Above All Else

by Dana Alison Levy

  “Namaste,” he says loudly, gathering everyone around one last time. “Send me your photos, your summit photos with your blessings, and I will put them on the wall. I look forward to your safe return.”

  I glance at the wall behind him, where hundreds of photos show climbers, Sherpas and tourists alike, standing at the summit with their tiny prayer cards held up to the camera. I shudder.

  “Are you ready? Let’s go,” I say to Rose and head toward the door.

  Dad hangs back, talking to the lama in a quiet voice. He breaks off into a thick, choking coughing jag that makes me cringe. It’s been bad the whole trek, but now it sounds nasty.

  “Namaste, Tate,” Lama Geshe says, “and good luck.”

  I bow one last time and head out into the cold, empty air.

  * * *

  —

  Later that afternoon, after another ice climbing attempt that I muscle through with barely clamped-down fear, we slump around the fire in the lodge. Dad’s cough is worse, and he’s running a fever; he made it up this practice climb but it totally wiped him out, and now we’re waiting for Finjo to tell us what’s supposed to happen next.

  He comes into the smoky room and claps his hands. “So, we will have a slight change in our plans. As you know, we were planning to spend tomorrow and the next day in Dingboche. But instead we will detour slightly and travel to Pheriche. There is a medical clinic there. I would like them to assess Jordan’s lungs, to decide if he needs to descend or perhaps needs a different antibiotic.”

  We all turn to look at Dad, who scowls and clears his throat like he’s trying not to cough. A second later a cough rips out of him. I wince. He never gets sick and has no patience with anyone else who is. This must suck for him.

  “Does this put us behind schedule?” Yoon Su asks. “It seems unfortunate that so early in our trip we must delay.”

  Finjo shakes his head. “No problem! It is not a delay, just a change in the plan. Either way we will travel up, and either way we must stay there two nights to acclimatize. You have your porters, and if you wish, you can go—zoom zoom!—straight to Dingboche. But it makes no difference. Either way we are on schedule.”

  Yoon Su nods.

  “It’s nothing,” Dad says, sounding pissy. “I’m fine. I just need to shake this virus. I’m still ready to climb.” As though in direct contradiction to his words, he coughs again, but he scowls, daring anyone to say anything.

  He sounds so sure of himself, even with the shitty cough. It must be fucking great to feel that sure. I glance at Rose, expecting, as usual, to find her looking anywhere but at me. But she’s staring at Dad like she’s watching some kind of horrible news channel, like something bad is happening that only she can see. As everyone begins to discuss times for dinner and hot tea, Rose bolts from the room, muttering something about needing to change.

  I follow her. I know I shouldn’t. I know her not-now-Tate rules still stand, but I can’t help wondering, can’t help worrying, can’t help making sure she’s okay. We’re still friends, no matter what else.

  In our tiny ice-cube-cold room, Rose is on her bed, facedown and sobbing. I lurch back in surprise.

  “What happened?” It comes out in a half whisper. I drop to my knees next to her bed. “What the hell, Rosie? What’s going on?”

  The room’s dim, the lodge conserving its solar-powered electricity until it’s fully night, and I can barely see her face when she looks up.

  “God. It’s nothing, really. I’m being so stupid. I think it must be a side effect of altitude—” she starts, but I put out a hand to stop her.

  “No. Fuck that. What is it?”

  She takes a deep, shuddering sigh and sits up, leaning against the wall. Without thinking, I sit next to her, pushing against her so that we’re squeezed on the tiny bed. She presses into me, sliding down until her head is on my shoulder. Same as always, except now it’s dangerous and radioactive. I try and ignore the heat of her against me, which is like trying to ignore someone lighting me on fire.

  “It really is stupid. But listening to your dad coughing, swearing he’ll be fine…It was a weird déjà vu, you know? He’s fine, I get it, but I couldn’t help remembering…”

  “Your mom,” I say, understanding. Maya went from Wonder Woman to sick so fast. Though looking back, I wonder how bad the pain had been, and for how long.

