Page 23 of Free Fall #1

She says nothing else, but hands me back the phone. Suddenly, I need to know. “Do you like him?”

“There’s not a soul alive who wouldn’t like Sejin.”

“Well, that smile? The one in the photo? I really like it.”

“He’s adorable.”

“Yeah, he’s always good-looking, but there’s something about that smile…” I frown. “I think this probably sounds creepy. When I told him about it, he looked a little weirded out.”

“Enough for you to notice? Oh, lordy. What exactly did you say?”

“I told him that I want him to smile at me like that, and he hasn’t yet. I told him I want to hang out with him and be around him a lot until I earn that kind of smile.”

“He’s never smiled at you? I can’t imagine that. The boy’s a smiling machine.”

“No, he’s smiled at me a few times, but never…” I bring up the photo again and thrust it at her. “Never like that.”

She studies the photo. “Never like he’s looking at someone he loves?”

It’s a kick to the chest. I sit back in my chair. Cold. A little stunned. Holy shit, is that what the expression on his face is? Love?

I don’t want that, do I?

Being loved is…

I don’t know what it is. I haven’t experienced it much. The closest thing I have to a person who loves me is Peggy Jo. I’ve always said I don’t need love, I don’t want it, and all it does is hold people down, keep them back, tether them.

A cloud shifts over the sun and a corresponding shadow passes over the cats.

Coolness falls on the front porch, and a strange despair drops on me.

I’ll never make Sejin love me, and so I’ll never see that smile directed at me.

I’ve wanted to see it in person from the beginning, and then I wanted it all for myself, and if Peggy Jo is right about what that smile means, then I can’t ever have it.

I hate not having what I want because I’m always so careful to make sure what I want is something I can accomplish all on my own. I’ve made a huge blunder with Sejin and his smile. I’ve made the mistake of coveting something I can’t give myself.

“What’s wrong?” she asks. “You look like I shot your dog.”

“I don’t know what to do now,” I say. “I thought if I could just get this smile from him, it’d be enough. But…”

Peggy Jo stares at me. “It’s okay to want to be loved, Dan. You deserve to be loved.”

I don’t reply. Love’s a foreign thing. A mystery I’ll never solve.

I still want to see Sejin’s most beautiful smile directed at me. No matter what the cost, it’s worth trying for. I know it is. I want it almost as much as I want to free solo Heart Route. And that makes no sense at all.

Not a lick of it, as Peggy Jo says.

No, not even a lick of a lick of sense.

*

Sejin

“He didn’t pick up the phone,” I say to Leenie, digging a spoon into the peanut butter jar, ignoring her glares because I know something she doesn’t: I bought her a new jar on the way home.

All she has to do is check the cupboard for it.

“I called, for the first time in forever, and he didn’t pick up the fucking phone. ”

“Sejin, language,” she says, glancing at Jeremiah playing with trucks at our feet.

He’s using the lines in the kitchen linoleum as roads, and the table legs as mountains.

Apparently, these trucks can drive vertically and even upside down because he’s zooming them up the legs and underneath the tabletop.

“Sorry.” Apologizing for the f-bomb I dropped feels hollow, though, because I have a lot more of them locked up inside.

“What am I supposed to do? Beg him for attention? Everyone blames me for whatever’s going on with him, I guess because I’m the one who left West Virginia.

But he has a phone, Leenie. He can use it to call me or, I don’t know, he could pick up when I call him. ”

“Verny says he’s been depressed since your mom died.”

“I know, but what am I supposed to do about that? Stay there? Suffocate in that tiny town forever?”

“I thought you loved home.”

“I love it when it’s in my memory. I hate it when I’m there. Especially since Mom died.”

“Do you think he might feel the same?”

“I don’t know. But, again, what am I supposed to do? I can barely afford to take care of myself—who am I kidding, I can’t afford to take care of myself at all! I can’t bring him out here to join us. Your sofa isn’t big enough!”

She scoffs and ignores the last jab. “You could talk to him about it. He could probably afford the move, and it might be good for him. You two could get a place together, and—”

“What part of ‘he doesn’t pick up when I call’ did you miss, Leenie?”

I hate to sound so angry with her. It’s not her fault my dad is now even more determined than I am to run away from our feelings after Mom’s death. I just hadn’t expected that when I finally really needed him, like I’d needed him this afternoon, he wouldn’t be there.

“I’m sorry,” I say meekly. “You’ve done so much for me, and I shouldn’t have snapped like that.”

“You’re hurt. He should have picked up. Or texted. Or…maybe he’s out of range?”

“Maybe.”

“I’m sure he’ll call. Just be patient, Sejin.”

“Meh. I hate patience.”

“I know you do.”

My phone buzzes in my pocket and I jump. Part of me wants it to be Dan, of all people, and part of me is certain it’s my dad. His ears have probably been burning. That’s the part of me that’s right.

“Hello? Dad?” I say, and Leenie leans back in her chair, self-satisfied relief playing over her features.

His voice is a pleasant, familiar rumble that settles my anxiety as soon as it hits my eardrums. “My phone says you called earlier. I didn’t hear it ring. Not sure why.”

“Do you have it set to Do Not Disturb maybe?” I wave at Leenie and stand up, abandoning the jar of peanut butter, the spoon still stuck in it, to walk out of the kitchen, through the front door, and out to the driveway. The reception is better there. Plus, there’s at least a modicum of privacy.

