Lessons In Gravity

by Megan Westfield

  “What’s there to understand?” she said. “You’re going to die up there. I mean, you could die. You just say ‘F you’ to your family and up you go?”

  “You want to know the real reason I got to the top of the Sorcerer and no one else could? I didn’t care what happened to me. And no one else did, either.”

  He deflated like a balloon, hunching onto his elbows and pressing his fingers to his palms. “My entire family disowned me the day I left home to climb.”

  In an instant, her anger was gone. She stopped the camera.

  “In June, it will have been seven years,” he said, his face twisted with the memory of something. “There, you have it. I hope you’re proud. You got it out of me. No one—and I mean no one—has ever managed that. I hope Danny gives you a big bonus and you go on to do great things in the film industry.”

  She collapsed to her knees in front of his stool. She wrapped her arms around his waist. He pushed her away.

  “I’m so sorry for what I said,” she whispered.

  For an eternity, he was silent.

  “They got me a sports car for graduation,” he said. “I traded it in for the truck. I was out in the driveway, loading up to come to Yosemite, and my dad came out and told me that if I left, I would no longer be part of his family.”

  Josh’s body clenched. “He wasn’t kidding.”

  April’s tears flowed thick and fast.

  “Brothers, sisters, nieces, nephews, aunts, uncles, cousins, second cousins,” he said. “None of them will have contact with me. To them, I am already dead.”

  He lowered his forehead to hers and closed his eyes. She’d lost only one person, and it hadn’t been by choice. His entire family was actively shunning him. She enfolded him in her arms. This time he didn’t push her away. She pressed her cheek against his thigh.

  The problem of the Sorcerer was still there. But knowing about Josh’s family made the situation completely different. If she pulled away from him now, after he opened up to her about his family, it would be a double blow. He would be as reckless on the rock as he had been the first time he climbed it, but this time without the rope. Now, it was her career or his life, and she knew exactly what she had to do.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  April was someone who could be counted on to hold up her end of the deal. She didn’t back out of things she promised to do, and she’d never broken a commitment, especially not one this big.

  She pushed her oatmeal around in her bowl with her spoon. Danny had adapted the entire filming plan to squeeze in a beginner, and now it would seem like she was flaking out on him. She glanced at Theo and Madigan across the table. They weren’t just a coworker and a boss. They were friends, and they had spent so much time getting her ready for the Sorcerer. She felt worst of all about disappointing them.

  At the end of the table, Danny took his last bite of oatmeal and walked over to the dish tub. She stood up on wobbly legs.

  “Danny, can I talk to you for a minute?”

  “Sure,” he said. “What’s up?”

  “I can’t film on the Sorcerer. I’m really, really, really sorry, but I just can’t do it.”

  Danny frowned deeply, making the blood rush out of her limbs. She grabbed the table for support. Madigan looked over with alarm.

  “If you don’t mind me asking, why is it that you think you can’t do this?” Danny asked.

  “This isn’t something we want to push April on,” Madigan said, suddenly standing next to her. “If she doesn’t feel that she can do it, that is her decision.”

  Danny blinked several times. “I wish I’d known you felt this way a few days ago. Your role at the top is necessary, and it’s much too late to get a replacement out here.”

  She was frozen with fear. He couldn’t fire her for not consenting to the extreme filming, but he could let her go for waiting until the last minute to back out.

  “April, it’s fine,” Madigan said. “You’re making the right choice. If you have any sort of doubt, you would be putting the whole crew in danger up there. We appreciate you were able to recognize that.”

  Danny looked at her. “All true. I know it was a lot to ask in the first place.”

  “One of my film school friends works at the climbing gym,” April said. “I’m sure he knows all the rope stuff, and he’s a great cinematographer. We have a whole week, I can give him a call—”

  “It’s looking more like three days now,” Danny said.

  Only three more days? Only three more days with Josh?

