Tuesday, December 17, 2013

*waves*


Life is short and fickle, you know?

I got some terrible news yesterday, the kind of news that puts everything in perspective. The kind that rocks your little world for a few violent,  torrid moments, like you're the island and fate is the towering tidal wave. The kind that makes you spend a lot of time afterward grateful that you were only vicariously traumatized.

That you aren't the one having to live through that reality, right in the very thick of it.

What am I saying?

I'm saying that despite it all, despite the love or hate or whatever else, everything is so inconsequential when it comes to the world you create around yourself, for whatever time you have. And I let myself get so upset about these words I have collected here, just full of flailing and tears and anger, that at first I wanted to feel bad about that. How small and stupid and selfish of me . . . but then . . . the things that bring you joy, no matter how small or stupid or selfish they might be, are the only things that might make your time here worthwhile. The little things that you love are the things that define you and I'm perfectly content to let my existence be defined by my words.

The ones here, the ones still stuck inside me, the ones I haven't even thought of yet.

So, yesterday was a complete loss. I was worthless. I spent the time reposting chapters, getting frustrated with formatting issues, fighting against time and energy and real life and readers, who plow through words faster than I can put them up.

---> The Other Way is fully posted and I'm putting the final touches on the PDF, just in time for Christmas. (Because I'm mf'ing SANTA, ok?)

---> Chalk, Mind The Gap and all of the outtakes are up as well, PDF in the works.

In the meantime - My head is being eaten up with original work. I only say this because I'm at a bit of a loss when it comes to Double Struck. Floundering is what I'd like to call it, but it's really more that the spark was snatched away in all the dirty din and dizzy mess that sprung up around me like a goddamn swarm of locusts and I just have not been able to locate it again. Like searching down a long dark hallway with your arms outstretched because you know there's a light switch somewhere, you're just not entirely sure where.

I'm still fumbling.

Thank God for Hadley Hemingway.

And let's talk about her for a minute, shall we? Because after I got that terrible news yesterday, you know who I called? Her. Not my mother. Not my sister or my friends. Her. How did this happen? This random, fandom friendship we created on a fluke that has now become so important to me that I reach out to her in times like that? I'll tell you how:

Because we're soul mates, I shit you not.

How do I know this? I know this because I picked her name out of hundreds for a reason. I know this because we can talk on the phone for HOURS, but a lot of that time is spent in comfortable silence as we work, just like an old married couple. I know this because we think things at the exact same moment. I know this because I don't make friends easily and she slipped on just like that old favorite pair of gloves. I know this because we call to check up on each other and I start to feel funny if I haven't talked to her in a couple of days. Her family puts up with me, both from afar and in close proximity, and my husband always knows who I'm talking about even though I jump from her Hadley moniker to her real name and back again without even blinking.

She has my manuscript.

She also has my heart.



XXOO

HBM

Chalk Outtake

Shivers




The video is complete shit.

And I can say that because I took it.

Grainy in quality and shaking erratically from my unsteady hands. It sparks to life in a flash of blinding white, dark shadows morphing slowly into jagged trees and jutting rocks. The heaping piles of snow keep the automatic focus busy and when his face finally graces the camera, he’s a blurried mess of color.

Pink cheeks and green eyes, tousled penny hair and a smile as bright as the snow.

The last image of him, untainted.

“Say hello, Edward.” My voice, disembodied and sounding girlishly happy tugs his smile into the corner of his mouth.

“Hello, Bella,” he says seriously and I remember how proud I was that I figured out the zoom button just then, panning out to film him amidst a heap of gear, suited up for the snow and strapping scary looking teeth onto his boots.

“Tell me what your doing.” Me again, voice high pitched from the cold, I think.

“These are crampons.” He lifts his leg into the air, sliver teeth flashing in the light. “You need a little more than a crash pad to climb ice.”

A yell echoes over the view and Edward looks up, a wild flash of camera pulling away to scan the top of a monumental waterfall, caught frozen and eerily still, dripping columns of pearly blue ice to the frozen stream below. Alice is waving from the top, her hand slicing the air in sparkled mittens and her face framed in the furry halo of her hat. I’d only managed to talk her out of the sparkle studded vest by giving her my furry knee high boots, which she was sporting with style.