  “Yeah. I know it’s different, obviously. But…This was going to be the four of us, you know? And now she’s out. And if Jordan really does get sick…” She trails off. “I never imagined we would be here without her, you know?”

  I nod. Rose’s breath is warm on my shoulder, and I keep my body still, keep myself from pulling her against me, pulling her face up to mine and running my hands along her back. I think of her tears and of the climb ahead and Maya left behind.

  I close my eyes. Try to will myself to move, to put distance between us.

  Rose’s hand touches my face, whisper-light. “I think…” she says, and her voice is low, so low that I have to bend to hear her, so that her words are warm against my ear.

  “I think I was wrong. You know, about us. About…this.” And she slides her body up until her lips are right above mine, lowering them so gently that I barely feel the pressure at first, until realization hits and I grab at her like it will save my life.

  Chapter Sixteen:

  Rose

  April 13

  Tengboche

  12,600 feet above sea level

  Tate pulls me against him, then stops. He is an open flame, the skin at his neck hot against my cheek.

  “Jesus,” Tate says, and, in the faint light from the window, I can see his eyes, dark and endless. “Jesus, Rose.”

  I pull him to me, wanting to swallow him, wanting to hold him as close to me as I can possibly manage. My lips find his skin, his head first, then his rough cheek, and finally back to his mouth. I kiss him hard, blocking out anything that is not us, not right now.

  “Are you sure? I—”

  Grabbing his hands, I bring them up to my lips, kissing his wrists, letting my tongue lick at the strong pulse beating against my mouth. Tate makes a noise in the back of his throat, and I pull him to me, on top of me, never taking my lips off him: his arms, his neck, his rough cheek, smelling of sweat and dirt and Tate.

  “Yes,” I murmur against his neck. “I’m sure.” I press myself against him, unwilling to let any space come between us.

  Tate pushes back against me, just as hard, and kisses me as though I am food and water and air. I gasp and grab him, touching as much of him as I can reach. The buckle on his climbing pants digs into me, and I move blindly, trying to make it disappear, wanting anything that’s between him and me to be gone. Once it’s undone and his shirt pulled off, I move my hands away from his body just long enough to pull my shirt over my head. A jolt like an electric shock runs through me when my skin touches his.

  He groans and finds my mouth again. Lips against mine, he whispers, “Rose. I want…I want this so much. Are you sure? I mean, can we…?” His voice trails off into a gasp as I bite his lower lip.

  I nod without moving my mouth away from his, and his kisses push harder against me as we struggle to undress.

  “Remember? I’ve had the implant forever,” I say into his chest, which is damp with sweat, even in the chill of the room. “I’m sure,” I say. And I mean it. This is Tate, my best friend, the person who knows everything about me. Almost everything. Until now. My hands tremble as they reach for him, wanting to bring him closer, as close as I possibly can. I want to live inside his heat, smother it like a thick wool blanket over flames, absorb it into myself.

  Tate’s skin. Every scar and freckle I’ve seen and some I haven’t, all mine to touch and explore as I hold him tighter, wrapping my legs around him and kissing him again and again, swallowing his voice as it rises. The voice that
makes me laugh now makes me blush, want and need and love all there as he calls my name, soft at first, then louder. Until I can’t think anymore, and it is only my body, rocking against him, answering him best.

  We finish, exhausted, breathing heavily and slick with sweat. In the dim room, I can feel and taste but not see the dampness on his neck. My heart is slowing down, and the unreality of the moment makes me dizzy. Outside our windows, the tall Himalayan peaks blaze orange in the very last of the day’s light. Inside, I am naked with Tate, every inch of his skin, which I thought I knew so well, now exposed to me in a different way.

  We lie still, my legs tangled up in Tate’s long, heavy ones. He runs his hands across my hips, my waist, my legs, tracing the shape of my body. His hands linger on my scars: a long puckered ugly one on my thigh from a bad fall at Yosemite, a big one on my knee, a smaller one on my wrist.

