Page 8 of Free Fall #1

“Oh ho ho, friend. You got laid ,” Rye says, laughing in that high-pitched way he hates. He’s been working on vocal training to change the tonality of his voice with a lot of success, but his spontaneous laughter is something he’s still wrangling.

“Yeah,” I say, stepping toward our meeting point at the start of the approach.

“Look at that smile.” He whistles. “Must have been a good night.”

“It was.”

The smile feels good on my lips. It’s been a while since anyone or anything—aside from sending a fresh route—has made me feel this clear and pure inside.

Like ice melt running through my body, all tickly and rushing.

I can’t stop thinking about Sejin, the sounds he made, the way he moved under me, and how his laugh had touched me like a physical thing.

There’s a lot of untraversed ground to cover with Sejin’s body, and somewhere on that ground must be the key, the one that’ll open that special smile up for me. I want it, and I’m determined to get what I want. Just like I’m determined to free solo and send Heart Route.

So, if Sejin’s game for another hookup or ten, then I’m game too.

I don’t think other men have ever made him come the way he did last night.

He’d seemed overwhelmed by it, taken by surprise.

Just like me. I’m not usually big on surprises, but this one intrigues me and what harm can it do to work his body over again and again until we both get what we want?

For him, that’s orgasms that make him cry, obviously, and for me…

That smile. That particularly perfect smile.

“Anyone I know?” Rye asks.

I shrug. “Maybe. You know a lot of people.”

“I do,” Rye agrees. “I’m quite the slut these days.” He chuckles, this time in the new, deep tone he’s cultivating. “Between my sex work and hookups, my future memoir will need to be called ‘Sex in Yosemite.’”

“Sex work, doesn’t that make you a whore more than a slut?” I ask, hoping to get away from the inquisition about my sex life. Why talk about what I like to keep private if Rye’s willing to talk about what he loves to share?

“I can be both.” He grins proudly. “Why not? People are happy to pay for access to what I’ve got, and they’ll pay me even more for the games I’m willing to play.”

“Just keep it safe,” I warn, never liking the idea of Rye’s promiscuity as much as he does.

He’s small, lean, and light, and he tends to fuck guys twice his size, many of whom are into the fetishistic fantasy of screwing him more than they’re into the reality of it.

More than one encounter has ended with Rye bruised from their rough use.

Cis men are assholes—I know because I’m a cis man—and I don’t trust any of them not to hurt him.

“I just got free of all that bullshit,” Rye proclaims. “Screwing as a gay man is a reve-fucking-lation, and I won’t be going back into any kind of cage. Understood?” He chuckles again. “Cages are for my clients.”

I huff a laugh, kicking off my approach shoes and putting on my rock shoes. “Clients are one thing. You’re in charge with those. Randoms are another.”

“Like you don’t fuck randoms?”

I shrug. “Good point.”

“Last night was a random hookup, wasn’t it?”

“Yeah.”

“Guy or girl?”

“Guy.”

“Who was it? I wonder if I’ve had him.”

I stop with my left rock shoe half on, a coldness washing over me. I cast my gaze up at the gray granite of El Cap as I ponder whether Rye and Sejin might have slept together before. I finish pulling on my shoe. The chances are good.

Unlike me, Rye resides in Mariposa all year and, as he’s just been saying, while he’s riding out this new testosterone-induced male puberty, he’s living to get fucked in all three of his potential holes by whoever is interested.

His business as a Dom has several regular clients and thrives on the kinky seasonal tourists who come and go.

But he’s told me many of his clients aren’t even paying for penetrative sex.

Sometimes they just want him to boss them around, or tell them to lick his feet, or order them to jerk off on the floor and then lick that up.

There’s lots of licking involved in his work, from what he tells me.

Also, Rye craves a lot of sex. It’s why he hooks up with random men all the time. After trawling that hideous app, I know for a fact there aren’t that many options available for him here in Mariposa during the winter months, especially not with men who aren’t awful, or assholes, or…

I swallow hard.

So, there’s a strong chance, a very strong chance, he’s had Sejin. Why does that bother me? It shouldn’t bother me.

I shake out my arms and hands, trying to get the uncomfortable feeling in my chest to leave. Sejin and I have hooked up once . I don’t even know anything about the guy outside of the sex. But that logic doesn’t seem to matter.

I can even imagine them together. I can see how it would go—

Sejin on his knees as Rye fucks him with a dildo. Rye on his back as Sejin—he’s vers, I remember—screws him to glory. Swallowing hard, I feel a little sick at the thought of Sejin being like that with Rye.

It’s not jealousy, is it? It can’t be.