“Beats me, son. I’m just proud I can work the damn thing at all. Your mama made me get it, and I’m glad and all but, Lord, the way they change it every time I just got it all figured out. Took me near a week to re-learn how to close the internet pages after this last update.”

“It was confusing,” I agree.

“Anyways, you called, and I’m callin’ you back. You okay out there? Need me to come get you? Just say the word.”

I smile. God, what is wrong with me? I’ve been convinced he doesn’t want me around and is avoiding me, or blaming me for his grief and pain, but here he is saying he’s here for me. In his own way, of course. Not in those words. But I know what he means.

“I’m still okay. What about you, though? The family’s worried.”

“Oh, bah. Those extroverts don’t know how to leave a body alone, I tell ya.

They’re like your mama. Always getting together with each other and talkin’ up a storm.

Dang if Verny didn’t come over last week, and I thought I was gonna have to just get up and go on to bed with him still yammering on the couch. ”

I snort. Just hearing my father’s voice makes me long for West Virginia, even though I know it’s not the place for me.

But there’s just something about that accent, that emotional warmth that persists even when I’m getting a scolding, and the friendly nosiness of every last neighbor, friend, and family member—all wanting the best for me, all prying way too much.

That’s not even getting into how the mountains themselves hug you like a mama.

They’re warm and curved, and don’t loom over you like snow-capped, luminescent, wrathful giants that might decide to come alive, march during the night, and take out the human race.

Wow, just talking with my dad has unlocked a part of me I don’t always embrace—the colorful, winding, wordy part that wasn’t born or bred into me, but was instilled by being soaked in Appalachian culture since I was eight months old.

I fall into my accent harder as I reply. “I’m so happy to hear your voice, Dad. I’ve missed you so much.” It’s instantly true. It happens every time we talk. As soon as I hear his voice, the missing just wells up inside me. It’s part of what makes reaching out hard.

“What’s going on? You don’t call for no good reason.”

I sigh. Earlier, when I’d been sitting in the car, staring at El Cap, I’d had some sort of words planned, but now they escape me. “Boy trouble,” I summarize.

“Ahh. You used to talk to your mom about that.”

“Yeah.”

“So, what’s the problem? He a jackass?”

I laugh. “Pretty much.”

“Cheating on you?”

“No. We aren’t dating, really… Well, we aren’t dating yet.

” Because isn’t that sort of what Dan is requesting?

We can take the sex out of the equation, but he still wants to spend time with me because he wants to see a very specific version of my smile.

Which is so fucking weird and yet…I kind of get it.

I want to know more of him too, and that’s what I think he really means.

But I’m not an idiot. If I say yes, I want to spend time with him too, then sex is gonna go right back into that equation, and then we’ll be dating, or something very much like it.

Dad and I are quiet together for a moment, which is something I always appreciate about him. Mom would fill in the silence, and I liked that too, because I liked everything about her, but with Dad, I’m given some time to think.

“This guy I’m seeing is a rock climber.”

“Tough guy, then.”

“Very tough. And he does some dangerous climbs.”

“Right.”

I take a deep breath. “What if something happens to him?”

“You think something might happen to him?”

“I think the chances are higher than average by far .”

“Ah.” He’s quiet again.

“I’m scared to get too close to him, even though I want to at the same time.

There’s something about him. He’s kinda odd, and we don’t really know each other very well.

” Try at all, outside the bedroom, but I’m not telling my dad that.

“I just have a feeling in my gut, if I keep seeing him, I’m going to fall for him. And I’m going to fall hard .”

“Did your mama ever tell you she had those breast cancer genes?”

“Yeah.” I’m a little discombobulated by the apparent change of topic, but I’ll roll with it, see where he’s going. If he just needs to talk about Mom’s death, then that’s okay.

“We didn’t know, of course, when we married. They couldn’t test for it yet back then.”

“Right.”

“But once we found out, I thought and thought and thought . How if we’d known, we could have done things differently. Gotten an early mastectomy or what have you. That kind of thing. I’d have loved her, no matter what.”

“Of course you would have. So would I.”

“But do you know what she said to me?”

“No.”

“She said she wished we’d known when we were young too, because then I could have married someone else, and not gone through all the hard times with her—the infertility, the cancer.”

“Oh.” I suck in a breath. What about me?

“I knew as soon as the words left her mouth, son, that she was telling me how much she loved me. She was telling me she’d have wished for another future for me that didn’t have this pain.

But I also knew I wouldn’t have traded a single dang moment we had together, just her and me, or the three of us as a family, for any kind of life with another woman.

I lost your mom too early, but even if I’d lost her way before I did, even if I’d only had a few years with her, it would’ve been worth it. ”

“Oh.” I see now what he’s trying to say.

Dad’s voice is serious when he asks, “Do you love him like that?”

“No, not yet anyway. I barely know him.”

“So, this is your chance to run,” Dad says.

“Exactly. And I feel like I should run. He’s not a good long-term bet.”

“Right.”

The Sierra-Nevada mountains loom above the tree line around the yard, hemming me in. They don’t want me going anywhere.

“But even when I run, my feet keep wanting to head back to his door.”

I don’t tell my dad that Dan’s door opens up to a converted van. My eyes fill with tears when my father speaks again. He says exactly what I want to believe and everything I’m afraid to hear.

“Trust your feet, son. Your feet have never steered you wrong.”