Freefall (Santa Cruz Skydivers Book 1) (2 page)

Chapter Two

Andi

MY LIFE SUCKS!!!
All capitals, three exclamation marks. No, let me reword that.
I hate my life
. Or how about this one?
This shit life is fucked
. Every morning before I even opened my eyes, one of these phrases ran through my head. Some mornings, like this one, I would use them all like a mantra, and then again every night before I went to sleep. My headspace was not exactly in a great place. Some days were worse than others, and on those days, I just wanted out, an ejection from life altogether. Today wasn’t that bad, although I was borderline.

“Stop it,” I said out loud to my inner voice, tired of its constant interruptions and self-doubt, and angrily kicked off my blankets while contemplating whether to throw my pillows at the wall as well. Deciding I’d rather be comfortably angry, I stayed lying on my back, pillows puffed up under my head, glaring up into the darkness at the ceiling like it was its fault I couldn’t go back to sleep.

I was twenty-one, the world should have been my oyster. I should have been a precious pearl waiting to be discovered. Instead, it felt like I was a rotting mollusk inside a barnacle, on an unwanted ship that was going nowhere fast, except maybe to the depths of the ocean floor. I was working a dead-end job, had no boyfriend and no life. None of my family and friends knew how I really felt. Friends all thought of me as a party girl, happy-go-lucky, and my family—well, they didn’t know me at all.

Rolling over to my stomach, I glanced quickly at the clock on my cell phone and buried my head under my pillow, fruitlessly trying to block out my inner dialogue, wishing desperately I go back to sleep before I had to get ready for work. Five a.m. It was still too early to get up and sit around watching TV, especially when I didn’t live alone. Besides, morning TV viewing was pretty slim on its pickings. As well as the usual shopping opportunities, I think this morning’s viewing was a “Friends” rerun or a Matthew McConaughey romcom. No thanks! I mean, his washboard abs were pretty hot, but his cheesy acting—blech.

I could always read, but even fiction failed me at the moment. The books I liked only made me feel even more insignificant and alone. Not to mention the sex scenes left me feeling…well, in a nutshell, unsatisfied. I needed my own romance, with a real happy-ever-after. Full stop. The End. No sequels, just forever.

Romance…the stuff dreams were made of. My dreams anyway. It was all I could think and talk about. Perhaps because it was missing in my life. I wish I could say it was the one thing missing, but my life was so screwed up. There was so much more missing from it than just romance. I didn’t even know where to start. If I had to write a short list with the three top things absent from my existence, it would most likely be—romance, excitement, and adventure. In no particular order.

“Ugh,” I groaned, pulling the pillow tighter around my head and muffling my voice into my mattress as I thought about my day ahead. Every day for me was pretty much a constant day-to-day rerun. My life was so boring it even bored me. I’d wake up, go to work, come home, and go to bed. My only excitement escaping my nine-to-five job came from my Friday and Saturday nights, and even they had come to resemble a monotonous stream of nightclubs, binge drinking, and lots of vodka. Vodka helped silence my inner doubts. Those doubts that told me I wasn’t thin enough, not smart enough, not good enough at anything other than working a dead-end office job for the rest of my life.

Damn it
, I screamed in my head, finally caving in to my frustrations, and sat up and threw the pillow at the wall. My life was just too depressing. I seriously couldn’t think about this anymore. I rolled out of bed, and like a good roommate, slid my feet noiselessly along the carpeted floor in the rented apartment I shared with my best friend Lili to get a drink of water from the kitchen—vodka wasn’t even an option at five a.m. on a work day. At least I’m responsible.

Taking care not to wake Lili and her boyfriend Scotty, who may as well be on our lease, with loud kitchen noises, I poured myself a glass of water and took it back to my room. As I passed Lili’s room, Scotty surprised me by opening the door and poking his head out.

“Hey, Andi, thought I heard you. Care to join us in a little threesome action?” he asked with a suggestive wiggle of his eyebrows.

“Ha ha.” I contemplated throwing the water at him. I wasn’t up for his usual banter at this time in the morning

He gave a shrug of his shoulders. “No harm in asking.”

