gaze for the rest of the night? I visibly deflate. "Yeah, you're right. We should stay."
"Hey, that guy we were talking to, Eric, lives about a block from me," Emmett says with a sympathetic smile. "I'm sure he won't mind if we catch a ride home. You go ahead."
I was angry before, but Emmett's charitable pity makes me bite my lip to stop myself from crying. He knows I don't want to be here anymore, and he's giving me an out. It makes me feel even more pathetic than I usually do.
I swallow the lump in my throat. "Yeah, sure. Ask him if it's okay and text me; I'll wait if it's not." But it will be okay, because Emmett will make it okay; that's the kind of guy he is.
"Want us to walk you to the car?" Kalani asks, slightly impatient.
Even from the middle of the trail, I can hear shouting and splashing. The sun is setting, and the air is colder.
"No, go back and talk to Eric. I'll be fine." And I want to be alone. I want to get home and cuddle with my dog, Kevin, who's never pitied me or tried to throw me off a cliff.
"Are you sure?" Emmett frowns, but I'm already taking steps backward toward my car.
"Yes, have fun! Text me."
I make it back to my car in record time, just as my phone pings with a message from Kalani, informing me that Eric agreed to drive them home. I don't even bother putting my shoes back on, the bottoms of my feet are disgustingly dirty now anyway, and pop my address in the GPS. The entire ride home, even though it's the absolute last thing I want to do, I think about Pink Shorts, and all the insults I'd hurl at him if I ever saw him again.
***
I hope you've enjoyed this sample of The Blind Date Agreement! It is SUCH a fun story, I've LOLed so many times while writing it. Carina is amazing and Jay is just *chef's kiss*
I've taken the rest of the story down to do a massive rewrite, so stay tuned for news regarding this story! Follow me on socials for updates, and check out my published books in stores anywhere books are sold! <3