She’d walked to the top of the waterfall with Jasper, the curving road that winds up Box Canyon crossing a bridge just above the towering deluge of frozen water. The camera catches them kissing solidly before Jasper trots back down to join us at the base. A short walk from the bridge was the touristy stop at the Falls, crowded with fat furry chipmunks overfed by the 50 cent bags of sunflower seeds for sale inside the visitor’s center. It would be easy enough to find her when this was all over.

To say that Alice had a weak spot for anything small and fuzzy would not do justice to her addiction.

“Are you two sure about this?” My voice asks, the camera bouncing between the boys in a dizzying flip-flop before wandering aimlessly off Jasper’s face and into the trees. I’m sure I was peering up at the looming wall of ice, forgetting the video. It was rather pretty, soft sea foam green amidst the blue and the shadows cast purple through it all. But I was scared. You can hear it in my voice.

“There are fixed anchors the whole way up and I’m on belay, he’s got nothing to worry about and neither do you.” Jasper gloats into the camera in that way he perfected, just sexy enough to forgive him for being a cocky bastard. In the two years we’ve been climbing together, he still treats me like a gumby. He reaches toward the camera and there’s another mad shuffle of light and dark, my squeals and then some snow on the lens.

Needless to say, he put enough snow down my hood to build an army of snowmen.

“Do not forget that I’m forever connected to your girlfriend. I know where you sleep.” I thought I sounded scary at the time, but hearing your voice recorded is a mind trip at the best of times and I really only sound like a two year old marking her territory. Jasper smiles at me around my finger using a tissue to wipe off the screen.

“I could say the exact same thing to you.” He leans in to give the cleaned camera wink before smirking off in the other direction and yelling toward Edward. “You ready for this or what, Doll Face?”

His voice echoes off the ice, catapulting around the icicles in a fading rhyme.

It’s hard to tell, the camera only just gets there in time, but Edward is flipping Jasper off when the lens lands on him. He drops the scary looking ice axes into the snow at his feet and holds his arms out to his sides.

“Come give me a kiss, sweet girl,” he calls, his breath frozen in the air and the camera falls, going dark and muffled. It doesn’t capture our last kiss, my slip-slide across the ice and snow toward him, or how he lofted me right off my feet to put his mouth down hot and wet on mine. Doesn’t catch him setting me down and landing a solid thump on my ass with his gloved hand, telling me to stand clear with that stern look on his face he only gets with me.

There is exactly four minutes and twelve seconds of off-air, radio silence.

That’s because I tossed the camera into the safety of my open bag, abandoning film for the sake of a kiss.

I pranced back over to our stuff and plucked the camera from its spot, the film getting the only glimpse of my face it would, a split-second smile cut off at the edges. I look cold and anxious, hair dark and wild around my face and cheeks gone apple red. I let Jasper take the camera on a visual tour of Edward’s planned route, his finger pointing out the caribeaners drilled into the ice. I had put up a fight over this point, feeling unsure until Edward showed me one of the bolts that was used to hold the caribeaners to the ice and sure enough, the thing was a little more than half the length of my forearm.

I tried to breath easier, listening to Jasper’s voice, but you can tell that it isn’t working.

The video is trembling.

“What’s it called? The route?” I ask and pan back to Jasper’s face, his cheeks stained pink with cold and his grey wool hat pushing his curls into his eyes.

“Shivers.” He smiles at me and tugs hard on the rope that attaches him to Edward.

The camera watches in silence as Edward slowly acsendes the wall of ice, viciously planting the sharpened blades of his axes and the steely teeth on his boots into the floe of frozen water. I was used to the smooth movements of rock climbing, untainted by gear, skin to stone in dancing patterns that often faltered and ended abruptly, but sometimes fulfilled themselves in smooth, graceful patterns. This was a completely different world, set away fro the heat and sun. Each movement was a measured amount of time spent hacking at the ice, kicking it solidly to sink the teeth of the crampons or the blades of the axes in solidly enough to trust. Tiny flecks of ice sheared away with each blow and Edward was breathing hard enough that you could hear him echoing softly through the speakers.

“He looks angry.” You can hear my whisper, but only barely.

“It only looks that way.” Jasper chuckles lowly and the next twelve minutes and thirty seven seconds are a silent omage to Edward, climbing steadily toward the top of the frozen waterfall, maneuvering between icicles and clipping himself firmly to each caribeaner as he edges toward the top. A delicate dance up the ice that seems to go on forever.