“He’s only joking,” Lili called out to me from inside her room.

“Or am I?” he interjected quickly with a smile on his face, clearly joking with me.

“Scotty, you’ll be the first person I ask if I ever want a threesome.”

“Awesome,” he said, a little too enthusiastic.

“What are you both doing up so early? Hope I didn’t wake you.” I attempted to stifle a yawn.

He yawned loudly, my infliction catching. “You didn’t. I’m heading to work soon. My hours have changed since I started at the
Bay Herald
. I wanted to see what your plans were tonight. I have a work function tonight being thrown by the paper. Lili is going and we thought you might be keen to come.”

Lili’s disheveled bedhead appeared behind Scotty. “Please come. It’s being thrown by Scotty’s new boss and I won’t know anyone.”

“You want me to come hold your hand?” I asked her.

She smiled sleepily, rubbing at her eyes. “Something like that. It’ll be all old guys in business suits and their pretentious wives. You know I don’t do those parties very well.”

I looked at Scotty. “Are you sure? Won’t it look weird? You turning up with your girlfriend and her best friend.”

He shook his head. “No, it’s fine. It won’t be all that formal. It’s really just a social function for all the advertisers and sponsors. I have to take photos for the social pages, but it’s important to my career that Lil comes and meets the big boss.” He paused, giving me an all-knowing smile. “There will be an open bar and food.”

Damn it. He knew me all too well.

“Um, sure, I guess so,” I said, the words “open bar” tipping me in favor. “I don’t have any plans tonight.”

Although I’d never been to a social function like this before, I doubted it would be any different from my dad’s work Christmas parties I used to attend as a child. It’d most likely be just a bunch of old stiffs standing around talking business and drinking their single malt whiskey.

“Great, it’s decided then,” Lili said, her body still concealed behind Scotty. I suspected she didn’t have any clothes on and they had been having sex, or about to start, as I hadn’t heard her screaming down the apartment. Both she and Scotty were usually very vocal when it came to their bedroom activities. “It starts at seven. Just wear something semi-formal. I’m going to wear my black dress and black heels.”

“How’d you know what I was I thinking?” I had just been thinking of asking her what she planned to wear. Although I shouldn’t be surprised she knew what I had been thinking. We knew each other so well. Sometimes it was like we both had telepathic abilities. “Silly question, don’t answer that. Lili, I’ll text you during the day and arrange our plans.”

“Sounds great,” Lili sang out, now fully awake, her newly-dyed flaming red hair flicking Scotty as she spun around and disappeared into the bedroom.

“You know you can always join us,” Scotty suggested with a twinkle in his eye.

“Bye, Scotty.” I rolled my eyes and turned back around toward my bedroom.

I heard Scotty chuckle as the door to Lili’s room clicked shut. Behind the closed door, Lili let out a playful scream, confirming my earlier thoughts. Guess it was never too early in the morning for that. My stomach turned. I prayed they wouldn’t be too loud. There was nothing worse than hearing your best friend and her boyfriend going for it, except maybe your parents, but thankfully, that had never happened to me. Not when your parents are aged in their late 60s. I highly doubted they even had physical urges anymore.

Once back in my room, I downed my anti-anxiety meds, chased by my water, then collected my pillow from the corner of the room and tried to settle my inner voice. Always an anxious child, I hadn’t needed medication until after my dad nearly died during my senior year of a heart attack. Since then, I had been told I needed a daily dose to keep me calm and balanced. Clearly they weren’t working, as the depression was new. No one knew about that, and I wasn’t about to share. I’d already had my fair share of psychologists poking and prodding around in my head.

Sliding back into bed, I puffed up my pillows and fluffed my duvet, attempting to make myself comfortable in the hopes I would fall back into a deep sleep. For the next couple of hours, I tossed and turned drifting in and out of sleep, lucid dreaming. You know, the type of dream that feels real, like you are awake but you aren’t. And each time after I woke and went back to sleep, I had the same dream. I was falling. My arms and legs extended, the wind deafening in my ears as I hurtled to the ground. Instead of being scared, I loved it. I had a massive smile plastered on my face and I could feel the adrenaline flowing through my body.

