Tuesday, December 17, 2013

Mind The Gap / 6



Three weeks later, Bella on-sighted the Lock and Key.

It was a tricky climb, one that she picked out, even though I tried to talk her into something a little more sensible. It took her a single day to send the Straight Edge Of The Blade, four days to figure out the Mind the Gap and she flashed the Modern Man’s Hustle with only the barest of beta from me.

Right now, she was stuck.

Peel off,” I called up to her, hands cupped around my mouth. Part of the reason I didn’t like this climb was that it got her so far up off the ground. She was hovering well over my head and if she looked down now, that vertigo thing was bound to catch up with her.

“Will you just speak in normal human words, please. I can’t understand a fucking thing you say when you talk in tongues,” she hissed, voice muffled against the rock.

I’d only come to notice how strangely we talked after Bella showed up. I regularly used terms that felt completely natural to me, words I’d said a million times out here and that had been understood by everyone around me, but would confuse her none the less. We had an awful lot of slang, and it was usually when she was stuck on the face of a rock and I was trying to beta her through it that she would get frustrated with it. Like now.

“Just let go, Bella,” I called up to her, resorting to layman’s terms.

“I’m not gonna just let go.”

She had a stubborn streak that ran as deep as a vein of marble through a chunk of granite. Embedded and never coming loose. It probably helped her, the absolute unwillingness to fail spurring her onward, and I spent most of our time together trying not to be completely amazed at how fast she was picking this up. Her movements were becoming more fluid, less awkward and a bit more confident with each problem she completed. She could pull on her shoes with ease now and had even figured out how to tape up her own hands, a trick that took me years to figure out how to do solo.

Those taped fingers were currently groping blindly for the next hold, which was easily a foot out of her reach.

While I had been able to reach the spot easily, her short stature was working against her this time, setting down a one-shot in the middle of her climb that hadn’t been there for me at all. This was one of those moves where you have only one chance to get it right or you’d lose it all and come tumbling back to earth. She was stuck at what I considered to be the hardest part, fingers locked in a gaston hold, tucked sideways into a vertical lip of stone and her toe cammed into a crack in the rock that pulled her knee up to her hip. Spread-eagle against the stone. She was still searching for that hold, no idea that it was way too far above her.

I’d need to show her how to dyno before she tried this one.

“It’s too far.” I called up at her, taking a step back and readying myself for her to bail off the rock, which meant that I had a decent view of what happened next. Even though I saw it, I still don’t believe it actually happened. I swear she straight up sunk her fingers right into the rock, as though it was really made of sand and not solid earth.

Just pushed them into the stone like she had magical super powers and could turn concrete to liquid.

She used her impossible grip on the stone to haul herself upward, that stubborn thing kicking in again and propelling her to the top. I scanned the rock where her hand had been, looking for the soft spot she must be leaving behind and saw it, dumbfounded all over again. I remembered the hole, but only fleetingly because I wouldn’t have been able to shove my pinky in there, let alone enough of a stronger finger for it to be of any use to me. I couldn’t wrap my head around what I had just seen, still sort of sure that I’d seen her set her fingers into the stone as easily as dipping her hand into water.

If I didn’t believe that she might be too good to be real, I fucking believed it now.




Jasper was being a total dipshit when we found him.

Nearly six feet off the ground and well beyond the edge of his crash pad without a spotter in sight. He knew better.

“You need a spotter. That’s too Highball to do on your own.” I tried not to sound like too much of an asshole, but it didn’t work and I practically growled at him. His mouth tightened but he didn’t respond. Everyone knew that James might have been ok if he’d had just bothered to bring someone with him. That self-righteous-ego thing must mean that you’re above and beyond such trivialities, but lying in a pool of your own blood for a couple of hours before someone stumbles across you is a great way to sign your own death warrant, if you asked me.

“Emmett’s climbing with Rose on Coffin Nails and you’ve been off with Sparkles here, doing god knows what.” Jasper shrugged in defiance, silently calling me and Emmett out for ditching him. Not only had Jasper on-sighted Coffin Nails, but it was a route he placed himself after lots of that silent-staring thing he always did before he climbed. It was no wonder he was feeling left out, not wanting to revisit his old route, both of his boys off with their respective Gabby’s.

“She topped the Lock and Key.” I tipped my head toward Bella and saw the instant change in him, his eyes bulging in her direction.

“The Lock and Key?” He gaped at her, clearly impressed, and I saw Bella’s face do more of that scrunched up thing it did when she was angry or frustrated. So fucking cute.

“On-sight.” I couldn’t help but grin like a fool.

Dang, honey. I didn’t think you had it in you.”

There are some climbers who wouldn’t have given her the on-sight, but I couldn’t help myself. Admittedly, I had offered her something that qualified as beta, even telling her that there was crux somewhere in there would be considered by most to be a disqualification. However, she’d soundly refused any of my help and flat out told me she wanted it for herself.

Jutted jaw and all.

So I let her take it, because I was falling fast.








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