Twelve minutes and thirty seven seconds of forever.

And then it all goes to shit.

A sharp crack rips through the sound system, the speakers screaming through the sound as the camera whips to Jasper for a split second. His eyes meet the screen, lips gone pale and he mouths something that is lost amid the chaos.

The roaring crash of ice colliding with ice, splintering chandeliers of frozen water, rips through the incapable microphone of the video camera. The screen captures a tumultuous shower of pearly blue glass shattering in a millions directions when it hits the earth below. The sound echoes angrily up the canyon, rumbling aftershocks that set the remaining icicles singing, humming softly as they vibrate against one another. The camera fumbles wildly to focus on something, anything, and when it does, it’s Alice at the top of the waterfall.

Screaming.

My breath ragged in the background, beginning to break into sobs and Jasper’s far off yelling.

The view slides from Alice down the waterfall, across the ice in agonizingly slow precision, searching blindly until it focuses on him.

Edward, hanging limp from his rope, head thrown back and arms lip, ice pick tumbling to the base of the waterfall in an earthshaking roar of noise.

A single drop of blood splattering the screen.


PAUSE


I stabbed the button with its two upright lines repeatedly until technology finally caught up to my fear and the image stilled, sound gone unless you counted my breathing and in that case, it wasn’t quiet at all. I panted into my chest, gripping the edge of the couch to keep myself upright.

“Why in the world are you watching that?” His stubble scrapes my shoulder and I can feel the tension radiation through him as he stares at the screen. I had no explanation for my sudden urge to watch the video again. It was morbid and I knew he hated it, but it also tended to remind me of what I’d almost lost on more than one occassion.

A refresher course in fear wouldn’t go unwanted in the near future.

“Yeah, well you scared the fuck out of me that day.”

“I scared the fuck out of myself. If you had told me that morning, you know . . . I wouldn’t have gone.”

That’s when I turn to look at him, unable to help that my eyes land on the remnants of that video which still held in awful suspense before us. I put my hand on his cheek and let my thumb trace the ragged scar that dances a delicate path along his cheek bone, just below his eye. It edges close enough that we thought for sure that he was going to loose it all together, only a miracle saved his vision. The skin of the scar is still papery thin, pink and fragile even though it’s been almost two years. It lends his face a rakish air, rugged and unforgiving and maybe even a little scary.

“It wouldn’t have stopped you.”

“How can you say that? Of course it would have.” He glances into my lap and his face softens. “Though getting the news when I drugged up beyond belief in a hospital bed, about to go into surgery was quite memorable.”

“He’s just as bad as you, you know?. I caught him trying to launch himself off the fourth step today.” I smirk at Edward and that scar, remembering the weight of a heavy one year old landing in my arms, the tiny person in question sprawled fast asleep in my lap, undisturbed by the video or the conversation. He was a dead ringer for his father, and just as reckless. Edward cupped a giant hand around the tiny sleeping head, curls though his fingers and nodded in tempered appreciation.

“The fourth step, huh? Well last week it was the second, so the boy has lofty goals. Seems we’ve got a prodigy on our hands.”







Chalk Outtake

Imitosis







Jasper drug me clear across the meadow to the Passion Pit, but I just didn’t have the head for it, bricked out on a new fantasy. Sparkles had only been gone for sixteen minutes and I was still thinking about her.

Legs, and hands, and that wide-eyed look she got when I caught her blushing about something.

Thinking about how she had a real name, something just as pretty as what I called her in my head and how her eyes flashed frustration with every peel off her rock. She was so close, nothing a week or two of climbing wouldn’t fix and I fully expected her to top it by the end of the month.

Which was good, because I also intended to kiss her at the top of that rock when she finally got there, and it gave me a good two weeks to work up my courage.

“Dude, are you even watching me?”

I shook Sparkles free and glanced up at Jasper who was hanging from his fingertips, leg wrapped around a lip of rock nearly two feet above my head, a long way from his crash pad. With his hair wild and a scowl on his mouth, he hung his feet and dangled for a moment before landing delicately on the pad. When he wiped his hands agitatedly on his shorts, he sent a puff of white off into the air.

“How did you even do it?” He grumbled.

“Do what?”