  “The west face of the Sorcerer was protected from the rain. We looked at it again this morning. It’s dry enough to climb right now.”

  Her throat constricted, and she could barely muster enough breath to speak. “I’m so sorry. I wish I could, I just—”

  “April, really, it’s fine,” Madigan said.

  She’d never been so humiliated. If only there was a legitimate excuse she was willing to share. It only made it worse that Madigan, in trying to help her back out, was unknowingly facilitating her secret relationship with another guy.

  “There are tons of things you can help us with on the ground,” Danny said. “You can go pick up Michelle at the airport first thing tomorrow morning and give her a hand with the media.”

  Danny rinsed his oatmeal dish. He wiped it dry with the dishcloth and put it back in the bin in the bear box. “Speaking of, I have a conference call with some of the media in a few minutes, but let’s talk more when I get back.”

  As soon as Danny was gone, April walked toward the parking lot. Once she was sure Madigan wasn’t tagging along, she swerved onto a trail in the direction that would take her to Josh’s truck.

  Josh was sitting in his camp chair, waiting for water to boil on his backpacking stove. His eyelids were puffy, and his hair was wild from sleep. There were pillow lines across his cheeks.

  She sneaked up behind him, sliding her arms over his shoulders until her chin rested in the crook between his neck and shoulder. “You know, you’d be a lot warmer if you put your hood up.”

  He twisted around and kissed her. She tousled his hair and sat in the camp chair next to him.

  “What are you making?” she asked.

  “Grits.”

  “Grits?”

  “They’re big out in New River Gorge.”

  “Where’s that?”

  “North Carolina. Lots of southerners climb there. Want some?”

  “Hmm. Instant grits? I’ll pass.”

  “Don’t get all highbrow on me, Hollywood. They stick with you longer than oatmeal. And they’re not instant, by the way. You insult my camp-cooking skills.”

  He slid his chair closer and wrapped his arm around her shoulder. Being here with him, she knew she had made the right decision about the Sorcerer. The humiliation of her conversation with Danny was already fading.

  “I’m not going to be filming on the Sorcerer,” she said.

  “Why?”

  Because of you. Because of my dad.

  This would be the perfect moment to tell him about the crash. But he didn’t even know her dad was dead. And surely if she told him how her dad died, it would reveal her true feelings about men who risked their lives in such a manner, especially after how she’d acted during their last interview. If her goal was to get Josh through the climb without messing with his mind space, then it was better not to tell him anything about her dad or the crash.

  She cleared her throat. “I’m not going to do it because I don’t feel comfortable enough with rappelling.”

  “You did great on Flying Sheep. Just practice some more. You’ll do fine.”

  “No. I think it’s better this way.”

  “I hope this doesn’t have anything to do with me.”

  “Of course not,” she said. “So what’s up for today, after the grits?”

  “I’m climbing the Sorcerer, top to bottom, with Lars.”

  “Lars can climb that route?”

  “With aiders.”r />
  She pictured the young Josh from Danny’s clip scrambling desperately up the black rock. It had looked like he was trying to run up a down escalator, his sheer determination being the only thing that was keeping his momentum going.

  There was a rap on the side of Josh’s truck. April shot up from the camp chair. It was Lars.

  “Don’t worry,” Josh whispered. “He won’t say anything.”

  “Morning, Lars,” she said loudly. “I was just on my way back to log some footage.”

  She walked past him like it was no big deal to run into him at eight o’clock in the morning at Josh Knox’s campsite, but Lars winked, and her subsequent blush ruined her act.

  She took the long way to the Walkabout site, during which she should have been panicking about Lars discovering her and Josh, but instead she was proud they had been seen together. It made them real. Official. Something that existed outside of just the two of them. For a few days, anyway, until the Sorcerer and Josh’s departure to Utah, he was hers and she was his.

  …

  There was a scratch on her tent, light but deliberate. The kind of scratch a finger might make.

