Or maybe they were still worth doing, despite the risk.
Because of it.
“It’s beautiful,” Julia said, marveling at how the forest stretched for as far as the eye could see, wrapping around the city that glinted in the sun, clusters of towering buildings nestled in among the rolling green.
“It’s the largest urban forest in the world. That mountain over there, with that pointy peak, is called Pedra da Gávea. Pedra means stone and gávea is like a kind of sail. Topsail, I think you call it?”
“The sail above the gaff sail,” Julia said.
“Gaff?”
“On a large sailboat, the gaff is the square sail, and then the topsail is the smaller, triangular sail on top.” Julia remembered how she’d lied about getting seasick so she could run off with Blake and laughed to herself.
“That’s what it looks like, you see? It’s 842 meters high and the largest monolith along a coastline in the world—that means it’s made out of a single rock, in this case granite.”
Even from this high above Julia could see how the elements had eroded the granite into a dramatic, smooth face that jutted up and out and then swooped down. It really did look like a sail stretched full in the wind.
“You know a lot about the area,” Julia observed.
“I’m a geology student when I’m not jumping. I’m a Carioca—someone from Rio. This city is in my blood.” Suzi shifted her shoulders so the glider swung right, closer toward the ocean, giving them another view of the face of the Topsail Rock, and Julia understood how being here could make someone so much more aware of the land and the water. Millennia of shifts had created this landscape. Julia felt impossibly small in comparison, and yet somehow a part of it all.
The more they hung in the air, the more the city unfolded to them. There were more sites to point out, more mountains and forests and tall granite peaks. Built up the sides of a hill was one of the country’s largest favelas, a slum that Suzi explained was being bought up by wealthy landowners. The corrugated tin roofs sparkled in the sunlight, and Julia wondered about all the lives being lived below her, the different heartbeats drumming around.
As she took huge gulps of the cool air rushing by, she felt her own heart begin to normalize and her breathing slow until the panic, panic, panic alarm ringing inside her was replaced with an exhilarated hum. The wing dipped and Suzi steered them toward the ocean. The white foam where the waves crashed looked like a thin broken line snaking along the shore.
The water came closer, the white sand beaches extending until the city ended in the point of the peninsula and curved around on the other side of the hills. It was a different feeling to be over the sea. Even though Julia knew the land wouldn’t protect her, it was scarier to have nothing below them but endless, unforgiving blue so bright it almost hurt, a light clear turquoise in the shallow parts toward land.
They circled over the water, slowly losing altitude, until after what felt like an eternity but also way too soon Suzi was telling her it was time to prepare to land. Julia had forgotten everything she was supposed to do, but suddenly there was no time. The glider was pointed out over the beach and heading straight down like it was coming in to a landing strip. The lazy circles were gone; every movement was purposeful as Suzi steered them in. The beach rushed up faster and faster until Julia could see the peaks and crests in the sand and the waves were no longer snakes of white but large breathing things that swelled and crashed beside them.
They were coming in fast, so fast, something had to be wrong—
“Lift up and run,” Suzi instructed, and before Julia knew it her body was swinging forward, pulled upright once again. When they touched the ground, she felt a little kickback from the glider but then she was running behind Suzi, and it only took a few steps for the whole thing to slow, brought in to such a smooth landing it seemed impossible that they’d been flying so fast.
Suzi unhooked her harness, asking how she felt. Julia was breathless and giddy and relieved and amazed, and all she could do was laugh and keep saying how great everything was. She had jumped, she had fallen, but instead of crashing and breaking into a million pieces, she felt more whole than ever before.
They moved out the landing area and Julia watched Blake’s glider circle overhead, so high she couldn’t tell it was him. She wondered if she had looked like that, a small dot suspended effortlessly in the sky. Then they circled down for their landing, and she spotted the sun-kissed curls and those tanned, strong arms she would recognize anywhere now.
They landed like she had done, coming in fast and then suddenly standing up, Blake shouting and cheering as soon as he caught sight of her on the beach. When he was unhooked he ran up and enveloped her in a giant bear hug, rocking from side to side and refusing to let go.
“How was it?” he exclaimed, brushing the loose strands of hair from her face.
“My legs are shaking,” she said, and it was true. She was trembling like she was even more terrified now that it was over because she couldn’t believe that she’d actually done that, jumped off the tall, sheer peak towering above them.
But she was laughing, too, and kissing him and so exhilarated she thought she might burst. From the beach they couldn’t see the rest of the city anymore. It was mind-boggling how much she might have missed if she’d stayed with her feet planted firmly on land.
They thanked their guides whole-heartedly, leaving generous tips and wishing Suzi good luck on her studies. Blake kept his arm wrapped tight around her shoulder as they walked along the beach away from the peak they’d jumped from, São Conrado, and the landing strip. Every so often they looked back to see the cliff as it faded from view and the gliders circling like birds in the sky.
“Are you mad that I took you there?” Blake asked.
“Mad?” she said, surprised. “I was pretty shocked, but definitely not mad.”
“You seemed really terrified.”
“I was really terrified!”
“I’d thought you weren’t afraid of heights.”
“I have a healthy fear of the insane, Blake!” she cried.
“But it was worth it?”
She linked her arms through his. The ground still felt wobbly and strange after being in the air. “Some day my legs will start working again.”
“You could have said no and that would have totally been okay,” he reassured her.
She stopped walking and faced him, taking both of his hands in hers. She could feel the sand solid yet shifting beneath them, the steady swish swish of the ocean all around.
She grazed his lips. “Sometimes don’t you have to take a risk and fall?”
Chapter Seventeen
Blake’s knees were still knocking as he and Julia made their way down the beach, splashing their toes through the water, marveling at what they’d just done. They were north of the more crowded city beaches. Here on the outskirts of the wealthy Barra de Tijuca neighborhood the sand was fine, the color of pale straw, and there was hardly anyone around. They walked hand in hand, laughing and breathless, hearts beating a mile a minute after such soaring sights.
“How on earth did you think of doing that?” Julia asked, still shaking her head from the rush.
“I’d heard of people doing it when I was here before, but it seemed, uh, a little crazy.”
“A little?”
“I was going to do it. Really. I was halfway down the street and trying to make myself hail a cab when I just…oof, I was chickenshit.”
“You?” Julia raised an eyebrow incredulously.
“Maybe if I’d had some peer pressure, but it was only me and I…I couldn’t.” Blake shrugged. He might not have wanted to admit to just anyone that his nerves had gotten the better of him, but Julia wasn’t just anyone. Seeing how scared she’d been made it easier to admit that it had felt like a risk for him, too.