My Guys

by Tanya Chris

  “Now I know you’re wondering how Kyle is going to belay me.” Gary had said. “You’re thinking I outweigh him by fifty pounds, but you’re wrong. It’s at least seventy.” We all laughed. “Why is this safe?”

  “The belay device?” I asked.

  “That’s right. Kyle doesn’t have to hold my weight. The belay device does that. The belayer’s job is to hold the rope. Watch.”

  When Gary started to climb, I realized I’d been wrong about him. He didn’t used to be a climber; he still was. He ascended the wall as easily as if it were a staircase—until he abruptly let go. Even though I’d seen a belay device work before, I cut my eyes to Kyle. He had a firm grip on the rope but he didn’t look strained by it.

  “That’s the belay device,” Gary said. “Now let’s show you how to use it.”

  That was when he’d told us to form pairs and Katrina and I had ended up together.

  I’d been back twice since the class, now a fully-certified climber with belay privileges, but then Tech Week had intervened. I hoped I still remembered what I was doing.

  “Lissie!” Gary said when the customer in front of me left and I stepped up. “You came back.” He smiled warmly when I asked for the monthly membership instead of a day pass. “How’s that harness working out for you?”

  “I haven’t even had a chance to try it yet.”

  “Let me know if you need any help putting it on.” He handed me back my credit card, holding it longer than he needed to until I looked up at him. As I walked into the changing area, I had the sense he was still watching me. He probably didn’t trust me on my own yet.

  I put on my new harness and left my street shoes in one of the cubbies, then wandered into the gym, scanning the room for someone I knew. I’d arranged to meet Katrina, but she was habitually late.

  “Hey.”

  I turned my head and saw Jenny next to me.

  “Sorry, I forget your name.”

  “Lissie.”

  “Right, sorry. I’m Jenny. Hey, you want to climb?”

  My self-consciousness said no, but my mind couldn’t think of a logical reason to back that up. “I could give you a belay.”

  “Cool.” She led the way over to a rope and started to tie in. “So, you came back.”

  “Why does everyone say that?”

  “Do we? I guess a lot of people don’t come back. Maybe climbing sounds like more fun than it is.”

  “I think it’s more fun than it sounds like.”

  “Me too.”

  She climbed up the route fast, which meant now it was my turn. I picked out a rope with a route I’d been working on the last time I was there. It was a seven. I’d graduated from sixes to sevens and had even climbed one or two eights all the way to the top, but this particular seven was on one of the steeper walls, and I hadn’t gotten very high on it before.

  “I don’t know if I can do this,” I said, pre-emptively apologizing.

  “This is your project?” She could tell I didn’t understand, so she clarified. “The route you’re working on.”

  I nodded, remembering Derek using the word project before. She probably thought a seven was a ridiculous project.

  “Then you don’t want to start with it. You should give your muscles a chance to warm up first. Here, do this one over here.” She moved over a rope. “I know they both say seven, but this one’s a lot easier.”

  She wasn’t judging, I realized. Only I was judging. I climbed the easier seven. It really was a lot easier. When I got back down, Derek was standing next to her.

  “Hey,” he said. “You—”

  “Don’t say I came back.”

  Jenny laughed.

  “I was going to say that you bought your own gear,” Derek said, “but since you two seem to have your own inside joke, never mind.”

  I belayed Derek while Jenny stood next to me. We both watched him. I watched him because I didn’t have the coordination to belay with the casual nonchalance that Derek and Jenny had. I still needed to concentrate on the climber. Jenny watched him either because he was a nice thing to look at or because there wasn’t much else to watch. I wasn’t sure which. So far I hadn’t seen anything pass between them that could be interpreted as romantic, even if you were trying to stretch the point.

  “How long have you been climbing?” I asked when the silence got heavy.

  Jenny shrugged. “Year, year and a half.”

  “Everyone’s so good.” There was no way I’d be climbing like she could in a year.

  She shrugged again. “Everyone could be better.”

  Derek came down and she went up. Everyone did a few more warm-ups before I noticed that Derek and Jenny were taking longer to climb their routes, having to pause in places to shake out, and breathing heavily when they lowered back down. I figured that meant it was time for me to try my ‘project’ so I moved over to the rope with my nemesis seven.

  “Go get it,” Jenny said, putting me on belay.

  The route was overhanging, which meant that it sloped back towards me as it went up. The holds at the start were big, almost like handles. I could sink a hand in and pull with all my strength to reach the next one. But about ten feet up, there was a closed-off hold. Even when I pulled with all my strength, I couldn’t hang on. I tried a few times, feeling my muscles weaken with each attempt.

  “Lissie,” Jenny called so that I would look down at her. “Like this.” She mimed a sequence of moves, showing me how she’d turn her body.

  I tried it her way but my arms were soft and rubbery and wouldn’t cooperate. I tried again with even worse results. I was so close to the ground she could have reached up and touched my foot. Stuck there, on my project—the seven. Derek and Jenny climbed tens to warm up.

  “Can I come down?” I asked.

  Jenny let me down and I untied quickly, racing the tears. I rushed out of the gym, not knowing where I was headed. I couldn’t go far in rock shoes with my car keys still inside, but I needed privacy.

