Chalk

5

I went back.

Mostly because I laid awake in bed all night hating on that rock. I felt like it had beaten me somehow, that I’d been offered a challenge by something that didn’t even breathe or sleep or cry and I’d failed. It was a rock. A fucking piece of earth that shouldn’t have been nearly that formidable, but it was.

I hated on the rock in lieu of fantasizing about that guy. The half naked one.

Which I also failed at.

I made it back to my nemesis the next afternoon without spotting any other human life along the way, breathing a sigh of relief as I dropped my newly purchased crash pad to the ground. A puff of dust splayed out around it when it landed. It wasn’t as heavy as it looked, but it wasn’t exactly lightweight and I was glad I didn’t have to carry it anymore.

The thought of hauling it back to the car was heartbreaking.

“Hey there, Sparkles. Fancy seeing you here.”

Gah.

Shirtless Guy. Leaning against a tree and looking expectant. Even though I wasn’t surprised, I sure wasn’t fucking prepared either.

“There are no sparkles today. I checked,” I told him, sitting on the edge of the crash pad and pulling my shoes from my backpack. I hadn’t let Alice come within three feet of me this morning and even did a cursory once-over in my rear-view mirror before leaving the relative safety of my car.

“Who is this Alice person and when can I meet her?” He sat down next to me and I tried to ignore him while I tugged on my shoes. He was wearing a shirt this time, which was a little sad, but the bands of muscles in his arms were flexing and I was kind of upset he was asking about Alice. Had I said her name out loud, or did he remember it from yesterday?

“Why?” I muttered, trying not to sound too jealous.

“I have a friend who sounds right up her alley.” He stood, his shoes already on and I wondered how the fuck he did that so fast. I only had half of one foot successfully into mine and he was already staring up at the rock.

“You have a friend who wears lots of glitter?” His answer surprised me, and I wondered if he knew his friend might be kind of gay.

“No,” Shirtless Guy chuckled. “But he picks up sparkly rocks wherever he goes. You could push him into a lake at the end of any given day and he’d probably sink right to the bottom. He’s got a thing for shiny stuff.”

“So does Alice,” I muttered, remembering the disco ball she’d tried to get my to hang in my living room. It ended up in hers. Far more fitting.

“So, I’ll uh . . . I’ll give you some beta if you want? It’s not that hard of a problem, once you know where to put your hands.” He looked back over his shoulder at me, his hair a little wild, and I shook my head at him in confusion.

“You speak an entirely different language.”

“What did I say?” he grinned, all teeth and lips and just a tad too much facial hair to be decent.

“Beta? What’s a beta? A fish?”

“No,” he laughed at me, again, which seemed to be becoming a thing with us. “Beta is like . . .  information. Instructions. I’ll give you beta on the climb?” he offered and nodded his head when he saw that I understood.

We spent an hour at the rock. I watched Shirtless Guy climb the route a couple of times, trying my damnedest to pay attention instead of ogling his ass before I tried it myself and boy, was it an experience. I learned that the spot where I’d torn all my skin off last time was called a ‘sloper,’ a flat expanse of rock with no obvious place to grip. That you just had to slap your hand hard against and use nothing but brute force to keep yourself there. Learned that the little ledges I was tucking my fingertips onto were ‘crimpers’ and that I’d probably never have another manicure again for as long as I lived. I didn’t make it to the top, falling to my ass on the crash pad more times that I cared to admit, but Shirtless Guy only said that I needed to be a little stronger and then it would be like child’s play.

Climbing rocks for fun is totally child’s play.

No matter how pornographic Shirtless Guy made it look.

He noticed me examining my hands as we were packing up, the sun starting to sink behind the trees. The skin on my fingertips was raw, my palms felt like sandpaper, and I was bleeding just a little on the knuckle of my index finger. The white powdery chalk I’d been using all afternoon was cemented to my skin with sweat, sunken into the ridges and haloing my broken spots. Shirtless Guy took me by the wrist and pulled my hand toward him to examine it, his fingers pressed to my pulse.

“You gotta take care of your hands tonight, or you won’t be climbing at all for a while.” He let go of me to rummage through his bag and I clutched my hand to my chest, blood throbbing just below where his thumb had been. “Use this tonight.”

He gave me a jar of green goopy salve and that’s when I noticed his own hands. If my hands looked bad, his looked even worse. There were spots like mine where the skin was sort of rubbed off, but still others that looked a week, or even months, old. His fingers were callused and there were deep ridges of skin protecting the side of his hands. I wondered how often he was out here.

Judging from the thickness of those calluses, I thought it was probably a lot.

“It looks like you need this more than I do.” I tried to give him the jar back and he followed my gaze to his own hands before he laughed low in his chest.

“I have more at home.”

We got back to the parking lot by the road, our cars the last two there, just as the sun disappeared entirely and everything went that odd lilac color it did just at twilight.

“What did you call me yesterday? When I was leaving?” I asked him as I threw the giant pad into the back of my truck. Shirtless Guy reddened a little at the neck and shrugged, watching me intently as he leaned against his own car, something too small and shiny for a grungy rock climber.

“It was nothing,” he muttered.

“Gumby.” I narrowed my eye at him, trying to look scary. “What does that mean?”

“You’re just new, is all. Everyone gets called that at first, but you’ll grow out of it. Besides, I kind of like Sparkles.”

“There are no sparkles today,” I reminded him, waving my hand in front of my face.

“That doesn’t mean I’m going to forget them.”

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