“Find a girl like that, out here?” He waved an arm at the forest and I glanced around, wondering what the fuck he was getting at and trying desperately not to think about the girl he was obviously referring to.

Poker face.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Victoria? Tanya? Jane?” He shot back at me in quick succession and yeah, so he had a point. One had a neck the size of my thigh, another climbed like she was having some sort of neurological fit and the other was just plain annoying, in no particular order. He didn’t mention Maria, which I knew meant he was still feeling burned and edgy. Some girls just weren’t cut out to be gabbys, but Jasper fell hard and landed even harder.

I’d like to think that he was worried for me, but I knew he was probably jealous.

“I don’t know. I swear I thought she was a hallucination at first.”

Jasper stared hard at me for a moment before throwing up his hands and sitting on the crash pad to tug off his shoes. “You’re useless. You’ve got that glazed over look you always get,” he grumbled. “Usually it’s over a rock but now there’s this . . . this . . . girl.”

Yep, totally jealous.



When we made it back to the car Jasper plopped into the passengers seat and picked my newly purchased plastic bag of chalk up off the floor, rolling it around between his hands as I drove. I preferred my chalk in loose form while Jasper was a block man. I still didn’t understand why, watching him meticulously crumble bars of chalk into his bag but it seemed to have become part of his ritual, much like the absent-staring thing he always did. Which he was doing again, right now.


The silence was deafening.

“I just fucking met the girl. She’s gonna kill herself out there if I don’t do something.”

“I dunno . . .” Jasper fondled the chalk bag thoughtfully, all three pounds of it. “You’ve never left handprints on my ass.”

“Do you want me to?”

“Not particularly,” he snapped at me. “But I don’t want to loose another climbing partner to some girl.”

He was talking about Rose and the disappearing act Emmett had been pulling for the last two weeks. I couldn’t blame him, even I was getting a little pissed.

“I’m not gonna bail on you.”

“You say that now.” More grumbling and the plastic crinkled beneath his fingers, agitated chalk tumbling around inside. He seemed to be staring far off into the future while I had barely made it past her mouth.

“I’m not marrying the girl, I’m just showing her the ropes.”

The chalk bag exploded.

Fragile plastic torn through by the pressure between his palms. In an instant the entire car was engulfed in a suffocating cloud of powdery white, coating my mouth and stinging my eyes. I slammed on the brakes, sliding to halt in the middle of the winding dirt road that would eventually get us back to the highway, coughing as I tumbled out of the car. The breeze pulled most of the chalk cloud away and left me coated from head to toe in snowy white. The interior of the car wasn’t much better, the grey leather gone all sorts of snow-globe. Jasper looked freshly tarred and feathered.

“What the fuck, J? That was supposed to get me through the summer.”

I whined, no lie. Chalk isn’t cheap.






Mind The Gap / 14




The first snow of the year came far sooner than I expected.

That was a good day. I woke up in Bella’s bed to dreams of her smell lodged in my brain and wormed my way between the flowered sheets until I was face first in her pussy. She came-to already breathless, fingers in my hair, my name in her mouth. Best way to wake her up, hands down. The entire room was bathed in the strange blueish-grey light that snow cast, and every inch of her skin was the smoothest thing my ravaged fingers had ever felt.

Yesterday had been our last outdoor climb of the year.

You could feel the shift of the seasons in the air that day, a bitter underbite to the breeze that cut just a little deeper than it had before. The forest was calm, the birds disappearing and the animals bunkering down. It meant that we’d spend the next half of the year climbing in the gyms, which I wasn’t looking forward to at all.

Bella accused me of bringing her back to the Problem Queen so that I could re-live how fucking epic it had been to find her tumbling off that rock. That wasn’t necessarily untrue. I now had a strange affection for the climb I only used to warm up on, but at the time I had no idea what I was getting myself into. I couldn’t even grasp the gravity of the situation and had no idea how far off my path her presence would launch me.

It would be a lie to say that I didn’t think about that first time, every time we climbed.

I trailed her through the meadow on our way back to the cars, letting her talk to me about dinner but totally stuck in my head. Her hair was down, her steps practically skipping right along with her words and I didn’t care at all that I was meeting her parents tonight, even though I normally would be freaking out right about now. Instead of anxiety, the fear that her father might shoot me on sight or that her mother would think I looked too scruffy and rakish to take care of her daughter, I was being swallowed by a feeling that took me the entire way back to the car to put my finger on.

