Rebound (Boomerang #2)(52)

She shakes her head. “No, my special darling. You’re going to learn to trust yourself! Isn’t it marvelous?”

It’s not a question, really, though she still punctuates it with another kombucha-scented kiss on the lips. “Today, you’re going to learn to trust each other, yes. But you’re learning to trust yourselves, most of all. Trust that you can push yourself harder than you believe. Trust that when you fall—” she nods at the raised platform—“you’re truly worth catching!”

My cell phone buzzes in my pocket, and I lift it out and clear off the condensation on the screen with my gloved finger.

Dad: Any progress?


Part of me wants to ignore him, to smash the phone under the heel of my boot and forget all about Adam’s past, about my “mission.” But I know he’ll persist, and giving him an answer now is the best way to keep from having to deal with a text every hour on the hour.

Ali: Just getting started. But I told you, I’ve got it. Will fill you in tonight.


Now leave me alone, please, I want to add, but I don’t. Here’s hoping I’ve bought myself a few hours of peace, at least.

I thumb the switch to silent and thrust the phone back in my pocket.

“Everything all right?” Adam asks, kicking up little clouds of snow as he closes the space behind us.

I nod. “Yep, just had to let my dad know I got in okay.”

“Too bad he’s not here,” Adam says with a hard-to-read grin. “He could use some trust exercises himself.”

I hear my dad say, “Trust me, Ali. We have to keep this between us. It’ll break your mother’s heart, and for no reason. I don’t want to destroy our family. You have to understand that. Things like this . . . they mean nothing.”

Trust me.

Family is everything.

“I’m glad you took my advice,” my dad says, and with a flourish, he hands me a small box. It’s Christmas. Catherine, my parents, and I sit in the cozy family room, warm cinnamon-sprinkled hot chocolate in our hands, tinny holiday music playing over the expensive speakers. My parents give each other cordial smiles, and I open the box. Two earrings—large A’s for Alison—studded with diamonds. “Just for you,” he tells me. “Because you mean so much to me. You all do.”

Now, I run a finger over one of the earrings, feel the softly pebbled texture of the diamonds, now cold in the November Wyoming air.

“All right,” Jasmine exclaims, bouncing on the toes of her boots like a little kid. “Our first exercise is called ‘Walk the Line!’ Doesn’t that sound like fun?”

She pairs us with our team-building buddies and ushers us over to the end of the fuchsia line in the show.

“All right, she says. “Stand side by side, facing me. Cookie, you put your left foot on the line. Philippe, put your right foot on it, right up against Cookie’s. Get cozy!

“Don’t get cozy,” Cookie snaps, but I can see from the mischievous sparkle in Philippe’s eye that she doesn’t intimidate him.

“Now the trick, my sweetest pets, is to simply walk the line—from here to the end.”

Cookie starts to stride forward, but Jasmine reaches out and tugs her roughly back by the collar, almost lifting Cookie right off her feet.

If I hadn’t seen it for myself, I’d never have believed it. The pixie Arnold Schwarzenegger is everything Sadie and Pippa promised.

“Now, now, my hasty one, let me finish.”

Cookie sighs and rolls her eyes but returns to stand near Philippe, her ankle aligned with his.

“The trick is for the two of you to walk the line together, to keep connected, your feet in contact with each other at all times. But you’re not allowed to touch one another otherwise. And you’re not allowed to speak. You must go deep within your partner’s energy and intuit his or her movements, fall into a rhythm that speaks to both of your hearts. You see?”

From the mystified faces around the clearing it’s obvious we’re all lost, but Cookie and Philippe gamely try again. And again. Jasmine stops them every time they fall out of sync, which is often.

“Cookie, my darling, you have to give something to our dear Philippe. Slow down. Allow yourself to consider his rhythm. You can’t bully your way through something like this.”

Mia and Sadie giggle at Cookie’s frustration, and at someone having the guts to call her a bully to her face. Finally, they’re able to walk the entire length of the fuchsia line, and Philippe celebrates by wrapping Cookie in a bear hug and rocking her back and forth until she finally, reluctantly, puts her arms around him.

“Oh, how honored I am to have seen that!” Jasmine cries. “Truly, so special to see your souls at work together.”

She lines the rest of us up and coaches us through the activity. It takes Rhett and Sadie about twenty tries to align their grossly mismatched strides—like watching a bear and a hummingbird attempt a salsa. While barely touching.

Everyone else bumbles through the activity with greater or lesser success. Then it’s my turn with Adam. We line up, the sides of our feet touching in the center of the fuchsia line. I feel the warmth and solidity of him, and even without looking, I can feel that his eyes are on me.

We start to move, and with no conversation, no touching, and no trouble at all, our strides fall in together. Our feet stay pressed together as we move, a single fluid unit, across the line.