  She lowered the magazine photo of Josh she had been ogling through the beam of her headlamp.

  “April,” Josh whispered. “Are you awake?”

  “Yes,” she whispered back.

  “Meet me at the road, okay?”

  She slid slowly and silently out of her sleeping bag. She put a hat, jacket, and shoes on over her pajamas, and then unzipped the tent noiselessly.

  It was surreal to be going anywhere besides the bathroom this late at night. She crept out of the campsite with her headlamp off. Not a soul was awake, and the only evidence of this evening’s campfires were the glowing goals in the fire pits.

  When she stepped out of the trees onto the main road, the full moon glowed white like it was laser cut from the silk of the black sky. It was so big and bright that craters were faintly visible, as if they had been sketched on the surface with pencil.

  Josh was on the sidewalk on the other side of the road. The air puffed out of his down jacket as she hugged him, and she breathed in his scent mixed with the cool night air.

  “I’m glad you were still awake,” he said as they latched hands. He guided her into the forest, picking up the trail that led to the meadow she’d picked for his interviews.

  There, the moonlight colored the pine trees inkwell blue, the grass dusky gray, and the familiar shapes of the Yosemite rock formations shadowy violet. The trunks of the white aspens shone like lanterns.

  He released her hand to take off his backpack, and then stood behind her with his arms wrapped around her waist. It was perfectly silent but not silent at all, with the steady conversations of crickets and bullfrogs and the babble of a creek she hadn’t realized was close by.

  “It’s so beautiful,” she whispered.

  Josh kissed her softly on the neck and pulled an MP3 player from his back pocket. Her skin tingled as he slid an earbud into her ear and then the other into his own. The song playing was quiet, but she instantly recognized it as the beautiful Jackal Legs song from the gala.

  She twisted within the circle of his arms, and they danced to the music only they could hear.

  “I didn’t know you were so romantic,” she said.

  “I’m not. You’re an exception.”

  She rested her cheek on him and closed her eyes. The rise and fall of his chest was steady and comforting.

  The song faded to an end, and April slipped her hand inside Josh’s pocket to restart it on the player. There wasn’t anything in the world that could be more perfect than this.

  They danced to the song twice more.

  “Look,” Josh said.

  He turned her toward the open end of the meadow, and there was a bear walking across the valley in the distance. It was big, but nothing like the superbear on the campground signs, and it didn’t pay them any attention. She felt no fear, only awe of the beautiful animal that was bathed in moonlight.

  They watched the bear until it disappeared into an island of trees, and then Josh spread a small tarp on the meadow grass and topped it with a soft blanket. After the rain, the grass had sprung up to midthigh. When she and Josh lay on their backs to stare at the sky, the grass was like four walls around them with a blanket of stars for the ceiling.

  “Vera’s Yosemite was nice, but she could never recreate this,” he said.

  Everything about their meadow was unimaginably peaceful. How would she ever be satisfied living in a city of cement and obscured skylines after this?

  “Just so you know, after the Sorcerer, I’m going to kidnap you,” he said.

  “Yeah?” she asked. “And where will you take me?”

  “Tuolumne. Since you’ve never been. We’ll pick up some champagne and a pizza at Smith Lodge and have a picnic at Tenaya Lake. And after that, I know a great secret camping spot near the east gate.”

  It sounded amazing, and it made her so sad knowing it would never happen.

  “All the media are going to want to do interviews afterward, you know,” she said to deflect the idea.

  “When have I ever cooperated with the media?”

  April rolled to her side and studied him. Lying there with Josh was just like being back at their lake, alone together in incredible vastness. She wanted to memorize this moment, how the peacefulness of the meadow reached into his face, and how his eyes were magnificent, even in the low light.

  He ran his fingertips lightly across her forehead and temples, eyelids and nose. She pressed in closer, and he repeated the route with kisses so light they made her shiver. His mouth moved across hers, and he kissed her with a depth that had no end. The warmth of his lips lingered as they watched the shifting moon shadows in the meadow.

