Lessons In Gravity

by Megan Westfield

  And there was Josh, right next to him, ready to do the same thing. Her heart soared.

  His eyes crinkled as he smiled at her.

  “Madigan wanted to come check on you,” Josh said. “But I thought he might need a little help getting back to the hotel.”

  “I’m fine,” April told Madigan. “I took some aspirin and the headache’s almost gone. Thank you for checking. Let’s get you back to your room before you pass out.”

  She and Josh guided Madigan down the hall to his room and laid him on his side with pillows stacked against his back so he couldn’t roll over. Josh made a funny face at her from the other side of the bed. She choked back a laugh.

  Madigan grabbed her hand and looked at her like he meant to say something, but the call of the comfortable bed was too much and he was asleep and snoring softly in seconds. April took his shoes off, and Josh left a glass of water on his night table.

  They sneaked back down the hallway to her room. She undid the deadbolt she’d used to prop her door open and then let it fall closed. Finally, they were truly alone.

  She turned, and Josh was right there. Gone was the jovial camaraderie from helping Madigan. His face was dead serious, his eyes yearning. Before she knew what was happening, she was pinned between his body and the door. Their mouths were together, their tongues hot, deep, urgent. She couldn’t breathe, but she’d rather die than stop kissing him.

  His tuxedo jacket was open, and his rock-hard abs pressed against her. She reached up the back of his jacket, grabbing his shoulder blades and pulling herself even closer. His hands were in her hair, sweeping tight along her scalp.

  She needed more of him. More, more, more.

  He gripped her shoulders and straightened his arms. The sudden space he’d created between them was like a wave braking on top of her head. The freezing water crashed all around her, sucking at her shins as the sea called it back.

  She looked up, fearing he would say it had all been a mistake, but his eyes were dancing with happiness. “Do you know how long I’ve wanted to kiss you?”

  “How long?”

  “Since the very first time I saw you.”

  “At the cafeteria?”

  He bent his arms, drawing her near again, and then closing the sides of his jacket across her bare shoulders. His stomach expanded into hers with every breath.

  “No,” he said. “Since you fell out of your tent, and when you were at the bathroom watching me climb, and then when Madigan introduced us in the cafeteria.”

  The blood in her body surged all at once. Her knees would have buckled if she were not still leaning against the door.

  But— Oh, no. The tent?

  “Please tell me you didn’t really see that.” A goofy smile crept to his face, and she buried her face in his lapel.

  “How could you have seen that? You were over on the boulder!”

  “Yeah, a boulder that has a great view of the whole campground.” He put his fingers under her chin, forcing her to look up. “It was the most adorable thing I’ve ever seen.”

  He tightened his grip across her back and lifted her off the ground. Her feet dangled in the air as he slowly spun her in a circle, like they had all the time in the world together.

  The carpet was soft against her feet as he gently lowered her down. He took off his jacket and folded it over the back of the desk chair. She studied his face across the small distance. They’d kissed twice, yet, in a way, she was just as intimidated by him now as she had been that very first night at Walkabout’s candlelit picnic table. Her fingers, itching to fiddle with something, found the lace on the hem of her boxer shorts. He was just so gorgeous, and those eyes of his, so intense.

  He held out his hand and she took it, their eyes never straying as he pulled her closer. She placed her palm square on his chest, in the slight dip between his pecs beneath his smooth white dress shirt. This ability to just reach out and put her hand on him—it was like being able to touch an impossibly beautiful, lethal jaguar straight from the pages of American Geographic.

  She unknotted his silk bow tie and pulled it slowly out of his collar, noting the new-fabric smell of his tuxedo, the citrus from the hair gel, and a trace of night air from his walk back to the hotel. Raising onto her toes, she popped open the top button. Just like in his room before the gala, he laid his arm across her lower back to steady her, only now, her tank top had lifted with her arms, and his hand landed on bare skin, igniting sparks through her body.

