by Ruthie Knox
She laced her fingers through his. She wasn’t explaining herself well. Being honest enough. “I thought about how it is when we’re alone together, how easy it is to laugh with you, how effortless things are in the bedroom…and I thought I was making a mistake. That there had to be a way we could make this work, and I simply wasn’t being thoughtful about it. I have a home in England, but I could get a place in New York, and maybe we’d be able to travel together or spend part of our time together that way. Or when I’m writing this book, whatever it ends up being, I could write where you are, or you could be where I am.”
Rosemary paused to take a breath. Kal was so quiet. She didn’t know what he was thinking. “I guess I’d like to believe it means something,” she said. “That the way I feel about you means something. But it’s hard to imagine what we’re meant to do next.”
“The way you feel about me?” he asked.
She didn’t know that she ought to say it, but she said it nonetheless. “Love.”
Love was the word she’d avoided saying, because it was one thing to know that she felt it and quite another to declare it to Kal on a boat in Wisconsin. Love implied some kind of obligation. Love created vulnerability.
Love was a mess.
“I love you,” she said. “For whatever that’s worth.”
Kal stepped behind her and put his arms around her. She leaned into him, remembering the first time she’d been this close to him on the evacuation helicopter, devastation below, Kal’s forehead pressed to hers.
It’s going to be okay, he’d told her.
Rosemary didn’t know if it would. Was her heart meant to feel like this, so heavy and burdened and dark?
“I love you, too,” he said. “For whatever that’s worth.”
The words didn’t make her heart any lighter, but her body responded with a hum of rightness in her skin where Kal touched her.
They loved each other. It was no small thing.
He sighed against her neck. “I’d take a desert island with you over”—he gestured at the water, at Wisconsin—“all that. What’s in front of us.”
“Is it so bad, what’s in front of us?”
She wanted him to tell her it wasn’t. She wanted to hear that they were lucky to have found each other and the future would work itself out.
“Well, tomorrow there’s Manitowoc and you figuring out how to make things right with your kid. After that, there’s picking up my mom and driving back to New York. Then figuring out when you’re inevitably going to have to leave and head to London, and how we’ll be together, if I’m going with you or you’re coming back, or we’re on Skype every night just to feel connected. It sounds good if you want to get a place in New York, but I’ve got my family. I can’t just step away from that—there’s my sisters to watch out for and the business, even if I can transition some of that to my brothers eventually. After that, it’s where are you going next, what mountain are you heading off to and whether I’m going to want to be there. Maybe I even end up doing another project in Nepal. I can’t manage something like that from England, you know? I’d have to be in-country.” Kal sighed. “It’s just…what would I have to do if we want to be together?”
If.
That was the part that was making Rosemary’s heart so heavy—that if. If it would be worth it to be this vulnerable at this stage of her life, to rearrange herself for love, to fit love into her plans and make room for it. If she wanted to. If Kal did.
It didn’t feel good, listening to him list off all the reasons it might be too complicated, too difficult.
“Can you imagine a way to figure it out and be happy?” she asked.
He kissed the side of her neck, his lips warm, his arms solid around her. “It’s not the best timing in the world. I’ve got a lot of personal shit to sort out.”
“Your work.”
“Yeah, and my family, too. I had a talk with my mom after we dropped you at the airport. It was…intense.”
“Good intense?”
“I think so. I’m not sure yet. Hearing her story at Jigme’s, and talking with her today. It’s a lot to process.”
Process it with me.
Talk to me.
Use me.
“I understand,” she said. “I’m in the same place, in a way. Trying to sort things out with Beatrice and decide what I’m going to do if I’m not going to climb the Seven Summits.”
“You’re not?”
“I’m not.”
“For sure you’re not?”
“I still have to speak with Indira, but I’ve made my mind up. It’s not the right path for me. They’ll be able to find someone to take my spot who belongs there.”
Gently, Kal turned her toward him. “How does that make you feel?”
“Mixed?”
“Selfishly, I’m glad to hear it.”
“You’d rather I not climb mountains.”
“I’d rather you not die on a mountain, mostly.”
He kissed her, his mouth opening over hers, his tongue delving deep, and Rosemary wanted to want this. She wanted to surrender to this moment and feel relieved, open to his desire for her safety, his desire for her.
She wanted to. But she felt herself stiffening and drawing back. “What if I hadn’t decided this way? Would you still be willing to be with me if I were climbing? Or would you assume I was crazy or stupid to put my life at risk?”
“Rosemary—”
“I’m not sure I can be loved like this. Where it’s fine when I make one decision but not another. Where every day I have to wonder if I’m being someone worthy of love.”
“That’s not what I said.”
“I know, but it’s what I feel. I feel…”
Trapped.
That was the word, but she didn’t say it aloud, because she didn’t want to fight with Kal. The fight was looming over them, her heart racing with the offense she’d taken at his comment about her decision not to climb—and, if she was being honest, with the pain of listening to him tick off a list of all the ways her life was too complicated for him to fit himself into it.
