Dont Forget Her

Above The Palm

Luis didn’t wake to the alarm so much as he surfaced into consciousness the way a man breaks through ice—sudden, disoriented, and immediately aware that something above him had changed. For a few seconds, he lay still in the dim blue-black of the Dubai hotel room, listening to the soft mechanical breathing of the air-conditioning vent above the door. It was a controlled sound. Engineered. Predictable. The kind of noise that suggested nothing in the world was slipping.

But his body didn’t agree.

His pulse was already too fast.

He stared at the ceiling, where the faint outline of recessed lighting formed a grid. It reminded him, uncomfortably, of drafting paper. Of measured space. Of control. And for a brief moment, his mind tried to latch onto something familiar—some structure, some plan, some safe architectural system he could understand.

Nothing held.

Then it came back to him in fragments, not as a single thought but as a sequence of realizations stacking too quickly.

Dubai.

The Palm.

Tomorrow.

The word tomorrow landed differently now. It wasn’t an abstract unit of time anymore. It had weight. It had shape. It had consequences.

Luis sat up slowly. The sheets slipped from his shoulders with a soft rustle, and the sound felt too loud in the quiet room. Across from him, Daniel was still asleep, sprawled diagonally across his bed like someone who had collapsed into rest rather than entered it properly. One arm dangled off the side. His breathing was deep, steady, completely unbothered by the fact that they were, technically speaking, on the edge of a decision that defied instinct.

Luis envied that for a fleeting second.

He swung his legs off the bed and stood, barefoot against the cool floor tiles. The city outside the window was still dark, but not asleep. Dubai never fully surrendered to darkness. Even at this hour, faint ribbons of light traced the highways in the distance, like circuits running beneath skin.

He walked to the window and pulled the curtain aside.

The Burj Khalifa stood there again, as it always seemed to, even when he wasn’t looking for it. A vertical inevitability. A monument that refused to disappear into background noise. He had studied its structure before—its bundled core, its Y-shaped floor plan designed to resist wind torsion—but none of that knowledge made it feel smaller now.

If anything, it made it worse.

Because he understood exactly how much human intention had gone into building something that could challenge the sky.

And tomorrow, he was supposed to approach that sky willingly.

He exhaled slowly.

“Still here,” he murmured to himself, as if confirming attendance.

Behind him, Daniel shifted in bed.

“You talking to skyscrapers now?” Daniel’s voice was thick with sleep.

Luis let the curtain fall back into place. “Not yet,” he said.

Daniel rolled over, squinting toward the clock. “What time is it?”

“Early.”

“That’s not an answer.”

Luis almost smiled. Almost. “It’s the kind of early where your brain starts negotiating with itself.”

Daniel groaned and sat up, rubbing his face with both hands. “I hate that kind of early. That’s the worst kind of early. That’s ‘life choices are about to be made’ early.”

Luis turned away from the window. “That’s accurate.”

That made Daniel pause.

For a moment, the humor drained from his expression. “You okay?”

Luis didn’t answer immediately. He didn’t know how to.

Because “okay” had become a complicated concept. In the last few days, it had stopped meaning absence of pain and started meaning something closer to acceptance of instability. He wasn’t in pain. Not exactly. But he was aware, constantly aware, of the fragility of his own continuity.

“I don’t know,” he said finally. “But I’m here.”

Daniel nodded slowly, as if that answer made more sense than it should have. “That’s enough for now.”

The room settled into quiet again, but it was no longer empty quiet. It had texture. Presence. The kind of silence that comes before movement.

Luis dressed slowly, choosing clothes without thinking too deeply about them. That was new for him—this absence of calculation. Normally, even clothing was a system: function, efficiency, minimal friction. Today, he simply chose what felt like it would not interfere with breathing.

A simple shirt. Light trousers. Nothing that demanded attention.

His sketchbook sat on the bedside table, leather worn at the edges, like it had already traveled further than he had. He picked it up and held it for a moment without opening it.

Inside it were blueprints of his mind.

Inside it were things he feared forgetting.

He opened it anyway.

The list was still there.

Things I Want to Do Before I Forget.

He stared at it longer than necessary. The ink didn’t feel like his anymore. It felt like a version of him that had made decisions before fear could interrupt.

Face my fear of heights.

A checkmark waited beside it, still imagined but no longer theoretical. He had not done it yet, but the world had already started treating it as inevitable.

Luis closed the book.

“Today,” he said quietly.

Daniel was already dressed now, sitting on the edge of his bed tying his shoes with exaggerated slowness. “That’s the thing about you,” Daniel said. “You say things like that like they’re weather reports.”

“What do you mean?”

“‘Today.’ Like it’s just… happening somewhere outside of you.”

Luis considered that.

Maybe it was.

Or maybe it was the only way he could survive the pressure building inside his chest—by treating it like something external, something he could observe rather than resist.

The ride to the coast was quiet in a way that didn’t feel awkward, just suspended. Dubai’s morning light was beginning to spread across the city, softening the edges of steel and glass. The highways were already alive with motion, cars threading through lanes with mechanical precision.

Luis watched everything through the taxi window as if he were seeing a simulation of a place he used to understand.

Palm trees passed in rhythmic intervals.

Buildings rose and receded.

The city behaved like an engineered system that refused to break character.

And beneath all of it, something in him tightened—not fear exactly, but anticipation without direction.

When they arrived at the coastal district, the air changed.

It was heavier. Saltier. More open.

The ocean was visible now, stretching outward like a decision that could not be reversed once made. The drop zone facilities stood near the edge of it, low structures surrounded by wide open space, as if the city had deliberately stepped back to make room for something else.

Something that fell.

Luis stepped out of the car and immediately felt the wind.

It was different here. Less controlled. Less polite.

He stood still for a moment, letting it press against him.

“You look like you’re about to argue with gravity,” Daniel said beside him.

“I might lose,” Luis replied.

“That’s the spirit.”

They walked toward the building together.

Inside, everything was bright, efficient, and strangely calm. People moved with practiced familiarity—staff checking equipment, instructors reviewing harnesses, participants laughing too loudly in ways that suggested they were trying not to think too much.

Luis noticed how normal it all looked.

That was the most unsettling part.

There was no ceremony for what was about to happen. No architectural grandeur. No warning system that matched the emotional scale of it.

Just routine.

Just process.

Just steps leading somewhere irreversible.

At the counter, they were handed forms. Waivers. Confirmations. Legal language that reduced risk into paragraphs.

Luis signed his name carefully, as if handwriting might somehow stabilize meaning.

When he finished, he stared at the paper for a second longer than necessary.

A staff member took it away without looking at him.

“Instructor will meet you shortly,” she said.

As they moved deeper into the facility, Luis felt the atmosphere shift subtly. Through large glass panels, he could see the preparation area outside. Parachutes laid out like folded wings. Harnesses hanging in rows. The sky beyond it all too open, too indifferent.

He swallowed.

“This is real,” he said quietly.

Daniel glanced at him. “Unfortunately.”

Luis almost laughed.

Almost.

Then someone called his name.

And everything continued forward.

Not yet the fall.

But everything leading toward it.