For one thing, Rye and I haven’t ever fucked.

When we first met, I sometimes wondered if he wanted to because he’d look me over with an expression that only made sense once I decided it was lust. But I’d always ignored it because a good belay partner is hard to find—especially for me—and I didn’t want to ruin it by fucking him.

Luckily, as Rye got to know me better, those looks stopped. Now I don’t think there’s any amount of money he’d accept to have sex with me. At least, I hope not. Rye’s great, cute, and fun, but he’s my friend—no matter what Peggy Jo thinks—and I don’t fuck friends.

So, I can’t be jealous. One of the guys I don’t even know, and the other is my friend.

The end.

If they’ve fucked… So be it. It’s fine.

Except it isn’t, and I really don’t know why.

“What’s wrong?” Rye asks. “Is there a problem?”

As always, he’s attuned to me in ways I can’t reliably reciprocate. I don’t always know when he’s upset, so why does he always see through me like this?

“I don’t know,” I say honestly. “His name’s Sejin. Have you fucked him?”

Rye blinks at my bluntness, but he recovers quickly, accustomed to it for the most part. “Yeah, no.”

My heart flip-flops so fast between the yeah and the no I feel dizzy. “Yeah, you’ve fucked him, or no, you haven’t?”

“I haven’t.” Rye cocks his head. “Seems like you’d care if I had.”

I shrug, relief running through me like cool water over a sunburn, shivery and right. “I don’t know why I would.”

But I did, and I do, and I’m so glad it’s not an issue. “You don’t know him then?”

“I didn’t say that,” Rye says with a smug grin. “I know him plenty well. He teaches Movement at Jeanie’s nursery school.”

Jeanie is Rye’s daughter, though she lives with her dad these days, ever since Rye claimed his life as Rye instead of…

well, the name he went by before. I don’t remember it anymore, though I heard his mother call him by it once when we stopped by his folks’ house after a climb to grab showers.

I’ve never heard it since, and I don’t care if I ever do again, given the way Rye’s shoulders had slumped and his expression had fallen.

I told him afterward he should never go back there if they don’t respect him, and as far as I know, he hasn’t.

Okay, maybe I can read him too, sometimes. I’m not a complete jerk after all.

“Movement?” I frown, trying to figure it out. “Like…baby PE?”

“It’s more like baby dance,” Rye says, laughing again. “It’s so adorable.”

He raises his brows, checking over his clips and hardware, making sure he’s got what he needs for the climb. “And Sejin is adorable too. You should see him with the kids.”

I think about the man I fucked. He’d been so open and enthusiastic about everything we’d done. A man so eager for joy is totally the kind of guy who’d teach dance to children. I bet he’s cute with them. I feel the corners of my lips pull up with another irrepressible smile.

“Wow. He must be some fuck,” Rye says, bewildered. He pulls the rope in smooth, clean loops around his shoulders, so it won’t get tangled in our bags.

“Yes,” I say again with another smile. “Yes, he is.”

“You gonna see him again?”

I nod. “This weekend.”

“Yeah? So soon?”

I shrug as an answer, then finish off my prep work and heft my bag up onto my back. “Ready to hike in?”

“Yup,” Rye says. “Are you ready to put down a bet?”

“On what?”

The trees around us are beyond tall, and they sway in the wind with audible creaks and groans. The sandy earth beneath our feet lets off the reassuring smell of disintegrating leaves as we walk. I feel at home in a way I never do anywhere else.

“I bet you thirty bucks this weekend won’t be the last time you see him.”

I consider my memories of our night together and think of Sejin’s naked body and all the things I haven’t done with it yet.

I remember the way he’d crooned like a wild thing as he surrendered to my cock, and think of that photo on the app, the smile in it that lights his face like a radiant, heart-stopping sunbeam.

I remember the dimmed approximation of it I got to see last night and how beautiful it’d been too. “Nah, no bet.”

“Why? You think I’ll win?”

I shrug again. “I don’t want to take your money. You need spending cash for your days with Jeanie.”

Rye chirps another high-pitched laugh and then shifts it to a lower key. He elbows me lightly. “I see how it is. And speaking of Jeanie, I have her for a few hours this afternoon before Andrew gets back from Groveland. He had business there today. Wanna hang with the two of us?”

“You don’t get a lot of time with her, do you?”

“No, but she thinks you’re cool, and she’ll be glad to see you.”

I scoff. “Me? Cool?”

“I know. I don’t get it either.” Rye sticks his tongue out at me, and I laugh as we navigate the thicker vegetation and rocks that lead to the base of the wall.