She loved him, for what it was worth.
He loved her, for what it was worth.
Surely they could set aside the inevitable argument and find a way to make it worth more than it sounded like it was in this moment, at the end of a long day, in the middle of this dark water.
“I think we need to go step by step with this,” she said. His hands were at her elbows, his expression so dark it made her want to run. Rosemary let out a slow breath. “If we look at our decisions one at a time and take it slowly—figure it all out rationally…” The pressure to look away from him got the best of her. She glanced in the direction they were heading and saw lights. Shoreline.
“One at a time,” Kal repeated. “That sounds doable.”
“Our next decision point is where we’d like to spend the night. Should we push on to Manitowoc, or would you like to find a hotel here?”
“Let’s stay here.”
“All right. Do you want to look up lodging on your phone, or shall I?”
They carried on that way, peacefully, rationally, as the boat churned to the shore and docked. One decision point after the next until they had found their hotel and checked in, located their room, navigated the key into the lock and their luggage into place. Kal decided to take a shower. Rosemary decided to flop onto the bed and study the plaster rosette on the ceiling.
It should have helped to have a plan.
It shouldn’t have made her feel as though she had to push down hard against her chest with both hands to prevent herself from bursting into tears.
She turned on the television. When he came out of the shower, flushed and damp, with a towel wrapped around his waist, he laid down beside her on the bed. “Look.” She gestured at the screen. “It’s our friend the survivalist.”
The producers had dropped him on top of a snowy ridgeline this time, with only a length of rope and basic survival tools. He
wore shorts and seemed delighted by his predicament.
Kal extended his arm along the back of her pillow. Rosemary settled into his nook and draped her arm across his bare stomach.
“What do you think this guy was like before they gave him a TV show?” Kal asked.
“Exactly like this. Probably he never had any mates in school, because he spent all his time crouching in the corner of the school yard trying to make fire with a flint and steel.”
“At school lunch, the other kids were like, ‘Trade me for peanut butter and jelly?’ and he was like, ‘No way, I’m going to eat this Korean War ration I bought at the surplus store.’ ”
“Or he would supply his own lunch. A brick of suet sprinkled with nutritious seeds, perhaps.”
“Which was actually a finch feeder he stole from some old lady’s backyard.”
“A finch feeder he foraged,” Rosemary corrected.
“Right, foraged. How much you want to bet he forages dinner from the crew’s luggage while they’re sleeping?”
“He should forage himself a sleeping bag so he doesn’t freeze his ballocks off.”
Kal was grinning at her—the old grin, almost, with the old lightness in his eyes. Nearly. Rosemary smiled back, because she loved him. For whatever it was worth.
He muted the television, then threaded his fingers through her hair and tugged her closer.
Their kiss was hunger and relief. His body still hot from the shower, smooth skin over hard muscle. They’d avoided a fight, found a way to lighten the space around them enough to make room for this. A physical confirmation that everything would be okay.
She gave it her all. Straddled him, kissed him deeply with her hand on his neck. When he sat partway up to urge her onto her back, she let herself be flipped, let him take control, let desire lead the way.
This part, they’d always known how to do. Two bodies in peak form, two adults with plenty of practice. He moved down between her legs, showing her what he could give her with his mouth, as she showed him that she knew how to surrender. He brought her to orgasm with his tongue and his fingers, took the condom he’d placed on the table by the bed and rolled it on, moved inside her body slowly, his eyes on hers, his expression a demand that she feel with him, be with him, take him in.
Rosemary was sweat-slick, knees trembling beneath his hot palms. She pulled him down to lie on top of her, to kiss her as he thrust, until neither of them had the presence of mind to do more than breathe together, until it became impossible to breathe and she had to bite.
She bit his lip. He put his thumb in her mouth and she bit that instead, the callused pad against her tongue as she squeezed her eyes tight shut and focused on friction, sensation, pressure, to bring herself to orgasm.
She held on to it for as long as she possibly could, urged on by Kal’s moans, his hurried final thrusts, his need.
She couldn’t make it last forever. She wished she could.
Rosemary wished she knew a way to keep her body from cooling, her pulse from slowing, the heavy weight from settling back over her heart—twice as heavy now, because as the sex hormones banked she felt more certain than ever that everything would not, in fact, be okay.
One decision at a time only led to bad decisions.
If she kept this up with Kal, she would make one bad decision after the next. She would give him her body and her heart, and she would tear herself to pieces in the process.
It should have helped to have a plan, but it didn’t. Sometimes love wasn’t enough.
Chapter 23
Kal wanted to leave.
He’d never wanted to leave after sex. Maybe half an hour after, with women he didn’t know very well. But definitely he’d never come and then seconds later started to fantasize about getting up and putting on his clothes and walking out of the room.