Eventually, after I woke for about the tenth time, I gave up on trying to get decent sleep. The sun’s morning rays peeked through the gaps in my closed drapes—new day, new start. Yeah right. Same old shit, more like it. I knew I should get up. And I knew that staying in bed would make it all the more difficult, but I continued to lie there, waiting for my alarm to chime and force me to go through my daily routine. It was Friday. So at least that was a positive. Mentally, I went through my closet, deciding on what to wear to the function tonight, and decided on my black pleated pants teamed with a black sleeveless silk top and black slip-on heels. I loved wearing black. It was nice and slimming.

As for my hair, I didn’t even bother visualizing a hairstyle. My long, dark, brunette curly hair always had a mind of its own. Washed and GHD’d would be about the best I could hope for. Once I had that all sorted, I reached over to my bedside table and picked up my smartphone. I still had a few minutes until the alarm went off, so I decided to Google “falling dreams.” Various pages came up and I chose the first one that I thought sounded the most accurate.

It read
, “Falling Dreams often indicate anxiety, insecurities, and instabilities in one’s life.
” I contemplated the meaning behind the dream. I already knew I had anxiety and was insecure, but that didn’t explain the feeling of euphoria in the dream. Did that mean I was insecure but happy about it?

Lili would laugh if she thought I was taking this stuff seriously…and then she’d tell me to get a life. She didn’t believe in this stuff like I did. Along with my addiction to romance novels, my shelves in my bedroom at my parents’ home were full with books about past lives, reincarnation, and stories from beyond the grave. Books by mediums were my particular favorite. Some of the stories of people communicating with loved ones that had passed would give me goose bumps. Their love had no boundaries. Reading these stories often gave me hope that true love would find me. That maybe we had already met in a past life and we were just waiting to find each other again. I sighed. I was such a hopeless romantic.

Once my alarm chimed, I rolled lethargically out of bed and into my usual morning routine. A fifteen-minute hot shower followed by a quick protein shake—the latest diet I was on in my attempt to shed those last ten pounds—then out the door to my highly exciting job—not really—of inventory controller at Costco Wholesale. The start of my daily routine was always like this, and this Friday wasn’t any different. Unexciting. Unspontaneous.

Driving to work, I contemplated my lackluster love life. It wasn’t that I was desperate for a boyfriend, it was just that I craved that connection Lili had with Scotty, and my other best friend Charlize with her on-again, off-again boyfriend Sam. I wanted someone to share my intimate thoughts with. Someone who understood me. Not the funny party-girl façade, but the real Andi, the anxiety controlled, insecure and unsure Andi.

Arriving at work, I pulled my two-door, early model, soft top Jeep into the employee parking lot with a few minutes to spare before my shift started. Like my life at the moment, I also hated my job. Although, being in inventory was a step up from my previous position of cashier. My work colleagues weren’t all that bad, despite the fact over half the staff were as old as my parents. If it weren’t for Charlize that worked a couple of days in the office with me, my job would be totally unbearable.

I took a few deep breaths in and gave myself a boost.
Friday, the end of the work week
. In just eight hours, I would be free for two whole days to do as I chose. Except tonight, but once I put in an appearance at this function, drank some free alcohol, and made sure Lili was settled, I planned to hightail it out of there for somewhere more exciting. There was a new bar I had been dying to go to. I just had to convince Charlize to meet me. Shouldn’t be too hard. Initially, we’d bonded at work over our love of drinking. Also, she and Sam were on one their “breaks.”

Just as I cracked open the door to my Jeep, a late model BMW convertible, top up, zipped into the empty parking spot next to me, RnB music blasting from its open windows and the occupant singing just as loud. My heart skipped. It was Ben, one of the casual stockroom guys. I’d had the biggest crush on him since he started at Costco six months ago. Unfortunately, he barely knew I existed other than to say a casual “hi” when we passed in the aisles. Numerous times I had tried to change my break times to coincide with his, but had always been unsuccessful. In fact, when he worked, he usually didn’t start until mid-morning for the lunchtime shift.