I head to Olivia's apartment to pick up a few things. I assume she'll need her laptop. Clothes too, I imagine, but I'm not touching that one. I have enough Olivia-based issues without looking through her underwear drawer.
I grab the key she keeps hidden under the planter and let myself in but come to a quick stop just inside the door.
The room is empty.
No couch, no table, no pictures, not so much as a cup on the counter. If I hadn't seen her enter and exit this apartment on multiple occasions, I'd assume I was in the wrong place entirely. I knew she was hiding something, or someone, that time I came here to talk to her, but I never dreamed she was hiding this.
///
In the bedroom, I find evidence of her, but that's only more unsettling. Her clothes still sit in a suitcase that's open on the floor. She has a laptop but no books, no desk, no lamp and no bed, just a sleeping bag on the floor. I've had times in my life when I considered myself broke, but it was never like this.
She's awake when I get back, sitting on my mother's couch still wrapped in the quilt, and her face hardens when she sees her suitcase.
"Why didn't you tell me you were living like that?" I ask her.
She doesn't meet my eye. "It's fine."
"I could have helped you, though. I mean, it's insane that you've lived like that for over two months."
She opens her mouth and closes it again. "I'm not a charity case. I have what I need," she finally says.
My mother comes out of the kitchen, where she's been baking, her go-to in times of stress. She sets a plate of cookies in front of us. "You know what you should do?" she says briskly. "Take Olivia out climbing."
"She doesn't climb."
"Then teach her. It's always helped you when things aren't going well."
I glance tentatively at Olivia. "I'm sure she doesn't feel like climbing."
To my surprise, Olivia stands and casts off the blanket. "Actually, I sort of do."
Under any other circumstance, I'd refuse. I consider that part of my life over. But I don't seem able to refuse Olivia anything under the best of circumstances, so I'm certainly not going to today.
38
Olivia
We're standing at the base of a massive rock.
It looks close to impossible to climb. It's not smooth like glass, but it's not exactly laid out like a climbing wall either.
"I can't climb that," I tell him definitively.
"Yeah, you can," he says. "You'll be wearing a harness. I'm not going to let you get hurt." It seems like the kind of thing he can't promise, but I believe him anyway.
He leaps onto the rock without any kind of rope whatsoever. "It's easy," he says. "Seriously, watch."
He scrambles up and across the rock effortlessly, his body twisting and shifting as if this is a dance he's practiced a thousand times. It's the hottest thing I've ever seen in my life. Every muscle in his body straining and delineated, his attention focused entirely on the movement.
"You just have to shift your weight," he calls. "And if you twist into it like I am, it won't require as much upper body strength."
He hops down and has me slip into a harness, carefully knotting ropes, checking and rechecking both mine and his own. He climbs up again, and affixes something into the rock, and slides the rope through it. When he's finally satisfied, he slides back down with amazing agility.
"Ready?" he grins. His face is bright, and I don't think I've ever seen him quite like this. He's happy, but it's more than that. It's as if he is 100 percent here, invested.
"I guess," I reply doubtfully.
I set my feet in the most obvious place and look desperately for something to grab hold of before jumping back to the ground. "You were fine until you panicked about your hands," he says. This time, I climb back on the same footholds and he places a hand against my lower back to keep me there. "Do you feel that?" he asks. "If you balance on your feet and lean in, you don't even need your hands."
No.
What I actually feel is his hand. Its heat and its breadth spanning my lower back, making it hard to breathe much less find some elusive foothold or balance. I fumble with my hands until I find something to cling to, and then he has me practice moving across the rock. I'm a graceless, slow-motion version of his earlier display.
"You made this look a thousand times easier than it is!" I shout.
"You don't have to shout. You're still only a foot off the ground."
"Asshole," I mutter.
"I heard that," he replies, "proving you don't have to shout."
I go back and forth, time and again, and once I'm doing reasonably well he tells me I can start climbing up. I see now why he used to do this to get away from his problems: it requires such absolute concentration that I can't think of anything else. I'm about 10 feet off the ground when I lose my balance and start to scream, expecting to plummet to the ground, but instead I'm suspended, and he's standing beneath me laughing.
"I assume you're laughing at me, not with me," I say sourly.
///
He smiles. "You're doing great. You need a break?"
"No, dammit," I say, looking at the distance I still need to climb. "I'm getting to the top. I don't care if it takes all night."
"That's my girl," he says proudly, and for a moment I sway in the air, stunned by how happy that statement makes me though I've got no idea why.
It takes an hour, and by the time I get to the top I've fallen repeatedly. My arms and legs are undoubtedly bruised and my muscles are shaking. I slide back down on the rope and collapse at his feet.
"What did you think?" he asks.
"I think you need to carry me to the car."
His smile is proud and happy and wistful all at once. "But you loved it."
"Yeah," I laugh, "I guess I did."
Once we're back in the car, I tell Will he can just take me to my apartment. "I'm fine. Honestly."
"You're going back to my mom's."
"She shouldn't have to do that," I sigh.
"My mom loves having you over. And you're doing me a favor."
"How am I possibly doing you a favor?"
"Because my mother's couch is a hell of a lot more comfortable than your front steps, and I'm sleeping on one or the other."
I don't even know what to say. His willingness to take care of me time and again hurts somehow.
I go to my room that night, but I'm unable to fall asleep. No, I'm too scared to fall asleep. The idea of those nightmares scares me under normal circumstances but tonight they terrify me. I walk back into the living room just as he's emerging from the bathroom freshly showered and shirtless. Jesus Christ, he should be in magazines looking just like this – tan and slightly damp and nothing but muscle. He's so pretty that for a moment I'm scared I might make some audible noise of longing.
I move toward him, knowing I shouldn't, unable to help myself. He stiffens as I approach. "I just want to see your tattoo," I tell him. He's unnaturally still as I run my fingers over his left arm. He seems to be holding his breath. "Denali?"
"I got it done the first time I climbed it. I was going to do all seven summits and get a tat for each."
I want to move closer to him, to press myself against his damp chest. "Why isn't K2 on there then?" I ask, mainly to have some reason to keep my hand on his arm.
"Because that was the climb where I realized I wouldn't be climbing the other five." His voice is stilted, wary. He moves away from me and reaches into his duffel bag for a T-shirt.
Dammit.
He pulls the shirt over his head and I use the opportunity to ogle the shit out of his stomach when he does it. "Just before I climbed it, I called home. I thought my dad might actually be proud, but instead, he told me it was time I grew up. I hung up on him like an entitled little dick and went climbing, and when I got back to base camp, I learned he'd had a stroke. He was dead before I got home."
My stomach drops. "I'm so sorry. So you came home then for good?"
He shrugs as if the aftermath didn't really matter. "He wanted me to grow up. It was the last fucking thing he ever said to me, so it seemed like the least I could do."
"You had a job, Will, a good job. And by the sound of it, a job you were good at. That's a hell of a lot more grown up than a whole lot of people."
"I had a duty to my family," he counters. "I should have been pulling my weight around here, and instead, I let my dad take it all on by himself. No wonder he had a stroke."