Pear Milkshake
Title: Falling
Prompt: Pear 5: High & Dry
Extra: Milkshake!
Rating: PG
Word Count: 1,916
Summary: What gave Clara her courage. Takes place when she and Jacob are in college, which isn’t too far away from Heartstrings… so… it doesn’t count as whipped cream, unfortunately. Sad day.
“There’s nothing to be scared about!” That’s what she heard as she stood at the edge of the cliff, the wind playing with the hem of her skirt and her hair. She could see it out of the corners of her eyes, locks of red-gold that seemed to glint in the sunlight. That was Jacob, yelling up to her from the lake. “There’s nothing to be scared about, Clara!” he yelled again, smiling up at her and running his fingers through his hair. He was trying to get her to jump. Yes, jump off of the cliff and into the lake below. He was all the way down there, and he seemed to be enjoying himself. But she was just fine up here as well. She was high and dry, and she felt fine as she was. And yet he was persistent, still calling up to her, telling her that she didn’t need to be scared, telling her that she would feel much better if she just jumped.
“What about my skirt?” she called down, and a light flush stole across her face. She had a point there. What about her skirt? If she jumped all the way down there, then wouldn’t the hem of her skirt fly up? Wouldn’t it reveal more than she wanted to reveal? Sure, it was just the two of them there-it had to be. According to him, no one else knew about this place. Only three people knew about it-himself, his younger sister, and now her as well. And she’d keep it a secret just for him. This was his refuge, or so it seemed to him, and now it would become her refuge as well. It was a place for him to dive into the watery depths and literally wash away all of his worries. And now it would be a place for her to sit and think things over. Think about how fortunate she was to be where she was-a sophomore in university, going for a bachelor’s degree in music. A rather amiable young woman with a small group of close friends. Elizabeth. Esteban. Ali and Nuha. She felt fortunate to have them all. Not to mention she could now feel fortunate because she now had a companion of sorts. Elizabeth and Nuha called him a “boyfriend.” She herself, frankly, didn’t know what to call him. “Boyfriend” seemed like something out of the teenage years. Yes, she was close to a teenager-after all, she was only twenty years old-but there was that fine line that she had finally crossed. Out of the teenage years, into the world of the adult. Technically, she could say that she was “seeing him,” but that would require putting emphasis on the word “seeing” so that the message could get across more clearly. “Beau” sounded like something out of the nineteenth century. It was too difficult. Why couldn’t she just call him “Jacob” and be done with it?
He was still smiling up at her, wiping the water from his face. “You don’t need to worry about that! I’m not rude! I’ll close my eyes if you want me to! Or I can turn around altogether if you want me to! Take your pick, Clara, as long as you jump!” The grin simply would not leave his face. Neither would his resolve leave his heart. He really did want her to jump. He really did want her to be in that lake with him. He wanted her to be with him. Otherwise he wouldn’t have asked, he wouldn’t have been so persistent. He wouldn’t have been smiling like that. “Come on, chérie! Stop just standing there, close your eyes, count to three, and jump! The water will catch you!” He laughed at that, and she could see him swimming back to make some room for her.
Well, she thought to herself. She might as well do it now. Otherwise he might never stop asking her. She closed her eyes, did exactly as he said. Took a deep breath and tried to stamp out the adrenaline that was coursing through her veins. Slipped out of her black flats and let her bare feet embrace the rigid stone ground. Of course it was like this. It was a cliff… she was so high up. Would she really be okay, jumping like this? But then again, Jacob had jumped right in without a moment’s hesitation. But he’d done this so many times before. He’d found this place long before he’d found her. He’d been in London long before she’d ever set foot in it. He’d found this place with his younger sister, before he even knew that she existed. This was her first time going at it. But she could trust him, couldn’t she? He’d jumped, and he’d gotten down there all right. He had to have been scared when he jumped for the first time. But even still, he’d gotten down there all right. Maybe she’d get down there all right. She’d let the water catch her, just like Jacob had said. And she’d be all right. Yeah. She could trust him.
One.
She swallowed. Clenched her fists.
Two.
She took another deep breath. Shrugged her shoulders.
Three.
