Chalk

11

Jasper didn’t say a single word for almost an hour and Alice rambled like a toddler on speed, which I took to mean that they were both a little enamored of each other. He nodded mutely when she offered to show him the pictures she had been taking and pulled his shirt back on before he sat next to her in a soft hollow of grass to peer over her shoulder. I sat a little ways off with Edward and we both stared up at the climb he’d just completed, his chalky handprints only barely visible from the single, momentary touches he’d left behind.

“I want to try it again, but I’m too bricked out,” he muttered and strained his forearms, muscles and veins bulging under his skin. His hands were trembling.

“Bricked out.” I didn’t even have to ask it as a question. By now he knew that he confused the fuck out of me with practically every word he said.

“Too . . . pumped, I guess,” he shrugged. “I couldn’t hold onto that rock right now, even if I wanted to.”

“How long have you been working on it?” My eyes traced the steps of the route, heart flip-flopping as I mentally traversed the jutting lip of stone.

“Four months. Nearly every damn day, until I met you.” He smirked sideways at me as if he was blaming me for distracting him.

“And you went and wasted your time on the beginner problems.” I played along and he nodded.

“It was probably good for me, made me get back to the basics for a moment. I was getting in too deep to really see it clearly.” He clutched his hand together and I wondered if it was to stop them from shaking.

“Did you name it?”

“No, some local kid did. He died here a few months ago.”

“On this climb!?” I whispered in horror, that frightened feeling I had watching Edward up there rushing back in full force. I had apparently been spot on.

“Yeah.” He looked back up at the rock thoughtfully. “It should probably have a top rope. It’s almost too tall to be considered entirely safe without one.”

“A V15,” I remembered and he nodded again. “How high up does that scale go?” I asked, expecting him to answer with a 20 or even a 50. His response scared the ever-living shit out of me.

“16. Which is basically considered impossible.”

---

We left Jasper and Alice lying in the grass near the Passion Pit and hiked further into the woods, each of us carrying a crash pad. I was working on a new problem, one I picked simply because of the name. Damned If She Do was nestled clear up at the base of the cliff, just high enough that you could see over the tree tops and the horizon stretched out like one of those paintings they bolt to the walls in hotel rooms. A little too picturesque to be plausible. The rock was a soft muted rose color, freshly broken off and its edges weren’t worn smooth by the wind or the rain yet.

I’d torn a callus clean off here a few days ago and was harboring a grudge.

I tried a couple of times, getting mysteriously caught halfway up which frustrated the fuck out of me because I’d gotten a lot farther the day the rock ate my hand. I fell to the crash pad in a huff, full of disgust, and scrambled to my feet. Dunking my hand into my chalk bag to hide my annoyance.

“Take this off. It’s snagging on the rock.” Edward fingered the hem of my t-shirt, loose cotton fabric that draped loosely around me, and he was right. It was catching on the rough face of the rock and probably only impeding my progress. I gulped down my morality and shed the shirt, trying not to feel like he was staring, which was impossible because he was. Fair, but only because I totally stared at him when he was shirtless, which was often. He’d never seen me quite this unclothed before and while I was wearing a sports bra that mashed my boobs down to half their size, I was certainly displaying a lot more skin than I ever had before.

I made it by that elusive spot due to my lack of clothing, only to get stuck two holds up. The rock face was practically an overhang, angled out over the ground just enough that I had to grip even harder with my fingers to even keep myself on the wall, much less move anywhere. I was just about to attempt for the next hold when I felt his fingers on my back.

Just barely.

Pressed softly to the skin just below my rib cage.

Lord, help me to focus. Please.

I was sure he’d probably done this before, hovered his hand behind me for support incase I came unhinged, but this was the first time it was skin to skin and I could barely concentrate on anything else. I let go of the rock with a gasp and he caught me under the arms, lowering me to the mat which really only made me slide slowly down the length of his entire body.

Hot skin to hot skin.

He stepped away from me the moment my feet touched the pad and hunched his shoulders up around his ears while he crouched to dig industriously through his bag. He pulled out a toothbrush and I wondered if he wanted to brush his teeth before he kissed me.

Wait, what?

“Let’s clean up that hold for you. It looks like a bummer.” He stepped up the rock with the stem of the toothbrush between his teeth, placing his hands deliberate and sturdy on the spots I barely felt like I could get a grip on. It was like watching a wild animal in its natural environment.

A mountain lion plodding through the tree tops with practiced comfort.

“You climb like a mountain lion,” I blurted, without even really meaning to and even though he didn’t look down at me, I saw him grin to himself when he pulled the toothbrush from between his teeth and started brushing at the rock. Bummer around these parts only meant that the hold was rough rock, uncomfortable (or more so than normal) and would probably tear the skin off your hand.

He didn’t need to know that the hold wasn’t the reason I let go.

“Well, you climb like a ballerina,” he retorted and I tried to imagine what I looked like when I climbed. Ballerina was actually the very last connection I would have made, and I hadn’t even seen myself.

“I do not.”

“Yeah, you do. Just like Rose. It must be a girl thing.”

“And Jasper? What does he climb like?”

“Like a damn mathematician. He has to plot out the whole thing in his head before he’ll even try it, and the entire time he has this look on his face like he can’t remember the formula for gravity.”

I’d watched Jasper a lot over the last few weeks and Edward’s observation made total sense. Jasper took a lot of time at the base of the rock before he climbed, much more than Edward. He would sit and stare at the problem for an hour, his eyes jumping and his muscles flexing until he was ready. Which could come out of nowhere, mind you. He’d stand without warning and float up the rock like the laws of physics didn’t apply to him. He was the king of ‘on sighting’ and that was why he was so impressed with my Lock and Key triumph.

“Emmett is like a heavyweight.” Edward was still brushing the rock, sounding amused. “He just grabs on and bear-hugs himself to the top. He doesn’t call it Pebble Wrestling for nothing.”

This was quite the odd group I’d stumbled across. A mountain lion who had an obvious grudge against clothing. A mathematician with a thing for iridescent sparkles. And a wrestler who just might as well be a giant and probably gave great bear hugs. I hoped this Rose girl wouldn’t think that there was only room for one ballerina in this mix, and wondered where the hell a fairy with a serious case of childhood envy was going to fit in.

---

When I got home, I turned to examine myself in the hallway mirror and there they were.

Edward’s fingerprints, powdery and a little smudged, in a fan pattern across my skin.

I spent the entire night rolling around in bed to my chalk-dusted fantasies.

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