  For a moment, neither of them moved. Then his fingers bent around the narrowest part of her waist, making her heart race. His rumpled hair fell across his forehead, and his eyes were dark as his mouth lowered to hers, tasting faintly of the spearmint gum he always chewed. In his kisses, and in the tight hold he kept on her waist, was something distinctly reaching but also yielding. Like he wasn’t just kissing her but giving over a piece of himself and trusting her to keep it safe.

  “Come here,” Josh whispered, guiding her toward the bed, where he propped pillows against the headboard.

  She sat next to him, but he nudged her closer, and she slid over so that her back was against his chest. He bent his knees and slid his face alongside hers, his breath flowing down her neck. His lips followed his breath, grazing her skin in kisses that were as light as a down jacket. Her eyes floated closed for a beat as she tipped her head to the side to expose more skin.

  The dim lamp next to the bed cast a ghostly reflection of her and Josh against the window and the night lights of Sacramento. Her blond hair looked white, fanned across his black pants.

  She watched in the window as he lowered his head to kiss the place where her neck met her collarbone. Her lips parted, and she inhaled. Heat spread through her body.

  They stayed like that for a long time, his lips against her neck as his fingers traced lines slowly up her forearms.

  “April?” he asked.

  “Yeah?”

  “Why do you like film?”

  She ran her thumb across a faint scar on his knuckle. “Film? I don’t know, it’s just always been my thing.”

  “Well, what about it makes it your thing?”

  “I guess it’s because in movies, you can live in someone else’s world for a while. And when you have the ability to give that experience, viewers come away with this complete sense of empathy that can’t be matched in any other medium—especially not in print advertising or marketing. With film, you can help to influence so many good changes in the world.”

  “What was the first movie you made?”

  It was a sappy short about a wild cat that lived in one of the airstrip hangars. She laughed. “Let’s just say it’s a good thing I accidentally deleted that movie a long time ago.”

  “Can you expound on that?”

  “Wait a minute, this is sounding familiar.”

  “Don’t forget to repeat the question in your answer.”

  “Are you interviewing me?” She whipped around. Sure enough, there was a goofy grin on Josh’s face.

  “We can start with something easy,” he offered. “Like your favorite food.”

  “Josh!”

  “You know everything about me, and I barely know anything about you.”

  “I wouldn’t call two short interviews everything.”

  The grin faded from his face, leaving her swimming in the intensity of his eyes, in the heat of his body wrapped around hers. “April, I’m serious. I want to know everything about you.”

  She relaxed back against his chest. He picked up one of her hands, lacing their fingers together.

  “Okay,” she said. “Ask me a question.”

  She answered all of his questions, telling him how she was a film fanatic as a child, watching every documentary and art film at the library and on her parents’ streaming service. She told him about Christmas when she was eleven, the year her parents bought her a video camera, and how her favorite food was her mom’s buckwheat waffles. She told him the kinds of films she hoped to make someday
, and how three of the seven teens in her sample film to Walkabout were now in permanent foster care because the county of Los Angeles had uploaded her film to their YouTube page.

  It seemed like no time at all had passed, and suddenly the sky out the window was lightening at the lowest reaches of the horizon. She and Josh were still lying on the bed, talking.

  She studied his face. The lines at the corners of his eyes and the heaviness of his eyelids gave away his deep fatigue, but he managed a small smile. She ran her fingers along his jaw, and he closed his eyes.

  “I’m sorry I made you cry at the first interview,” he said when he opened his eyes a moment later.

  Her body stiffened. He had seen her tears!

  He pulled her into him, softening the impact of what he said. “I was scared of you,” he whispered. “I wanted to keep you at a distance, but I overdid it.”

  “I’m five foot one. How could I possibly be scary?”

  He swallowed. “Because I wanted you to know the answers to the questions you were asking me.”

