Page 21 of Free Fall #1
“Oh? I crossed lines another way?” He frowns. “I’ve been known to do that. Say the wrong thing. Accidentally be a dick.”
“It’s not what you said, or that you’re kind of a dick—”
He laughs, and my heart stumbles over the wide spread of his mouth gleaming across the bottom of his face.
Christ, he’s handsome, and my body really wants to respond to him the way it has the times we’ve been together before.
But the worrying part is that my heart wants to respond too.
His smile is endearing and special, and I can easily get used to it and start to want it every day.
“So, what is it then?” He sounds genuinely curious and not at all defensive. An open mind waiting to hear his crime.
“I didn’t even know I might have a boundary like this, but…
” I clear my throat and pick at my thumbnail nervously.
“I’m not judging you. I know we were just hooking up, and that’s all it was ever supposed to be, but…
” I meet his steady gaze and feel something inside me unlock.
Words spill out. “I heard some other climbers talking about you, saying you’re planning on free…
what did they call it? Free…you know, going up El Cap without ropes. ”
“Free soloing,” Dan says calmly, like I haven’t just said that folks are saying he’s on a suicide mission. No denial. No wince.
“Yeah. That you’re going to free solo El Cap.”
He nods, and his expression doesn’t change much. “That bothers you?”
“Yeah. It does.” I tug my hair out of the ponytail restlessly and let the cool cascade of it hide my face a little as I go on. “Maybe it shouldn’t. I mean, we’re just fucking, right?”
Dan shrugs. “We don’t have to just fuck.”
My throat clicks as I swallow again. I wish I had thought to bring another glass of water to the table with me. I could use a sip right now.
“You’d want to move past just hooking up?”
“If you do, sure. Do you want to?”
It’s tempting. Horribly tempting. “I don’t know? That might make it worse.”
“How?”
“Look, these climbers that were gossiping about your plans, they didn’t seem to think—” How am I supposed to say this to his face? “They thought you might fall.”
“Ah, of course they think that.” Dan sits back and kicks his legs out to the side, crossing them at the ankle. He looks pretty smug for a guy who’s in the midst of being rejected.
“You don’t agree?”
“I wouldn’t be training to do it if I believed a fall was inevitable, would I? I’m not suicidal. People just want to believe anything they are too afraid to try is impossible.”
“But it’s not like you can’t fall,” I say.
“It’s just not something I worry about. I don’t consider it the most likely outcome.”
“Yeah, but you did fall, just the other day, didn’t you? I put Bactine on your scrapes, remember?” And then we’d fucked like animals; I feel dizzy again remembering it.
Dan tilts his head, the scrape on his cheek still red and evident. “Look, Doc…”
“Look what?”
“I was about to say something, but it always pisses Rye off when I say it, so I guess I shouldn’t.”
“That’s not very reassuring.”
“You’re right. I’ll go ahead, but keep in mind I’ve never had people care if I die or not, and so I don’t really get it. Falling isn’t something that scares me.”
I blink, trying to understand. “What does that mean?”
“No one gives a shit about me, and I’m used to that.”
“I give a shit about you.”
“Oh.” He lets out a slow breath and meets my eyes. “Do you?”
“Well, yeah. That’s the reason why I don’t know if we can hook up again. I don’t want to care about you more and have it end…” I feel sick. “Like that.”
“Huh.” He tilts his head again, thinking.
“Huh what?”
“Having people care whether I live or not is weird.”
“Weird? It’s weird to care whether the guy who makes you come like the world is ending and then being reborn out your ass lives or dies?”
“Okay, more like different. And it’s not like I’ll definitely die.”
“Just likely.”
He shakes his head. “I won’t do it if I think it’s likely either.” He smirks again. “But back to what you said before—”
“Okay.”
He leans forward. “You came so hard the world was reborn out your ass? I fucked you that good?”
I roll my eyes. Men, they’re all the same. Even me. “You know you did.”
“Well…” He shrugs again, leaning back and settling in with his feet out and crossed. His smug expression doesn’t fade. “I knew that, yeah. Which is why I was so confused about why you were ghosting me.”
“Now you understand.”
“I understand that you and I have the same fear, yes,” he says, solemnly. “Of getting attached.”
“Right.”
“I admit, I almost let you walk away. I don’t see many benefits in attachment either. But I’ve thought a lot about it the last few days, and I think we should risk it.”
“Because the sex is so good?”
“Yes, but also…” He scrubs a hand through his hair and then leans forward, elbows on the table. “Actually, no. Let’s take sex out of the equation.”