She jumped. She gathered up all of her courage and used her feet to push herself over the edge. She was up in the air now, up near the clouds-or at least as close as her feet would let her go. And she was falling now, falling, and her eyes weren’t open. She had no idea if she was falling back down to land on the cliff, or if the edge of it would scratch her back (or perhaps worse). But she was falling faster now, faster, faster. She couldn’t be anywhere near the edge of the cliff. She was falling, and the water would catch her. The wind was playing with her skirt again, the way it had during the car ride here, the way it had when she was standing upon the cliff. Telling her you’re going down, you’re going under, CLARA MARIE HILMAN GOD DAMNIT HOLD YOUR BREATH!
She took a deep breath, and just in time, too, for the water had engulfed her, a cold, wet mass against her body, her clothes, her hair. Not to mention the fact that it had started to travel up her nose. That was the one thing she hated about diving into a body of water. It always got in her nose and her ears, and it always made her eyes burn. She couldn’t stand to have her head underwater for too long-it would start to hurt, and where was the fun in that? She tried to open her eyes; everything around her was a blurry mess. A clear picture blurred by the water. She thought she saw another body-probably Jacob’s, but she couldn’t be too sure-and so she kicked and swam toward the light, toward the surface, throwing her head back and coughing and gasping for breath. “I am never doing that again,” she said in between coughs, shutting her eyes tightly and wiping the water from her eyes. She wasn’t expecting it to burn that much. Perhaps it had been because she hadn’t been swimming in such a long time that she was no longer completely accustomed to it. She sighed. “I believed you when you said I’d get down here all right… and I thought you meant that I wouldn’t fall and hurt myself.”
He was grinning at her, gray eyes glinting mischievously. “I did mean that you wouldn’t fall and hurt yourself. And look at you. No bruises, no broken bones. So we were both right. You didn’t fall and hurt yourself.” He reached over and took a lock of her hair in between his fingers, chuckling all the while, creating ripples in the lake while trying to tread water at the same time. “But I wasn’t expecting you to get water in your ears and nose.” He smiled more softly, more affectionately, and wiped some water from her forehead with the pad of his thumb. “Sorry about that, chérie. Forgive me?”
She laughed to herself, swam a little closer to him. She wasn’t high and dry anymore. She was down here, and she was wet. No, that was definitely an understatement. She was utterly soaked from head to toe. Her hair was a dull red color now, nothing like the red-gold color she’d seen before she’d taken the dive. Her clothes were clinging to her now-or at least, her shirt was. She couldn’t really saw the same about her skirt. It was simply floating around. Almost like seaweed. She blamed the water for that, how slow it was, how leisurely it was traveling.
Then she saw the waterfall at the other end of the lake, and she smiled, eyes brightening in curiosity. “Did you and your sister ever swim over there? Or were to too scared to be hit with all that water?” She turned to look at him, to see if his eyes still had that mischievous glint in them. And they did. As a matter of fact, he looked even more mischievous than before. He was grinning as he swam toward her, taking her by the shoulder and nodding.
“We swam over there so many times. You know there’s a little cave hidden behind that waterfall? Lenny and I used to swim behind it and climb the rock wall-there are a bunch of dents engraved in the wall, like rungs on a ladder, you know what I mean? So we used to climb the wall like that, and we would sit inside the cave, right by the mouth, and we’d let our legs dangle over the edge, and we’d talk. It was nice, just sitting there and talking, just the two of us. It was one of those special moments that we used to have together.” He smiled wistfully. “She’s over in Ireland now. That’s where she goes to university. She’s an actress over there… she really loves it.” He paused, the same sort of smile on his face. “I really miss her, though. She was such a sweet girl… I miss sitting in our uncle’s flat with her and helping her with her homework… or playing my guitar for her when she was really tense or upset. She loved when I did that. It was a way for her to calm down. But now that she’s over there, I can’t do it. That is, unless she came over here to visit me, or unless I went over there to visit her. But I have to use my money to make all of my university payments. It’s hard, but my uncle helps me through it if I ever need help.”
She couldn’t help herself-he looked so vulnerable as he floated there in the lake, and given the fact that his face was already wet, she couldn’t tell if the droplets on his face were from the lake or if they were his own tears. She took him by the hands and pressed a kiss to his forehead, wrapping her arms around his neck and hugging him tightly. “It’s all right, you know. You could always call her when we get home… or you could make a recording and send it to her, couldn’t you?”
He grinned. “Yeah… you’re right.” Nodded his head toward the waterfall. “Now, come on.”