  “I’m damaged goods,” I say, and my voice is low and raspy. I hope we were quiet enough to avoid being heard in the lodge.

  Tate laughs a little. “Please. I think I have you beat on that one.” He lies back, and I look at him, really look at him. His body is a map of accidents—bike skids on steep hills, missed skateboard jumps, falls on rock. The Master of Disaster, put back together again and again.

  “Yeah. You win.” I keep my eyes down, tracing the scars and lines on his thigh.

  “Hey. You okay?” Tate asks. He lifts my face until he’s staring at me. “With…You know.” He raises his eyebrows. “That.”

  I smile and nod. Being with Tate is easy, easier—and better—than anyone else I’ve been with. Not that there have been many. There was my first, a misguided month-long “relationship” that started during spring break of junior year, and then my only boyfriend, who Tate insisted on calling Ben Boring. But my mind is replaying our conversation, and I’m suddenly embarrassed, not that we had sex but that my weepiness turned into my tearing his clothes off. I start to roll away from him, curling up in a ball, but Tate’s arm stops me and pulls me tight against his chest. I sigh and stretch out, leaning back in his arms.

  “I can’t imagine anything better than being here with you,” I say quietly. There’s no way to explain to Tate, to make him understand that he is the rope, tethering me, keeping the Dread away.

  Tate’s arms tighten around me, but he doesn’t say anything. Together we stare out the window as the last light slips away.

  “I want to be with you,” he whispers into my hair. “I want to give you everything you need.” His hands move against me, and I push into them, turning until I am facing him again. His face falls into shadow, so I hear him but don’t see him as he says, again, “I want you—”

  I kiss him as deeply and slowly as I can, until the only sound is the gasp of his breath.

  It is hours before we stop, hours as we skip dinner and push aside all thoughts of anything outside this room, hours before we sleep, and, when we do at last, we cram ourselves together, arms and legs tangled, in one tiny bed. The room as always is freezing, but Tate’s heat is a live thing, wrapping around me. I sleep hard, barely dreaming at all, waking only the next morning when a knock on the door sends Tate flailing across the room to his own bed, an icy blast of air slamming against me where his body had been.

  Chapter Seventeen:

  Tate

  April 14–15

  Tengboche to Pheriche

  14,300 feet above sea level

  I wake up psyched, a kind of Christmas morning–level excitement thrumming through my veins that makes no sense, until I remember. Rose. Rose and me.

  At breakfast I feel like I’ve got a giant sign over my head—one that says, Hey, I skipped dinner to have incredible sex with Rose last night! But nobody’s saying anything, so maybe not. Still, I can’t take my eyes away from her. From her long fingers, wrapped around her coffee cup, to her lips, squeezed together to blow on the hot drink, to her—

  “Dude. Are you even listening?” She’s peering at me, her eyebrows all wrinkled up.

  “Yah. I was listening. I was…Actually, no. No idea what you were talking about. Sorry.” I smile at her, and I don’t know, maybe my smile says something along the lines of “hey-put-down-that-coffee-and-let-me-kiss-you-hard,” because she blushes fast and red. I love making Rose blush.

  “Stop it,” she says, but there’s a smile in her voice and her gaze softens.

  Looking around quickly, I see that everyone’s busy with their guidebooks and novels and morning oatmeal. I lean down and pull her finger into my mouth, sucking hard. Rose jerks like I electrocuted her, her mouth opening in a gasp that she bites back. I lick her finger one last time, then move it away, wrapping it back around her mug.

  “I…ah. I don’t remember what I was saying,” she says, and her cheeks are a wild and totally sexy red.

  A clatter behind us sends us both bolting back against our chairs. Paul slides into his seat, scraping it against the floor, and reaches toward the coffee.

  “Morning. You both feeling better? You flaked out hard last night,” he says.

  Rose nods, pretending to be busy with her oatmeal. But I grin at Paul. I slept nightmare-free, and I’m allowed to lean over and kiss any part of Rose I want, which means everything else can go screw.

  Rose glances over, and her face turns red. I’m pretty sure my telepathic messages are working.

