"Of course it is dangerous. But it's also thrilling." He presses the elevator button, and the doors open immediately. "It makes me feel like I live life at its fullest every single moment. And what's the point, if you don't live life at its fullest?"
The elevator doors close, leaving me alone in the empty room. Alone and too stunned to move. I remember someone else living by this prerogative. Kate. She said something to this effect to me once, just before she sneaked out of our house, through the window of her bedroom. It was before she started heavily doing drugs. She'd been invited by one of her classmates to her fifteenth birthday party. Her classmate lived way too far from us, so my parents wouldn't hear of it when she asked for permission. So she did what Kate did best: ran away, even though I repeatedly told her Mum would ground her for months if she caught her—which I was sure she would. This only seemed to motivate Kate more. In the years that followed, I learned that nothing excited her more than the thrill of losing everything.
I always thought it was the drugs that made Kate so reckless. But now I realize it might just have been her way of living life. To its fullest. Every single moment.
Like him. They are the same, Kate and James. Danger excites them. It's just that Kate ended up on the wrong side of dangerous. That's where I always thought people dabbling with risk would end up. It never occurred to me that it depends on what kind of risks they take.
Jess always took risks—whether it meant forgoing paying insurance to have more pocket money, partying in less-than-decent bars, or having sex with a stranger. She always got out of whatever trouble she was in almost effortlessly, like she did when she needed money to pay off the bar damages. She always took risks but never really got to the point of no return.
Neither did James.
But the line between reckless and the point of no return is so thin, one can cross it and never even realize it. Like Kate.
And so I always shunned risk. Every form of it. I dismissed Kate and then Jess humoring me, constantly telling me I live a half-life. It was such a breath of fresh air when I met Michael. He, like me, seemed to want to stay out of any kind of trouble. No class skipping or bungee jumping for him. None of that for me. I thought we didn't need any of it. I honestly felt complete that way.
And then he left me.
I thought he was an asshole then. Now, I think he might have been onto something. Perhaps the desire to risk, the need for adrenaline is buried in all of us, deep in our DNA, waiting to resurface, fighting to do so. Some of us don't want to fight it at all, like Kate.
Some of us are particularly good at fighting it—like me. But where does that get us? If too much adrenaline leads to recklessness and abandon, where does its absence lead? An outbreak, like Michael's? A half-life, like mine?
I don't hate adrenaline; I just fear it. But part of me also relishes it. I felt that when I jumped from the plane. Tha
t small act of stepping into nothingness made me feel something I could get addicted to. That's why I fear it.
But what else is left? How long can I watch others take risks while I'm trapped in a prison of my own making, a paralyzing fear that forbids me to take that one extra step, to live life to its fullest. Perhaps that's why I always find myself somehow surrounded with people like Jess and James. They make me feel alive. Being with James is the most alive I've ever felt. Yet I'm so willing to let him go. All because I never allowed myself to learn the art of risking.
Perhaps if I had ever dared to take risks, any kind of risks, I wouldn't now prefer the certainty of losing him over the risk of him never growing to love me.
I don't find anyone from the group when I get out of the elevator. The reception area is empty except for the girl standing behind the desk itself. It's the same girl who mistook me for an interview candidate when I was here weeks ago. She's clutching an enormous cup of coffee in her hands, and she's watching me nervously.
"A rather large group was here five minutes ago," I say. "Do you know where they are?"
"They all went to Wellstone's. Do you want me to call you a cab, Miss?"
I smile. "That'd be lovely."
Twenty minutes later I get out of the cab in front of Wellstone's, only to find everyone camped in front of the entrance, in various stages of exasperation. Most sit on the sidewalk with their legs crossed, and some lean on the wall of the building or on the glass doors of the entrance.
"They open in half an hour," someone informs me.
"Great."
I find Ralph siting on the sidewalk a little farther from everyone else, smoking and smirking. Since he's the only one I know from the group, I go to him.
"Why the heck didn't you wait for me?" I ask him, and sit next to him at a safe distance so his smell doesn't invade my nostrils again.
"Darling, I thought you and James would be busy for the next hour at least. I assumed that was a perfect moment for some make-up sex."
"You assume too much," I say flatly.
Ralph shrugs.
I rub my arms with my palms as the morning breeze chills me. I wish I had a steamy coffee between my hands right now. I could use it to get warm and to whip the tiredness from my body and mind. I hadn't felt it before, but sitting here on the concrete, I feel like I might doze off any second now.
Ralph finishes off his cigarette and almost immediately lights up a new one. "I wouldn't push this too far, if I were you."
I choke on the cloud of smoke he breathes in my direction. "What are you talking about?"