  Her heart crumbled. She nudged him onto his back and laid her head on his chest exactly where her palm had been while they danced. “What made you decide to be nice?”

  “After I realized I made you cry, I knew I had to shape up or you’d never talk to me again. And that made me more afraid than of anything you might ask me.”

  She found his hand and threaded her fingers reassuringly though his. She closed her eyes and listened to his heartbeat.

  …

  Sun warmed her face, and she opened her eyes. The sheets and pillows were unbelievably soft against her skin. She was adrift in happiness.

  Josh. It was like it had all been a dream, except he was still spooned behind her with his arms holding her tight. She twisted within his warm embrace to face him.

  “Good morning,” he said.

  She lifted her head off the pillow, and they kissed deeply.

  “Just so you know, we don’t have much time before we have to be downstairs at the van,” he said.

  “How long?”

  “Twenty minutes.”

  “Oh my god!” She sat straight up. “I hope you were planning to wake me up at some point!”

  “Not until we were a half hour late.”

  She smacked him. He tackled her back down to the bed with him, covering her jawline with kisses.

  “You are not going to make me miss my last chance for a real shower for the next two months!” she said as she kicked to free herself.

  She got as far as her knees before pausing to look at him. This was Josh in her bed, the king-size pillow they’d shared still under his head and his thin white T-shirt doing an inadequate job of concealing his tan, chiseled chest. He snatched her up again, logrolling, with her shrieking and him laughing, all the way across the bed. They rolled to a halt right on the edge. She scooted closer, examining his face up close in the natural light, where the laughter still sparkled in his eyes. Lowering down on top of him, she kissed him, playfully at first, but then, remembering that their allotted time together was now over, she kissed him with all the longing that was still in her heart.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Everyone but Theo, who was driving, slept the entire way back to Yosemite. But naps—and any relaxation whatsoever—were over the second they pulled into the campground parking lot. Josh went off to climb, Danny rushed over to the Park Service office, and April helped Madigan and Theo set the camp back up.

  They would be reshooting Flying Sheep in two days, and now that she knew Josh’s secret route to the lake, she would not have to use the dreaded climber’s trail for filming the top out. Hallelujah. Code for Verity would come next week, since the rockfall had stopped, and they’d be prepping for the Sorcerer in between.

  April went to her tent to change her clothes for rappelling practice with Madigan and took some extra time there to be alone with her thoughts about Josh. It had been the most beautiful, intense night of her life. But it had been just that. One night. Now they were in Yosemite, and it was over. To break the rules while they were here on the job was a whole different level of wrong, and she had to put space between them so she’d mentally be able to handle filming him on the Sorcerer. Not that she was presuming Josh would be interested in more. Besides, he’d be leaving for Utah to shoot an Esplanade Equipment commercial as soon as he climbed the Sorcerer.

  You knew this was the way it had to be, and you did it anyway. Now you have to get on with things just as they were before.

  She forced herself out from beneath the weight of her sadness and walked to the parking lot to meet Madigan. He was at the van, chugging from a huge bottle of water. She prayed he was too drunk to remember any of the things he’d almost told her last night.

  Theo joined them, and they followed the trail well past Celery Slabs to a lesser-used top-roping cliff. While Theo went around to the top to fix an anchor for the ropes, she and Madigan got into their gear. He wasn’t joking around with her like normal, which wasn’t a good sign, and she could really use the distraction right about now. He carefully avoided eye contact when he handed her the backpack with the camera in it, making her cringe. It was going to be a long afternoon.

  They clipped into the ropes, but Madigan made no attempt to start ascending. He sighed. “I feel like I need to say something here.”

  Shit. Couldn’t they just pretend it never happened?

  “I was pretty drunk last night,” he said. “I vaguely remember coming to your room. I think I might have said something—”

  “Oh! Nothing. You didn’t say anything. You’re right. You were really drunk. Josh and I just helped you back to your room.”

  “I really feel like I said something, though. Something I shouldn’t have.”

