“Who’s counting?” she asks. “Am I counting or are you counting?”

“I’m counting,” I tell her. “If I let you count, we’d be here all day.”

“You’re going to catch me, though, right?”

“If you ask me that again, I might just change my mind and not catch you,” I tell her. “Now, one… two… three.”

She just stands there.

“Three,” I repeat.

She sways back a little, but quickly rights herself.

“Should we do it here?” she asks. “It might be better over—”

“We’ve got space to do it and carpeted floor,” I tell her. “Just go. One, two, three.”

Nothing.

“You’re not really filling me with confidence here,” I tell her.

“Why are you helping me?” she asks.

“What do you mean?” I return. “You asked me to.”

“Yeah, but what are you getting out of this? I can give you some money for your time, but it’s probably not going to be anywhere near what you were making with the remodel and everything.”

“It came out great, though, didn’t it?” I ask. “Actually, I’ll tell you what.”

“What?” she asks.

“These can work a lot better if you’re falling from a higher place than where I’m standing, so why don’t we do it over in the plus department. You can stand on the bottom stair and I’ll stand on the low floor. It’ll give you a little more time to fall, but I’ll still be there to catch you,” I propose.

“Yeah, I don’t know about that,” she says. “I think we should just start with something smaller before we—”

“Oh, come on,” I start. “If anything, that extra little bit of backward momentum will just help you learn to trust even faster.”

I don’t know it yet, but I’m about to come to regret those words.

“All right,” she says. “We’ll do it there, but you’ve got to swear that you’re going to catch me.”

 “You know, this really shouldn’t be the most difficult part of the exercise,” I tell her and start walking over to the sunken floor space.

We get there and she positions herself, rather obsessively, on the bottom step.

“You’re going to—”

“Yes!” I interrupt. “I’m going to catch you. Just go: one, two, three.”

The first problem is that I hadn’t expected her to actually do it this time.

The second problem is that, as soon as she feels herself losing her balance, her arms start flailing wildly about her.

Those two problems add up to the back of her hand smacking me hard across the face as I’m trying to catch her. My eyes close on their own with the impact, but I still manage to put my arms out well enough to catch her, although things don’t go quite as planned after that.

She hits against my body while I’m still trying to process my brand new injury and before I can get my eyes open again, we’re both falling backward onto the floor below.

On the positive side of things, I do eventually break her fall. On the negative side of things, due to our respective positioning, I get a pretty solid shot to the fellas when we land and it’s a beautiful fucking sight.

“You said you were going to catch me!” she shouts as she springs to her feet.

I would love to offer a response, but as I’m currently in the fetal position, rocking back and forth with one hand over my eye and the other covering my junk, there’s not much I can physically manage to add to the conversation.

“Shit,” she says. “Are you okay?”

Yep, still can’t answer.

I take a breath and try to be a man about it, but the fact that I took a shot to the jewels kind of makes this the only manly thing I can do in this situation.

“Oh, I didn’t do that, did I?” she asks.

“No,” I said. “I figured it would be a great idea to squash an incredibly sensitive part of my anatomy after strategically placing my face where the back of your hand could reach it.”

“Well you don’t have to be a jerk about it,” she says, and I try to laugh, but it just comes out as a gasp for air.

After a minute or so, I stop writhing and collect myself. It takes me another minute or two before I can get off the floor, and even then, it’s with plenty of her help.

“I think we’ve got a little bit of work to do,” I tell her.

“Maybe we should just give up. Maybe I’m just not the kind of person that can trust someone else is going to be there for me.”

Fixing her trust issues was supposed to be like constructing something but this was harder.

“I don’t believe that,” I tell her.

“It’s true,” she says. “This is stupid. I should just give up.”

“I’ll tell you what,” I say, still hunched forward, my hands on my upper thighs, “why don’t we change spots.”

“You’re bigger than me,” she says. “I don’t think I could catch you.”

“We’ll do it on the flat ground,” I tell her. “Stand just a foot or two behind me and just catch me when I start to tip. If nothing else, that’ll teach you that you can be a part of a trusting relationship.”

The look on her face tells me that I wasn’t particularly clear with that explanation.

“What I mean by that,” I explain, “is that I’ll trust you to catch me. You, I have no doubt, are going to prove yourself worthy of that trust. That’s what I meant by trusting relationship. This might be an easier place to start, as I know you trust your own ability.”

She looks at the ground, then at me, then briefly at my crotch, although I have no illusions that there’s any sexual context to the glance.

“Okay,” she says. “Are you ready or do you need another minute?”

After a glass of water and some pacing, I manage to get myself in a somewhat more upright position and we get in our places.

“You do the count,” I tell her.

“All right,” she says. “One, two, three.”

Against my better judgment in this scenario, I fall backward and she easily stops me from falling to the ground.

“Oh, well if I knew it was that easy,” she says as I get my feet back underneath the rest of my body, “I wouldn’t have freaked out when you tried to catch me.”

“In my defense,” I tell her, “even after the smack in the face, I did still catch you. Do you think you’re ready for this?”

“Yeah,” she says. “I can do this.”

“All right,” I tell her. “We’re going to start you on the flat floor this time just so you can get used to it and this time—”

“Keep my arms folded,” she says. “I got it. Sorry about that.”

“It’s okay,” I tell her, swallowing all of the many parts of myself that want to stay angry at her for inflicting such a massive dose of pain.

She gets into position and I start the count, “One, two, three.”

Jessica falls backward and, managing to keep her hands at least next to her body this time, I catch her easily.

“Whoa, that was cool,” she says. “Can we do that again?”

I snicker, “Sure. Do you want to try it from the step or do you want to do another one from the floor?”

“The floor,” she says. “I’m still kind of nervous.”

We do it again and this time she even manages to keep her hands crossed over her chest. One more time and Jessica’s actually starting to get comfortable doing it. And I’m getting comfortable feeling her body.

Finally, she says she’s ready to try it from the bottom stair.

“All right,” I tell her. “Now, what’s the point of this exercise?”

“To trust you,” she says.

Technically, it’s to show her the benefits of being able to trust, period, but it’s kind of nice to hear the words “trust” and “you” coming from her after having the opposite be the rule for most of the time we’ve known each other.

I think I had a game plan at some point before we started this, but that went out the window when my boys got the pinch of doom. Since then, my brain’s gotten a little hazy.

I do know that I was going to try to work the fact that I’m the one that she’s been sending messages to into the conversation at some point today, but given the fact that she’s only now learning to trust me at all, I’d say it’s worth saving for another lesson.