  “Do you think it’s weird?” he asked. “About my family?”

  She thought about the picture that had fallen out of his book. There had to be thirty people in that group. “It’s really extreme. I don’t understand it. How everyone is playing along like robots.”

  “We’re Italian, for starters, and they all work for my parents. When it comes down to it, I guess they’d rather have their cushy jobs than another relative.”

  “But, still, if you were my brother, there’s no way I’d ignore you, no matter what my dad said.”

  She was such a hypocrite. Just yesterday she was going to break up with him for the same reason his family disowned him.

  “It’s not like you were leaving home to be a drug dealer or something,” she said. “All you wanted was to live in your truck and climb.”

  He snorted. “They’d probably rather I dealt drugs. More lucrative.”

  April pulled the blanket tighter around them. Far in the distance, coyotes howled.

  “Do you miss them?” she asked.

  “I try not to.” He took a breath like he was about to say more, but then he didn’t. Instead, he fiddled with her jacket sleeve.

  “The worst is my nieces and nephews,” he said eventually. “The little ones. I used to be really close with them. They’ve probably forgotten I exist.”

  “I’m sure that’s not true. If they’re young, they wouldn’t have the means to contact you.”

  “They would by now.”

  “Then they’re probably afraid. Maybe they think you don’t remember them.”

  “Afraid, maybe. They could be working summer jobs for my parents. That’s how everyone starts. Everyone but me. My parents always hated that I was never interested in anything but sports.”

  April pictured her father’s stunt planes gathering dust in the hangar. She was going to have to sell the empire that had been his life’s passion. Even though he was dead, it didn’t make it any easier.

  Josh reset his chin on her shoulder. “Sometimes, when I check messages after I’ve been gone a long time, I get my hopes up, but there is never anything from them. I used to try to call them, but at some point you have to have some pride about th
e whole thing.”

  That explained his melancholy the first day in the cafeteria. “Even after all these years, they still can’t let it go? Don’t they know how successful you’ve been?”

  “Successful? Living in a truck is not my family’s idea of successful.”

  “You know what I mean. Do you think they’ve seen any of your magazine covers or movies?”

  “I don’t know. I certainly hope not. Knox isn’t my real last name.”

  “You’re hiding from them?”

  “April, they forced me to make a terrible choice. Of course, at the time I didn’t know I was making a choice. I had no idea how literal my dad was being when he said that. Maybe it’s insensitive of me, but I don’t want them following the very career they disowned me for. That’s the reason I hate doing interviews. Whenever I’m in front of the camera, I can’t stop imagining the awful things they’d be saying if they got their hands on the finished movie. It’s like I’m doing the interview live in front of all the people who betrayed me.”

  Poor Josh! She squeezed his hand. Even though he hadn’t seen his family in years, they were still managing to make him ashamed of his greatest passion in life. No wonder he was so enigmatic in films. To protect himself, he had to guard everything personal, but to keep the sponsorships he needed, he had to live in the spotlight.

  “The climbing community is my family now,” he said. “They appreciate who I am and what I do.”

  She flinched.

  “I just remind myself that, in a way, I’ve been successful because of my biological family,” he said. “See, I was my parents’ youngest child, and by the time they had me, my oldest brother already had two daughters. So I was between generations. They were all busy with their own lives, and I did whatever I wanted. If it had been any other way, I wouldn’t have been able to essentially grow up at the climbing gym. I wouldn’t have had the base of strength and skills to climb big stuff like the Sorcerer.”

  The images of young Josh scrambling up the Sorcerer’s hardest sections flashed through her mind. Her mouth went dry.

  “Once I left home, I had nobody,” he said. “I was living for myself. I could do whatever I wanted. I took risks I shouldn’t have and got lucky. I got sponsorships, and now I make enough money to climb full-time, which was my dream all along.”