  “Well, I need some time to…you know…write post cards and stuff. Before we leave, I mean. So I’m going to…” She trails off, gesturing behind her as she slides out of her chair.

  “Yup. Me too.” I stand up and turn quickly. “Later, Paul.”

  I catch the swinging door that leads out of the dining hall as it slams behind Rose. It’s still cold, and I rush to get to her, wanting her heat and touch so badly that everything else feels unimportant and distant.

  Inside our room I pull her against me, running my hands up the warmth of her bare back under her shirt.

  “Tell me you aren’t really planning to write post cards,” I say into her ear. “You can’t possibly have anything so pressing to say. Please tell me that. Please tell me you came in here so I could do this.” I kiss her neck. “And this.” I run my hands up the front of her shirt, feeling her shudder against me.

  “Tate, I…” Her words drift away as my mouth travels over her, my hands pushing her toward the nearest bed. “I want you to be sure…because last night…oh, God.”

  We are lying down now, and I want to tell her that of course I’m sure about her, that I’ve been sure of her since she sat with me on the otherwise-scary bus in first grade, since I saw her in her bathing suit the summer after ninth grade, since I trusted her to hold my life in her hands whenever we climbed. I’ve always been sure of Rose. But I don’t say any of that because I’m holding her as tight as I can, trying to show her how much I need her.

  When we’re still again, when I’m busy looking at the bite marks on my shoulder Rose made when I whispered for her to be quiet, when she’s half-asleep with her hair in a wild tangle around her, I ask her.

  “What did you want to ask me?”

  “Hmmm?” Her voice is slow. “We’d better get up. We’ve got to pack up and head out in an hour or so.”

  “We’ve got time. That wasn’t…Well, let’s say it hasn’t been that long since we came in here. But it’s not my fault. You can’t touch me the way you do and expect staying power,” I say, running my fingers lightly across her stomach.

  She laughs. “I’m not complaining.” As she groans and stretches, rolling over into a sitting position, I ask her again.

  “Oh, yeah. I…last night was…I mean, I was upset. And then I kind of jumped you—”

  “Thank GOD,” I interrupt.

  “ANYWAY,” she goes on. “That’s kind of my point. I didn’t want you to think…You know.” She blushes and walks away to pull on her hiking pants and fleece. Dressed like th
is, her hands moving fast to pull her hair back into braids, she looks the same as always, not like the Rose who was naked next to me. I miss that Rose.

  “Hey.” I walk over to her and pull her to me. I kiss her head, her hair smelling of lust and sweat. “I don’t know. Tell me what you’re talking about.”

  “I didn’t want you to think I was…ugh…trying to use sex to make this all about me,” she says, her face buried in my chest. “I felt like I was throwing myself at you right when I was so upset, like it was your job to comfort me…You know what? Forget it.”

  I tilt her face up until I can look into her blue eyes. Rose, who wants me, who wants to be close to me as we climb the tallest mountain in the world, who looks embarrassed, like she got caught breaking a rule. She needs me. I can do this.

  My heart’s whacking away at my chest, the kind of tight, fast excitement that I can’t control even if I want to. And right now I don’t want to. Fuck it. I’m happy in a way that I can’t remember ever being.

  “Rosie,” I say. “This is what I want. You’re what I want. I wasn’t being nice because you were crying; you know that, right? You can throw yourself at me anytime you want. Really.”

  She looks at me. “Really? This isn’t too weird?”

  I kiss her again, but my legs are jittering, ready to walk. Ready to move. “Not too weird. Just weird enough. The perfect amount of weird.”

  * * *

  —

  My good mood lasts through our trek up to Pheriche, through the chance to move slowly through the village with Rose, pulling her against an empty old stone shack so that I can kiss her until we’re both gasping for air. It lasts through the afternoon’s ritual cup of tea, where we sit by the fire while Dad and Finjo head to the clinic. Then Paul and I walk over to the clinic to see Dad, and the fun and games dissolve around me, gone as fast as the sun, which disappeared under low swirling clouds.