  April pretended to think it over. “Not that I can remember. But, you know, I was drinking a lot, too.”

  He looked at her like he didn’t know whether to believe her or not. “Well, I want to apologize anyway. I’m sorry if I said something to you that was out of line.”

  “Don’t worry about it. It happens to everyone. It’s happened to me, too.”

  Actually it hadn’t, because that would require her to have feelings for somebody. Which hadn’t happened since the crash. Until, well, Josh.

  Madigan looked at her strangely, and she realized she’d just given it away that he had said something—or had at least tried to.

  “I want you to know that it was the truth, April,” he said. “But we work together and I would never put you in a position like that.”

  Madigan had stunning blue eyes, and there was no doubt that he was a cute guy. It was strange that she had never considered this before. It was probably because she’d known he was her boss from the moment she met him. Not only that, he was five years older and lived in a completely different world than her. He owned a house. He had a golden retriever named Tucker. He’d probably had girlfriends who’d lived with him.

  He swallowed. “I thought, maybe after we’re done with this film…”

  Then he burst out laughing. “I totally did it again. I’m really, really sorry, April. Can I blame it on my hangover this time?”

  She was laughing, too. She gave him a friendly bear hug.

  His eyes were a smidge wistful when she pulled away, but he got right back to business, checking their harnesses and gear. “Okay. Are you ready for this?”

  She knew he would be true to his word. He would not broach the topic until she was no longer an intern. Perhaps by then, knowing it was a possibility, she’d feel differently about him. Someone who was not a risk-taking, free-soloing professional rock climber and who was as passionate about filmmaking as she was? That would be a definite improvement on her current situation. But for now, she was just thankful she had her friend back. She grinned. “Let’s do it.”

  They ascended the side-by-side ropes until they were twenty feet off the ground.

  April practiced switching her gear, rappelling, and climbing back up. To
her relief, her fingers remembered the movements perfectly after the weekend away.

  When they filmed on the Sorcerer, she would be wearing a chest harness to help stabilize the camera, but today she was just holding it on her shoulder. She was already familiar with camera technique at vertical angles such as this, though shooting while being harnessed in was all new. Madigan gave her a quick lesson on cliff-side filming stances. He clipped a tether to her camera in case she dropped it, and then rappelled down so she could film him ascending.

  “Let’s see,” he said when he returned to her. She handed him the camera, and he reviewed her work.

  “You did well overall, considering how close the ropes are,” he said. “Can you see the importance of the correct setup?”

  “Definitely.”

  “Same with knowing where the key moves and most cinematic backgrounds will be. No one wants to watch a guy yawning up an easy section when you could have him sweating it out on a corner with a great panorama in the background.”

  Madigan kept hold of the camera and settled into a filming stance. “You go down and I’ll film you coming up.”

  She completed the ascend-rappel cycle without any prompting or intervention from Madigan. She watched what he filmed, finding it hard to believe the small blond woman in the red helmet operating all that crazy gear was her. Madigan’s camera work was better in a number of subtle ways that added up to a completely different effect for a nearly identical shot.

  There was a whistle from the ground. Theo was back at the base of the cliff, ready to be a climbing model for April. She stayed in place on the rock while Madigan rappelled down to belay him.

  Theo pulled himself up the rock until he was about fifteen feet below her and then stopped. “Ready?” he called.

  April situated the camera on her shoulder. “Go ahead.”

  He climbed up to her, then past her, stopping when his feet were above the level of her head. He repeated this section of rock over and over. At first, he kept her entertained by acting out different emotional themes. Determination, frustration, fury, elation, exhaustion, fear, focus, pain. But after an hour, she was too uncomfortable to be entertained by his antics. Her stomach was growling from not eating breakfast or lunch, her shoulder ached from the heavy camera, the balls of her feet were sore from the pressure against the rock, and her harness had transformed itself into a torture device.