I scoff. “How? We’re literally hookups. We’re not even friends. If we take it out of the equation, what do we have?”
“Nothing.”
“Exactly.”
“And that’s perfect.”
“You’ve completely lost me.”
“Stay with me now,” he says, tapping his palms on the table. “I’ve had two goals ever since I saw your profile on that hideous app.” He puts up two fingers. “To fuck your brains out. Did that.” He puts one finger down. “To see you smile at me the way you’re smiling in your profile picture.”
I blink at him baffled. “I’ve already smiled at you? Plenty of times. I just smiled at you earlier when I sat down.”
“It wasn’t the right smile.”
I’m not sure if he’s a stalker, a freak, or an adorable weirdo. Inside I’m feeling the urge to run, to laugh, and to throttle him all at once. Maybe kiss him too. “What’s the ‘right’ smile?”
“The one where your nose crinkles up, and your eyes go kind of half-moon shaped, and they shine and twinkle, and…” He pulls out his phone, taps a few things, and then shows me my own profile on the hookup app. “This one.”
I snort. “Weird, but okay. I mean, not ‘okay, I plan to spend time with you until you achieve this bizarre goal no matter the cost to my own mental health should you plummet off a wall later’, but ‘okay I’m still listening even though I shouldn’t be’.”
“I figure there’s no way around the fact that life is short—”
“And yet you’re aiming to shorten it even more?”
“Life’s short, even taking my goals out of the equation.” Dan sees my eye roll coming and puts his hand out. “No, wait, I know what those other climbers said got under your skin. They filled your head with all kinds of visions, right?”
“It didn’t take much,” I confess. “My mom died a little over a year and a half ago, and I don’t have room for more death in my life right now.”
“I’m not going to die.”
“You can’t promise that.”
“Right, and neither can you. You could walk out that door right now and get smashed by a runaway semi-truck. Boom—you never fucked me again, and how sad is that?”
“I thought sex was off the table for this discussion.”
“Fine, you never smiled at me like this”—he shows me the phone with my stupidly happy face on it once more—“and what an eternal fucking loss for me, right?”
“But the chances are a lot less—”
“Chances are all we’ve got.”
Something about that sentence, issued from his handsome mouth with such finality, hits me right in the chest. It’s like a boot kick that knocks my breath away.
The light from the window shimmers around him, highlighting his brown, curly hair, and the fuzz on his jawline.
I’m mesmerized by his big eyes. They’re almost hypnotic as he gazes at me, certainty roaring out of them like a physical thing that also shakes me deeply.
“Kid!” Pete yells from behind the counter. “Time’s almost up. Got that personal life cleaned up yet?”
He’d said I had twenty-five minutes, and it’s definitely been less than that, but a glance out the window at the bus of tourists that has just rolled up tells me my time with Dan today is over.
“Why do you want to see me again?” I ask. “The real reason.”
“I feel like I need to see this smile.” He taps the phone again. “I feel like I’ll regret it for the rest of my life, no matter how short or long that is, if I don’t.”
I smile at him. “There. Now you’ve had it.”
“Your eyes aren’t glowing.”
I huff and cross my arms over my chest. “You’re a real dick, you know that?”
“So I’ve been told.”
I ponder that. Dan seems resigned to being considered an asshole. Interesting, and kind of sad.
“Kid!” Pete calls again.
Scooting back from the table, I rise. “I have to get back to work. I can’t give you an answer right now. I’ll text you later, okay?”
“Promise?”
He sounds so young then, and he looks it too. Far too young to die.
“I promise,” I say, putting my hair back up in the ponytail for work.
He watches me keenly, and then says, “I love your hair, Doc.”
“Thanks.” I shift awkwardly, not sure how to break free from him. I want to say something more, something normal or funny or soothing. I don’t even know if I want to soothe him or myself. Instead, I smile again. “Later, Dan.”
“Later,” he agrees.
By the time I’ve helped Pete with the influx of tourists, Dan has left the building. Again, I don’t know how I feel about that. Relieved, I guess.
At the same time, I’m confused now in a way I wasn’t before. I could use some advice, and it takes me a few hours to decide who to ask for it. I have a lot of friends, but not a ton of them are people who have the kind of life experience I need or who care about me for my own sake. Or should.
After my shift is over, I get in my car and drive to my favorite lookout point and park. With the vision of El Capitan looming ahead of me, I take a deep breath and pull out my phone.
And I call my dad.
*
Dan