Page 34 of Playing With My Heart Strings

dusty

Face Your Fear

“Are you a daredevil?” I ask Baylor as we walk hand in hand to the location for our date.

This is our second on-camera solo date, and although we’ve secretly spent more time together, I still feel like there’s a lot I don’t know about her.

I want to know what gets her heart racing, if she’s the type of person to jump blindly into love or dip her toes in first.

“I’m not sure,” she admits. “I wouldn’t say I’m an adrenaline junkie, but I’m not scared to do crazy things.”

“Good. I hope you’re not afraid of heights,” I hint at what our date has in store for us.

“Oh no.” Her face pales. “I’m guessing you’re not going to tell me what we’re doing, though, are you?”

I give her a mischievous grin. “That would ruin the surprise.” I haven’t really gotten to see Baylor in an uncomfortable situation yet. Sure, the drama with Aspen wasn’t pleasant, but it wasn’t something fear-inducing.

“ Please tell me we aren’t jumping out of an airplane or something.”

“If I said we were, would you still do it with me?” I ask.

She squeezes my hand. “I’d probably shit my pants”—she lets out a laugh mid-sentence—“but yeah, I’d still do it with you. I’ll face my fears, if that’s what it takes.”

“Atta girl.” I squeeze back and wink. “Come on, we’re almost there.”

About a quarter-mile later, our destination comes into view, a towering skyscraper. My stomach swims with anticipation, and I just hope Baylor won’t be too nervous when she finds out why we’re here.

We both look up when we reach the base of the building.

“What are we doing?”

“We’re going to the top,” I reply, wrapping my arm around her shoulder and pulling her into me.

She lets out a nervous laugh. “Just for the view, right?”

In convenient timing, a cheer cuts through the air, prompting her to look up at the person hanging from the side of the building.

“You’re joking, right? There’s no way we’re jumping off a building!”

“We’re rappelling off a building,” I correct as she pulls her bottom lip between her teeth. “Don’t worry, I’ve got you. We’ll do it together.”

“I swear, if we die because—” Panic fills her voice, but I press a finger to her lips.

“I won’t let anything happen to you. We’ve got professionals who are going to get us through it.” I’m not sure if my attempt at reassuring her works, but she reluctantly nods and we enter the building to take an elevator to the top floor.

Neither of us says a word in the elevator. I can tell Baylor’s nervous, and I don’t want to make her more anxious by speaking. So I just hold her hand, rubbing gentle circles with my thumb.

When the elevator dings, signalling our arrival at the top floor, she sucks in a deep breath. Before we exit, though, I cup her face with my hands.

“If you don’t want to do this, just say the word and we’ll go back down. I would love for you to do this with me, but the last thing I want to do is pressure you into something you’re uncomfortable with.”

She nods, closing her eyes for a moment. “I want to do this with you. I want to face my fears and take the leap…literally.” She chuckles, and my shoulders immediately relax before I plant a kiss on the top of her head.

Jarrod is already waiting for us with more of the camera crew, who help the professionals set us up with GoPros on our helmets.

Resting my hand on Baylor’s hip, I whisper in her ear, “How are you doing?”

“A bit nervous,” she admits. “I’ve never done anything like this before.”

“Neither have I. To be honest, I’m a little nervous, too, but everything is going to be great.”

The technician waves us over to get on our harnesses and the rest of the gear we need then goes over a brief overview of how to rappel down safely.

Before I know it, our harnesses are attached to the belay device and rope, and Baylor and I are standing next to each other on the edge of the tower.

I reach over to grab her hand and check in. “You doing all right?”

She nods, even though the grimace on her face says otherwise.

“I’ll be right here with you the whole way,” I reassure her as best as I can, trying to keep my own nerves at bay.

“Ready?” the technician asks.

“Ready,” we confirm at the same time.

“All right, have fun. Don’t forget you’ve got a radio if you need anything.”

To make our way down, we have to make our bodies perpendicular to the building so we can take steps as we feed the rope through the belay.

Finding my position is a lot easier than it is for Baylor, and I can tell she’s struggling to get started.

Her torso is lower than her legs, her feet still on the ledge of the roof.

She squeezes her eyes shut, her expression mimicking a person in pain.

“Hey, you’re okay.” I get her attention, and she slowly opens her eyes. “Talk to me.”

“I don’t know if I can do this,” she mumbles.

“You’ve got this, Baylor. Just use your weight to help you take your first steps. Slow and steady, baby.” I catch myself off-guard calling her the term of endearment, but I don’t think she even notices as she takes a long, slow breath and steps off the ledge.

Her first few steps are slow and a bit wobbly, kind of like a fawn standing for the first time. But once she gets her footing, she whips her head toward me with the biggest grin. Then she makes the mistake of looking down the twenty-six or so stories, and her face blanches.

“Hey, hey, hey, look at me.” I’m talking to her before she even has the chance to speak.

“I d-didn’t realize how high up we are.” Her eyes snap up to mine.

“Don’t think about that, or it’ll make it worse. Talk to me. What’s your favorite color?” It’s the first thing that comes to my mind, even though it’s a pathetic attempt at a distraction.

It works, though, because she lets out a laugh. “Orange. My favorite color is orange.”

“I don’t know if I’ve ever met someone whose favorite color is orange,” I reply, keeping the conversation flowing. “My favorite color is green. But forest green. My bedroom as a child was neon green, which gives me a headache just thinking about it.”

We’re slowly inching our way down, and I think my efforts to distract Baylor are working, because she doesn’t look as tense anymore. Her shoulders have relaxed, and she’s not white-knuckling the rope like she was when we first started our descent.

“My bedroom was just white. My parents didn’t let me paint my room, because they didn’t have time—family of doctors,” she adds. “As a kid, I was obviously devastated, but looking back I’m oddly grateful. I probably would have chosen the worst color combinations known to man.”

“As long as you didn’t want to paint your room baby-puke green, I’m sure it wouldn’t have been that bad.”

We laugh together, throwing out the worst color combinations that we could have used for our childhood bedrooms. I look up to see how far we’ve come, finding that we’re about halfway down the building.

I don’t mention it to Baylor, because I don’t want to freak her out, but pride rises in my chest at how she’s facing her fears.

“If you had to choose only one artist to listen to for the rest of your life, who would it be?”

“Do I only get their existing discography or do I get future albums?”

“All existing and any future music they release,” I confirm.

“Even with that, this is probably the hardest question ever. I can only have one ?”

I nod, taking a few more steps. “Yup. Only one. Everyone else is wiped off the face of the Earth.”

Baylor actually giggles . “Are you going to be offended if I don’t pick you?”

“I think I would be more offended if you did pick me over all of the options you have,” I tease. “My artist would be Elvis.”

“Even though you won’t get any more new music?” She gives me a quizzical look.

“As much as I would love to hear new music, I would hate to never be able to hear Elvis again.”

“I think that’s reasonable. Man, I don’t know.

I don’t think I’ve ever thought about that question before.

I would hate not having the luxury of listening to all my favorite singers.

I feel like I’d want someone with the largest catalog of songs, but there are so many,” she rambles on, and I stare at her in awe.

“Think about it and tell me later.” I wink.

We’re getting closer and closer to the ground, but selfishly, I don’t want this to end. I know we’re being recorded from our GoPros, but it’s been a nice reprieve from having a camera crew and producers in our faces.

“Look how far we’ve come!” Baylor looks up in awe.

The ground is much closer now, and the producers and crew on top of the building are smudges in my vision. Like tiny ants.

“ You did that.” I smile, and she reciprocates.

“Maybe, but I couldn’t have done it without you, Dusty.”