Page 35 of Free Fall
Hey, Doc, want to meet up tonight? I know we said Friday, but I’m ready for another round if you are.
My pulse rushes. I imagine leaving the coffee shop after my shift is over, going home, taking a nap, and skipping dinner in favor of prepping myself. I imagine telling Leenie not to expect me home, heading back to the campground to the blissful seclusion of Dan’s van, and sweating my way through another set of orgasms that rock the ground under my feet. Or under my knees, depending on the position…
I imagine bussing a table two days, or three weeks, or four months from now and overhearing from a callous set of climbers full of faux pity all about how Dan’s body was discovered in pieces, exploded on impact, smashed below El Capitan’s imposing walls. My fingers shake as I put in my reply.
Can’t. I’m busy tonight
Ok. Friday then
I click like on the text, but don’t send a real reply. I’m not sure I can do Friday either actually. I need to think about this before I let Dan get any further under my skin.
I need to think about it a lot.
*
Dan
Rope soloing isn’tas easy or smooth as climbing with a belay partner. It requires the climber to pass over the same pitch three times instead of just once, but Peggy Jo is of an age that means going up the more difficult big walls is a once-in-a-while kind of thing, and Rye is doing some volunteer work with Yosemite Search and Rescue today, so I’ll have to make do.
One advantage of it, though, and it’s a biggie, is that I’m able to really get to know each pitch of the wall. It allows me to move at my own pace, which can be quite slow when I’m training and don’t feel hurried to move on for fear of boring my belay partner senseless. It also means that every inch of wall I cover is gained entirely by my own toil, and that’s something that I need to feel confident and comfortable with when I’m free soloing.
Plus, I’m alone on the wall. My favorite way to be.
Today, my mind isn’t at ease the way I’d like though. Sejin’s response to my text yesterday was definitive, and I respect that, but it was also vague enough that I don’t know why he said no. “Busy tonight” can mean a lot of things. It can mean he has to work—but he worked the morning shift at his coffee shop job, and preschoolers don’t meet at night, so that doesn’t make sense. It could mean he doesn’t want to meet up because he’s tired, sore, fucked out, and just not interested in more sex right now. But then why lie about it and say he’s busy? Why not just say he’s not up for it? Itcouldmean that he’s got plans with other friends or family…
Or another casual hookup. Or a boyfriend.
What if he has a boyfriend?
No, no, Rye would know if Sejin were dating someone. Rye knows everything about the queers of this little community, so he’d make sure to tell me if Sejin was already attached like that. Irealize some guys are fine with their men getting dick elsewhere from time to time, so it wouldn’t necessarily mean that Sejin is a cheater, even if he does have a boyfriend…
But, no. Rye would have said. Right?
Sejin does have that accent, though, that sweet, lilting, Appalachian sound that makes my insides feel a little funny when he talks. And that could mean he has a boyfriend—or girlfriend—back home, and maybe that boyfriend’s in town, and he was meeting up with him last night. Or her. That’s a pretty out-there prospect and, statistically, the probability is pretty low.
Which leaves the last option, the most likely one given my general run with people during my lifetime—he’s already over me.
I’m typically a one-and-done kind of guy myself, but there have been a few times I’ve fucked guys more than once and, yeah, typically they dip out by the third or fourth fuck. Having gotten what they wanted from me, and found my personality and company lacking, they get out of Dodge. I’ve never cared that much before, but for some reason, with Sejin, it hurts right beneath my solar plexus to think that I’m only worth a few fucks to him. I thought I’d taken him to some pretty great heights during our first two hookups, and I’d wanted to take him to even more. My chest aches to think I won’t get to.
It’s…well, it’s disappointing. But that word doesn’t seem to completely capture the way my thoughts keep circling the brief exchange of texts, trying to figure out what I’m sensing and what went wrong. Worse, my feelings don’t stop twinging worse than my healing rock rash and bruises, even as I prepare to launch myself up the next pitch of my climb.
This isn’t a particularly difficult wall. I’ve chosen it because the route sports a gnarly dyno similar to the one on Heart Route,and I can repeatedly practice it at less height with ropes, and without having to tire myself out so much to get to it.
Unfortunately, the wall isn’t empty, and there are other teams of climbers both up on the wall ahead of me and gathering at the base. Luckily, most are taking the easier route up, and using aid climbing to boot, so they’ll be out of my way soon. But a few are standing off to the side at the base, eyeing the route like they’re gonna scramble up after me. I’d really rather they didn’t.
“You Dan McBride?” one of the guys asks as he passes me, scratching at his stubbled face. If I can shave with a hand mirror in a waterfall, then this guy can shave in whatever homey bathroom he has wherever he lives. There’s no way he’s a dirtbagger, not with his shiny new climbing shoes and gear. I wonder how he’s heard about me.
“Yup.” I finish chalking my hands again and shoot the group a hard, discouraging look. I’m not here to make friends. I’m here to climb, practice this dyno, and forget about “Mr. Can’t. I’m busy tonight”… Fuck. What’s his last name?
“Is it true you’re planning to free solo El Capitan’s Heart Route?”
My blood goes cold and my breath hitches. Who’s been talking? Rye? Peggy Jo?
Gotta be Peggy Jo.
Get a few beers in her and she’s spraying about her former students like a fire hose.
“I don’t know. We’ll see.” My usual answer to anyone trying to ferret out details of my climbing plans. It’s what I said the day I left my final foster home too. Mr. Anderson had squinted at my stuffed backpack, my scavenged bicycle, and my determined face before he’d said, “When you coming back home then?”