Page 16 of Free Fall

As always, he’s attuned to me in ways I can’t reliably reciprocate. I don’t always know whenhe’supset, 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’mso gladit’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 asRyeinstead 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 Icanread 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’scute 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. “Areyouready 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 Andrewgets 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.”