I wasn’t just happy or content or comfortable. I wasn’t simply awestruck or amazed or even intrigued by her. Wasn’t just in lust or love, even though I’d caught myself a decent case of both.
I was thankful. Thankful that I’d stalked her that day, following a feeling of dread in my stomach. Thankful that I’d caught her, not only that first time but all the other times after that. Thankful that circumstance had brought us together, face to face.


Just fucking thankful that I climbed rocks at all, really.




The End

Read The Outtakes Here

Chalk Outtake

Sunlight






“These are easily the ugliest thing I’ve ever, ever worn.” Alice hoisted her foot into the air, crammed into a new pink climbing shoe. I’d bought her a flowered chalk bag to match, hoping the colors would take her mind off the logistics, but she was too savvy for me.

“Yes, but you wanted to do this for Jasper, remember?”

“Remind me why?” She eyed the shoe skeptically, her mouth twisted.

“His hair. His ass. His eyes.” I ticked off the only three things she’d talked about in constant, detailed rotation for the last three weeks. After he took her to the fire tower and kissed her on that towering, cloud-bound porch, she was a goner.

“Will you tell him, for the record?”

“Yes, Alice. I will be sure to tell him that those are the ugliest thing you have ever, ever worn.”



“Does she always dress like that?” Edward whispered from behind me, ducking low to put his mouth near my ear. I tried to temper my smile in case she looked back and caught me.


She was actually dressed down today, but it took me nearly an hour to explain to her why she couldn’t climb in a skirt. I rarely climbed in a shirt these days, preferring to strip down to shorts and my sports bra lest anything get snagged on the rock and I had visions of her dangling from her frilly tutu, a good six feet off the ground. She eventually relented and settled for Lycra shorts and a pale pink tank top with a wispy ruffled hem that fell low around her waist. She was sporting a headband with a giant purple flower on it and had enough glitter on her face to attract attention from space.

“This is subdued for her, I promise.”

“I like your outfit better.” He traced his fingertips along the skin where my spine met my shorts, surely leaving a telltale streak of white behind and I hated on my skin for betraying me with pebbled goosebumps. I came home from our climbs covered in the patterned fans of his fingerprints, splayed fingers sprouting from smudged palms all over my exposed skin.

Lack of.” I corrected him slyly and he nodded without hesitation.

“Am I that transparent?”

“Like glass.”



She didn’t make it to the top, but she didn’t get hung up on her frilly tank top either, which surprised me more than if she had topped the rock. I watched her with some amount of fascination, impressed with her determination and amazed beyond all belief that she wasn’t completely preoccupied with the damage done to her hands. She was giddy and giggly the whole drive home, dabbing at her bleeding spots and glowing with pride. When the boys dropped us off at home I watched Jasper drag her out of the backseat and fold her up in his arms like a gift, their faces nuzzled together in silent conversation.


“Hey, you gonna send me home with a kiss, or what?” Edward looped an arm around my waist and pulled me up against him. He’d gotten a little sunburned today, his skin flushed and flaming hot enough to make my head spin.

“You don’t have to go home.”

“I do. Jasper and I are going to climb Sunlight tomorrow. I need to sleep and I’m not going to get any of that with you.”

“Is that a new problem of yours? Sunlight?”

“No,” Edward chuckled, mouth suspended to the side as if he was amused. “It’s a mountain.”

“A big one?”

“Yes. Fourteen fifty-nine, I think.”

“And that means . . .”

His mouth softened right along with his eyes and he put both hands to my face to kiss me, something soft and sweet and pure compared to our recent carpet excursions, with a hint of déjà vu. I steadied myself against him and let him run his tongue along my lower lip.

“Elevation,” he whispered, lips to mine. “Fourteen thousand feet.”

“That sounds dangerous,” I choked, fear still freshly scarred by falling rocks.

“Not as dangerous as you.” He glanced over at Jasper and Alice, giggling and fondling each other like love-sick teenagers. They’d barely been together for more than what amounted to a day or two and there they were, right along side us.

“Then why did it take so long?” I stood on tiptoe to reach his mouth and kissed him again, in case he needed explanation.  

“You threw me for a loop, silly girl. I was gonna kiss you on top of the Problem Queen, you know? But you topped it in three days instead of three weeks and my whole plan went to shit.”







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