  There was a line of shrubs next to the gym door. I ducked behind them, crawling beneath the low hanging branches until I was squatting against the building. Only then did I allow the sobs to burst from my chest.

  The gym door opened. I stiffened when I saw Derek walk through it. He looked around the parking lot, then bent his head, ducked under the branches, and slid in next to me.

  “I’m sorry,” I choked out. Speaking made it impossible to hold back the sobs, so my words came out between them. “I’m making a big scene.”

  “I’ve seen bigger.”

  “In the gym?”

  “Oh yeah.”

  I struggled to bring my crying under control. “I thought I was out of sight under here.”

  “You were. I guessed.”

  “How?”

  He laughed, a sort of sad huffing sound. “I’ve been here, done this.”

  “You’ve hidden under the bushes to cry? Really?”

  “I can be pretty hard on myself, too.” He patted my knee consolingly. “If you’re going to be a climber, you’re going to fall off a lot of routes. Like, not just today. Every day.”

  “But not a seven.”

  “I’ll tell you something I read on the internet once. This guy—his name was Mad Dog, so take it with a grain of salt—he said ‘I climb as hard as anyone. I just do it on easier routes.’”

  I thought about it, then shook my head. “I don’t get it. What does it mean?”

  “Well, how I took it is that we’re not competing with each other, only with ourselves. I climb as hard as I can. You climb as hard as you can. We’re both climbing the same hard, even if the routes have different ratings.”

  “I guess so.”

  “I saw you climb a seven the other day.”

  “I’ve done a bunch of them.”

  “Some people would avoid the one seven they’re having trouble with.”

  “Should I?” It sounded like a good idea right about then.

  “Hah! No. I was saying s
ome people would do it, not recommending it. If you want to get better, you have to climb the stuff you can’t climb.”

  “You’re very philosophical, grasshopper.”

  “I didn’t want to spend my climbing time sitting under a bush, so I had to find another way to look at it. My mind said failure, you know?”

  I nodded. I did know.

  Between the branches I saw Katrina walking towards the door from the parking lot. I put a hand on Derek’s arm to warn him into silence. When she was gone, I slid my hand up so that it wrapped around his bicep. I hugged his arm into me, leaning against his shoulder.

  “Are we staying here?” Derek asked, shifting so we fit together better.

  “Maybe for a few minutes. I feel stupid walking back in there.”

  “No one cares as much as you do, but there’s no hurry.” He tipped his head back against the wall and closed his eyes.

  I sighed, settling in to him. I felt comfortable with Derek. With Nate I felt like I wasn’t keeping up, as though he knew where we were going and was pushing me to get there. Derek exuded no sexual tension, only warmth. He assumed the friend role by default. Within that zone of safety, I could push my own boundaries.

  “What made you start climbing?” he asked.

  “It’ll sound stupid.”

  He opened his eyes slightly and shifted them in my direction. I could see the rust brown of his irises under the lighter-colored lashes.

  “Maybe not stupid, but cliché,” I clarified. “I’m getting divorced. I’m trying to find myself. Mid-life crisis, whatever.” I had lifted my hand from his arm to make air quotes around “find myself” and was too self-conscious to put it back. I dropped it to the ground between us. He reached down with his own hand and took it as I went on. “I didn’t expect to fall in love with rock climbing. Now I’m still getting divorced, still in a mid-life crisis, but I’m also a crazy person who cries over a bunch of plastic lumps on a gym wall.”

  “How old are you? I can’t really tell.”

  “Thirty-seven.”

  “Oh.”

  I didn’t know what to make of that so I left it. We sat in silence for a while again, still holding hands. The lights flickered on in the parking lot. I shivered from the dropping temperature. The foolishness of hiding under a bush holding hands with a much younger man while people came and went through the door only a few feet from us struck me, but I still didn’t want to go inside.

  “How did you get started climbing?” I asked him.

  He took his hand from mine and wiped it on his shorts. “Something similar. We seem to have a lot in common.”

  “How so?”

  “Actually, she brought me here in the first place. Then, after, I came back.”

  I tried to work through that and failed. “You’re going to have to start at the beginning.”

  “In the beginning there was Emily, and it was good. We dated all through high school. The summer before college we came here for the first time. She wanted to try it out, but then she didn’t like it that much, I guess. We only came a couple of times. I don’t even remember if I liked it or not, but, later, when we broke up, I—”

  He stopped, his eyes still closed but no longer in relaxation. They were closed against something he didn’t want to see. I put a hand on his thigh, just below the leg loop of his harness, and leaned in so he could feel me next to him.

  “I needed something to take my mind off it,” he continued. “I remembered this place and ...” He shrugged. “It turns out I like it.”

  “You still miss her.”

  “I never knew anything but her.”

  I wanted to ask him what had happened but didn’t want to answer the same question myself. Instead I slid closer to him along the wall, leaving my hand on his thigh but burrowing my shoulder into his armpit so that he had little choice other than to put his arm around me. I scooted down until my head rested on his shoulder.

  “Jenny?” I asked.

  “A good friend, a good partner.”

  “She’s very good looking.”

