“I bet we wi
ll,” he said, scrolling through his phone for a friend’s number. “This feels like the best day ever.”
9
Marian blinked up at the massive balloon before her, unable to fully register what the plan was.
“So, you’re saying…” She looked around, double-checking their surroundings. They’d left the city and stopped in an open park area. “You’re saying we’re going up in this thing?”
Omar nodded like a kid eager to show off his science project. “Yes. I know how to fly it.”
“You’re a hot air balloon pilot?”
He grinned. “Of course.”
The assistant at the hot air balloon port, or whatever it was called, readied some weights near the basket as Omar opened the flimsy swinging door, beckoning her to join him. “Come on. You’re going to love it.”
She eyed the woven basket, trying to judge its safety without actually setting foot inside it. “What if it goes up and never comes down?”
“Impossible. Because of science.”
She hesitated. “What if the balloon pops?”
“Won’t happen, because today is the best day ever,” Omar responded.
“It could very quickly turn into the worst day ever,” she said, pressing a foot inside the bottom of the basket. It seemed sturdy enough. “Sometimes fate likes to play ironic jokes like that. You think it’s the best day ever because you nailed the deal, but then the hot air balloon gets stuck in the desert and the oil tech firm calls to tell you they hated the deal and suddenly, somehow, we also owe them a million dollars.”
“Wow.” Omar urged her inside the basket, basically bucking her with his hips. “Is that how your mind works?”
“I’m a natural-born pessimist.” She gripped the edges of the basket, avoiding the center for some reason. It just seemed to make sense. “Or maybe I’m just a Murphy’s Law adherent.”
“What’s Murphy’s Law?” Omar untied some of the ropes tethering the basket to the ground. The basket jolted beneath them.
“It means whatever can go wrong will, and at the worst possible moment.” She squeezed her eyes shut as her stomach lurched. She’d never been in a hot air balloon before. It just wasn’t one of those things that seemed wise. But for Omar’s sake, she’d tough it out.
Even if it meant ingloriously puking from the side of a floating basket hundreds of feet in the air.
“This is perfectly safe,” Omar said, sliding his hand over her shoulder. She relaxed a little. His touch certainly had a tendency to soothe. He just might have to touch her for the entire duration of the trip.
“Nothing is perfectly safe, though,” she pointed out.
“You’re right. But I’ve gone up hundreds of times. Often by myself. Today is not the day we’re going to end up in the desert owing National Oil a million dollars.”
He planted a quick kiss on her lips, leaving her stunned and enthralled. Hot air ballooning certainly brought out a different side of Omar. He untied the last rope and opened the propane valve. A blast of flame shot up into the balloon. He left it open in long bursts, the tssss, tssss punctuating their ascent into the sky.
Marian gripped the edge of the basket, afraid to look down but also afraid to look up. Couldn’t the fabric catch on fire? She kept her eyes on the horizon, which looked like a postcard, something innocuous and surreal, sandy dunes rolling toward a cityscape.
“You like it?” Omar’s eyes were wide.
“Yeah.” She swallowed hard. Her knuckles had turned white. “It’s, uh, different.”
Omar turned up the burner, which took them higher up into the sky. Wind currents jostled the basket as they rose, sending Marian’s stomach lurching. But after a few moments, the basket steadied, and they drifted effortlessly through the air. Omar slipped an arm around her, surveying the horizon.
“This is the sweet spot,” he said, his voice soft and reverent. “The place where things just seem…fine.”
Marian blinked, finally daring to look around a bit. The world beneath them stretched away like a fairytale: jagged, scorched mountains to the east, a glittering gulf to the south, the skyscrapers stretching up into the clouds behind them.
“It’s amazing,” she said, trying to immortalize this view in her head, to remember this moment forever. The best, most intangible, souvenir from her trip.