Page 51 of Free Fall #1
Dan
“C heers! To Amelia Rose!”
Sejin and I clink our beer bottles together and stare up at the night sky.
It’s obscured by the light and smoke from the small bonfire we built in celebration of Peggy Jo’s daughter going into labor.
It’s also an anniversary of sorts, though I think I’m the only one who realizes it.
It’s been exactly two months to the day since Sejin and I first hooked up. It’s hard to believe, but it’s true.
“You know, when I met you, I didn’t think we would ever be like this,” I say, pushing Sejin’s hair away from his neck to nuzzle in and kiss him there while he wraps his arms around me and stares up at the stars.
“Me either.”
“I thought I’d fuck you, see your smile, and be done with you. Now I have to figure out how to keep you with me all the time, even when Peggy Jo comes back. Even when I’ve sent Heart Route. Even when I get old and arthritic and can’t climb anymore.”
“You can see a day like that? A day when you don’t climb?”
“Easier than I can see a day without you.”
“Dan…” Sejin shakes his head.
“Shh,” I say. “I know. That’s too much.”
“What is it about you and me being out under the stars that makes you declare all kinds of wild things?” he asks.
“Must be the moon making me crazy.”
“Must be.” The light from the fire glows against his skin.
“What about you? Can you see a life without me?”
Sejin grows stiller than still, and suddenly I know the answer, but it’s not because he’s thinking of leaving me. It’s because he’s afraid I’ll leave him.
“I’ll send Heart Route,” I whisper. “I promise.”
“I know you will.”
“When I do? Will you be waiting for me?”
Sejin clenches me close and kisses me hard. “Yes,” he promises.
The fire snaps and crackles. “Just promise you’ll come home to me.”
“I love you.”
He shivers in my arms, and I hold him tighter.
There are a lot of things we don’t talk a lot about, and Sejin’s experience of loving a person who didn’t come home to him one day has always been one of them.
Someday soon, though we’ll have to dig into it more.
The mother he lost, the father who’s coming, and the future in front of us.
But I have to send Heart Route first.
And there’s no time like the present.
*
0 days to free solo ascent
I wake at dawn. I don’t know why or how, but I feel it in my bones. Today is the day. The culmination of years of hard work, and months and months of training. The culmination of my very life until this moment. It’s like a whistle in my cells, a rising call I can’t ignore.
This might not be the day I’d planned to do it—that was next week—but it’s the day I’m meant to do it. There’s no other way to put it.
It’s time.
I leave Sejin sleeping in bed, all tousled and beautiful, and I bypass several sleeping cats to head out to my van. I briefly worry the van’s wheels on the gravel might wake Sejin, but my phone doesn’t light up with any texts questioning where I’m going so early.
I leave my phone on for the duration of the drive and the entire approach hike in, but I turn it off when I reach the base, so no texts or calls will come in while I’m climbing. I can’t afford even the smallest distraction today.
At the start of the route, I sit down on the ground and breathe in and out.
I allow myself to imagine everything that I’ll otherwise try to put out of my head during the climb.
In detail, I imagine falling. I imagine the fear as I plummet.
I imagine dying. I think of my body on the ground—or what’s left of my body after impact.
I imagine Sejin getting the news. That makes my gut churn, but I force myself to envision it all as fully as possible.
His heartbreaking sobs. The pain he’ll feel.
I breathe in and out.
I imagine him moving on. Learning to live a different kind of life, making new friends, finding new love… Forgetting about me most of the time.
Then I change out of my approach shoes and into my rock shoes, clip on the chalk bag, and shake out my hands and feet. My heart pounds. My blood feels effervescent. Life roils inside of me with a vibrancy I only feel at moments like these. Potent. Powerful.
This is it. I step forward with determination.
It’s time.