  I felt his shoulder move beneath my head.

  “What did Emily look like?”

  “Don’t read into this.”

  I waited.

  “She looks a lot like Jenny, but it wasn’t about how Emily looked. Emily was Emily. Jenny’s not going to replace her.”

  “That’s how I feel about Alex, too.” I drew a pattern on his thigh with my finger. “People want me to date, but ...”

  “Yeah.”

  “It’s been three years for you, though. That doesn’t seem healthy for a guy your age.”

  “It’s not like I wouldn’t like to be with someone else. Hey, let’s go back in, huh? This is fucking maudlin.”

  He was right. I’d come outside crying about climbing and there we were, both on the verge of crying over our exes. I sat up and kissed him on the cheek.

  “Thanks.”

  He crawled out of the bushes and reached a hand back to help me out. Just as I was popping out from under, the door opened and there was Katrina.

  “Oh, you’re here.” She glared at me, her eyes half-curious and half-hateful.

  “Sorry. I was just coming in.”

  “Don’t bother on my account.” She pushed past me, heading for the parking lot.

  I gave Derek an apologetic shrug and went after her. “Hey,” I said, catching her at her car.

  She jerked the driver’s side door open and threw her harness into the car. “I thought we were going to climb together.”

  “I was in there earlier. You could’ve climbed with someone else. You didn’t have to wait for me.”

  “There’s no one in there.”

  “Jenny’s in there. You met her last week, remember?”

  “Oh sure. The girl with the blonde ponytail down to her ass who climbs twelves, and me. We’ll partner right up.”

  “She was climbing with me earlier.”

  “Yeah and you and Derek play house in the shrubbery. I didn’t know you were such the in-crowd, Lissie.”

  I exhaled slowly. I got it. “Sometimes I feel out of place, too. They’re actually pretty nice—Jenny, Derek, all of them.”

  “They’re hotshot kids.”

  “Yeah, but nice ones.”

  Katrina’s shoulders lowered. “Climbing needs age groups. In the fitness competitions, I’m competing against women my own age. It gives me a fighting chance.”

  I thought about that quote Derek had told me but couldn’t remember it well enough to do it justice, so I explained why I’d been hiding under the bushes instead.

  Katrina smiled. “So I’m not the only crazy one.”

  “Not as long as I’m around.”

  “I don’t know what I’m doing here anyway,” she said. “I do pretty good in those competitions. I thought climbing would be good cross-training for my upper body but it’s like starting over. Everyone’s better than me.”

  “You know where I was yesterday? At an audition. Talk about everyone being better than you.”

  “Like for a play? That’s cool.”

  “Not cool. Terrifying. My friend Donna wanted to try out, so I figured I would too. Turns out I’m the worst actor ever. I sounded like a political robo-caller except shakier. I could hear how bad I was, like hearing yourself sing off-key, and there everyone was, watching me.” Including Nate.

  Katrina eyed me, considering. “I think I could act. I like performing.”

  “I think you can climb. I think we both can. Come on, I’ll give you a belay.”

  She retrieved her harness and we walked back into the gym together where we took turns belaying each other.

  “You going to try that seven again?” Derek asked me when we found ourselves next to each other.

  “Maybe.” I wanted another stab at it but didn’t want to embarrass myself with another scene.

  “Let me show you something first. Katrina and Jenny can climb together.” He picked up his shirt.

  “Whoa,
there, Cowboy,” I said, stopping him. “Don’t get all hasty. I might need the inspiration.”

  Derek dropped the shirt. The corners of his mouth tugged upwards but he didn’t meet my eyes. I put my hand on his shoulder until he did.

  “Do I embarrass you when I say things like that?”

  “Not really. Surprise me, more like.”

  “I guess you can’t read minds or you’d be hearing a lot of it.”

  He dropped his eyes and I laughed.

  “See?” he said.

  It crossed my mind that I was good for him. Or else I was a lecherous cougar. Either way, he made it easy to objectify him. Nate would be soaking up my compliments faster than I could spoon them out. Derek let them lie there, glistening between us.

  “I was going to show you something,” he reminded me.

  “By all means.” I refrained from making a comment about him showing me his chest.

  “This is a fulcrum,” he said, putting my left hand onto a hold. “You remember physics?”

  “Not super well. That was a long time ago.”

  “A pivot point, the point you’re going to rotate around.” He put a hand on my left arm. “This stays rigid like a teeter totter. You can’t teeter totter on a wet noodle. Now this”—he tapped my right leg—“supplies the power and this”—he tapped my left leg—“is the counter-balance.”

  “You’re losing me.”

  “Never mind the physics of it. Here are the mechanics: everything stays rigid, especially your abs.”

  I risked a glance at my non-rigid abs.

  “Try it,” he said.

  I sank down nearly to the ground and straightened up, feeling the way my body rotated around my left hand in a controlled fashion. “Do that?”

  “Exactly that.”

  Over on rope number nine I had better luck than I’d had earlier, my rigid body swinging smoothly to the next hold, no longer as far away as I’d thought.

  Chapter 7

  Alex.

  The first thing I saw when I walked into my mother’s living room was Alex.