Page 76 of Free Fall

I wonder if I can teach him to overcome his fear of heights. I’d like to have him on the wall with me. I’d like to have him most anywhere if I’m being honest.

Maybe that’s love? I don’t know.

But it’s definitely something new.

*

Sejin

“Doesn’t he knowit’s your birthday?”

“To know that, I would have had to tell him,” I say, licking the spoonful of icing I’d filched from Leenie’s mixing bowl.

“And why didn’t you?” She pulls Jeremiah’s hand out of the bowl, but that doesn’t stop him from popping his icing-laden finger into his mouth and sucking it clean with an excited little “ooooh.”

“Because we aren’t there yet.”

“Alright, but where are you then? You spend most nights with him now—”

“Not most. Some.”

“Most. And you—Jeremiah, no, that’s enough.” She lifts the mixing bowl up and away from his little reaching hand as I stick my spoon in to snag another dollop. “Sejin, you’re a terrible role model.”

I shove the spoon in my mouth before she can snatch it back. The icing melts over my tongue and I moan. “It’s so good,” I say around the glob. “And it’s for my birthday cake, so…”

“So, you can eat it when it’s on the cake.” Leenie darts a glance at the clock. “Which I really hope I can finish up before Miss ‘Misery’ Sarah Kate wakes up from her nap. She’s been a nightmare with those teeth coming in. Ugh.”

“Did you remember to put the teethers back in the freezer?”

“No, can you grab them for me? Wash them off first!”

I leave her with the mixer and Jeremiah to quickly pick up around the living room, wash off the two teething rings I find in the sofa cushions, and pop them both in the freezer so they can numb poor Sarah Kate’s gums later.

“You never answered my question,” Leenie says, covering the mixing bowl and putting it in the fridge to chill while we wait for the layers of the cake to finish cooling.

I make sure the colored icing and sugar decorations are out on the table and ready for the big event. Jeremiah’s been looking forward to helping with that part all day. “What question?”

I’m going to make her work for it, because I’m a jerk, and also I don’t quite know what to say. She’s already plenty skeptical of Dan and his place in my life. She’d been a little too happy when she’d thought he’d forgotten my birthday altogether, not that he didn’t even know about it. And I get the impression she’d love it if he just upped and went away.

Not that she doesn’t want me to be happy. She just wants me to be happy with someone who’s not Dan. Someone who doesn’t free solo, and who Jeremiah doesn’t hate—though I think he’d hate anyone who gets so much of my attention—and a guy who isn’t a little less-than-charming when he doesn’t like the direction a conversation is going…

Someone with a job. Someone who doesn’t live in a van.

Someone who puts me first. Someone who wants to build a future with me. Someone who fits her idea of a “good choice for a life partner.”

You know, not Dan.

And I get it. I do. If Celli was dating someone like Dan instead of someone like Gage, I’d tell her to run for the hills and find herself a good man with a stable job and a solid future. Not that Gage has a stable job or a solid future, but he’s at least not climbing up giant walls without ropes, and he’s not living in a van. I mean, he lives with his mother, but he’s only twenty, give the kid a break, alright? The point is, I get why Leenie isn’t into me seeing Dan, and I get why she keeps poking at me about the state of things with him.

I genuinely don’t know what answer will bother her more. The one where I’m honest and admit I don’t know what we are to each other really, but I also know I’m not walking away yet. Or the one where I lie and say Dan has asked me to be his boyfriend and that we’ve both committed to finding a way to make this thing work long-term.

I go for honesty because it’s always the best policy, and anything else is just a test of her reaction, and that’s not really fair.

“Leenie, didn’t you ever date someone and just…let it happen? Did every guy before Martin have to promise love and eternal devotion to get into your pants? Didn’t you just have some fun with a man or two?”

She glances at Jeremiah who’s begun playing with the cake decorations, zooming the packages around on the table like they’re cars. “I’m not saying I didn’t have my share of fun, but you’re not ‘having fun’ with Dan, Sejin, and you know it as well as I do.”

“Last night was plenty fun.”