It was a crazy impulse. He loved Rosemary. He’d been beyond excited to pick her up at the airport, to have another day with her and a chance at more. It felt bad, though, their bodies still tangled up together, her hair in his face.
He wanted to leave the hotel room worse than he’d wanted to get his ass off Everest after the avalanche. Something bad was coming.
Rosemary sniffled. She wiped at her eyes. Crying.
“What is it?”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Okay.”
It wasn’t, though, obviously. She kept crying, which made it increasingly awkward and wrong that they were naked, because when you were naked and one person was crying the other person was definitely supposed to do something about it. Something other than say “Okay.”
The TV was still on, the sound muted, the survivalist show wrapping up with credits and previews of the next episode’s shenanigans. He thought about restoring the volume. Getting under the covers. Watching TV while Rosemary cried.
He turned onto his side, propping himself up on his elbow. “Probably it’s not okay, though,” he said.
“I don’t know why I’m crying.” She wiped at her eyes with the back of her hand.
Kal fished around in his laundry and offered her his T-shirt. “Here.”
“Thank you.”
She said it like she always did—looking right in his eyes—and it broke his heart right open.
He knew why she was crying. It was the same reason he felt panicked and angry: it wasn’t working. It wouldn’t work. The idea that they could one-decision-after-the-next themselves into some kind of happy ending was bullshit. The two of them were over before they’d properly even gotten started, because they didn’t have a future and nobody was going to come along and hand them one.
They made no sense. The Sherpa dude from Queens and the patrician blonde from the UK, the ice doctor and the mountain climber, the guy who’d meant to save the world and lost track of how and the woman who’d wanted to conquer the Seven Summits so she could find herself.
Rosemary put his T-shirt on. Kal located his jeans and suited himself up for battle.
“You want me to take a guess?” he asked.
“Not really.”
“I’m guessing you’re trying to figure out our future again.”
She finger-combed her hair, her eyes on her bare knee. “We’re only going to hurt each other if we’re not careful.”
That revved him up. “I was careful not to put too much pressure on you when I left you at the airport, careful not to say too much or the wrong things when I got you back in the car, careful to say yes to your boat idea because it was what you wanted to do, careful not to ask you too much or say the wrong thing at the wrong time. How much more careful can we be, Rosemary?”
“That’s my point, though, we can’t. We can’t keep being careful and trying not to break anything and expect to be able to—to love each other properly. And we can’t…not be careful.”
“Because?”
“Because I already know what you want, and it isn’t me.”
The speed and depth of his anger surprised him. “If you know everything all of a sudden, tell me what I want, Rosemary, because I sure as fuck don’t know, any more than I know what you want.”
“You made it clear on the boat—you want to help your family. You want to know what your role in the world is. Maybe you want to go back to Nepal, but you aren’t saying, ‘Help me figure it out. I want to be with you wherever you are. I want to take care of you, and for you to take care of me, and I want to tell you everything. I want us to work this out together.’ You aren’t—”
“Who says that stuff to someone they just met?”
“Am I someone you just met?”
Kal shoved his hands into his pockets. “I don’t know. I’m not sure what we are.”
“Yes, well, I know what we’re not.”
“Enlighten me.”
“We’re not willing.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means there’s love, and then there’s something more than love, and the something more is about being willin
g to love completely. We’re not anywhere near completely, Kal. We like each other, maybe we do love each other, but all you’re thinking about is what’s next for you. You said goodbye and it was about what you were willing to give me and what you had to hold back for yourself. I just don’t think—”
“Hang on, last time I checked we were two people. Don’t you have a completely, too? Because you were completely willing to get on that plane—”
“I didn’t.”
“—and you were completely willing to drag me back to Wisconsin on another chauffeur errand without taking ten minutes to ask if it was what I wanted to do. Everything you have to say about the future is completely about your plans, where you’re going to live, the apartment you’ll maybe buy if you feel like it. You interviewing my mom is what you want. You dragging me to Wisconsin is about what you want. And tomorrow, and the next day, I’m willing to bet they’re going to be about what you want, too, because you haven’t one time woken up in the morning and said to me, ‘Hey, Kal, what did you have in mind for today?’ ”
“Maybe that’s because you’ve never told me a single thing about yourself that I didn’t have to pry out of you.”
“Or you can just pry it out of my mom or my baby sister, since that’s turning out to be easier.”
Rosemary stared at a spot on the carpet. Her cheeks were scarlet, her chest rising and falling rapidly beneath his T-shirt. “I didn’t want to do this.”
“Neither did I.”
She looked at him. It was awful.
So much more awful than it had been at the airport, because they’d said the things they’d been trying not to say for days.
“It’s done, though,” she said. “Isn’t it.”
It wasn’t a question. Kal didn’t have to answer it.
He rifled a shirt out of his bag, grabbed the car keys and a key to the hotel room, and walked away.