Leaving Everest

by Westfield, Megan

  “What are you talking about? What mistake?”

  “You saw. I didn’t have Phil on belay.”

  “That wasn’t a mistake. That was a judgment call.”

  I shook my head in denial. He was making excuses for me, just like he had when I told him I’d canceled my admission to Townsend College.

  “Really,” he said. “I might not have even gotten a rope out at all in that spot, and I know for a fact Thom and Tyler wouldn’t have. It’s practically flat. And with a serac having just fallen, there’s a lot of reason to get through there as fast as you can.”

  “But I hadn’t been through the icefall yet this year. I didn’t know what was underneath the rubble and, as it turned out, it was a crevasse. If I had made a mistake like that on the Lhotse Face, Phil would be dead.”

  “It didn’t happen on the Lhotse Face.”

  “Yes, but there’s no room for error on a mountain like this. You know that as well as I.”

  “You’re shaken up,” he said. “I am, too. But you’re blowing this out of proportion. None of this was your fault.”

  His continued excuses made me even more ashamed. I had the sudden, irresistible urge to get out of the tent and away from this conversation. I reached for my boots.

  “Emily! What are you doing?”

  I pulled the tongue back on my right boot and forced my still-cold foot inside. I was too choked up to answer.

  “Why are you acting like this?” he pressed.

  “I’m having a hard time accepting how much danger I put everyone in, okay? I appreciate how you’re trying to make me feel better. And just so you know, I don’t blame you for not wanting to continue our—”

  Relationship.

  God! I couldn’t even say it aloud. I stared at the tent wall, trying to find words. “We’re friends, but you’re not obligated—”

  He dropped his hand from my arm. “What do you mean, not obligated?”

  The sharpness in his tone made me turn to him. His face was slowly reddening as he waited for me to respond. Suddenly, he understood what I had meant. He sucked in a breath.

  “Friends. Right,” he said. “So I guess we’re going to pretend like the last two nights never happened?”

  My pulse and thoughts were all over the place. Yeah, pretend like it never happened. That would be easiest. And for the best. Just forget about it all. We never should have broken the rules to begin with, and we’d have to stop at some point, anyway, since we were going different places when the season ended. I hastily laced up my boots and reached for my outer jacket.

  He touched my arm. I froze. “Don’t leave. Don’t pull away. Please. Talk to me.”

  I didn’t really want to leave. I just didn’t know what else to do. But he’d saved my life, and I owed him, so I let my jacket fall into my lap instead of putting it on.

  “Listen,” he said. “I know you don’t want anyone to see that there’s anything besides peanut butter fudge cookies and niceties inside the incredible, Swiss-tuned mountain machine that you are. You’ll play, but when it comes down to it, you’re going to show only the polite. The helpful. The considerate. I just wish you’d allow me to see everything that’s there, even if it’s messy. I wish I rated that with you.”

  “You do.”

  “Then tell me what’s going on.”

  I fiddled with a zipper pull. “I don’t know if I can explain it.”

  “Try.”

  He was silent as I considered what to say.

  “I feel like you shouldn’t have had to rescue me,” I said, finally. “I feel like it proves something.”

  “What?”

  “Well, climbing is the one thing I’m supposed to be good at—the only thing that puts me even remotely shoulder to shoulder with you—yet I had to be rescued within four hours of my first day guiding on-mountain.”

  “You are good at climbing. I know you feel like you made a mistake today, but once your nerves settle down, you’ll see that’s not how it is. And there’s no way I’m equal to you in climbing. You’re on par with some of the best out there, and you’re just getting started.”

  “I wasn’t talking about being equal in climbing. I meant life.”

  His face fell. I’d said too much.

  “You’re the daughter of the most respected climbing outfitter in the Himalayas, and I’m the son of his cook and one of his former porters.”

  “No Luke. It’s completely the opposite. Look at all the places you’ve been and how successful you are with school and work and friends and life. You want to be a doctor, and I’m not even going to college.”

  “It’s not like you think,” he said quickly. “I don’t want to be a doctor.”

  “You just switched your major for that.”

  “I know. I don’t want to be a doctor. But I am going to try my best to become one. There’s a big difference there.”

  “Why would you—”

  “It’s because of all the people who donated money for my scholarships. And everyone who helped me apply and compete, like your dad. All those good people who assumed they weren’t just providing a privileged education to one individual, but that they were contributing to something that will help the people of this region. I’ve been selfish these past two years, majoring in atmospheric sciences for no reason other than it’s what I like. But my guilty conscience eventually grew so loud that I had to listen to it.”

  I hated the heaviness in his voice. He looked at the tent ceiling briefly. “Being in the medical or dental field is the most direct way to give back, and of the two, being a doctor is slightly more palatable.”

  No. This didn’t seem right at all. “Luke…”

  He shook his head. “It is what it is.”

  I reached for his hand and intertwined my fingers with his. When he finally looked at me, his eyebrows were pulled in with worry.

  “I was terrified today when I came around the corner and saw you on the edge of that crevasse. I just kept thinking, ‘This can’t be it.’ After how long I’ve felt this way about you. And we’d just broken through. Or so I thought. You can be so hard to read, and now I’m getting the impression that you don’t feel the same way about me as I do about you. I guess it makes me feel like we are on the edge of that crevasse.”

  I tightened my grip on his hand. “I do feel that way about you.”

  “But you called us friends. That must be how you think of us.”

  “No. I thought that what happened in the icefall had changed how you saw me. And us. I was just trying to give you an out. That’s the only reason I said that.”

  He wasn’t meeting my eyes, and his hand was limp in mine. He wasn’t convinced. My breathing tightened. What could I tell him that would prove how I felt?

  “It’s been years since you’ve been just a friend to me,” I started. “Since way before the earthquake and all through our Circs. You want to know the reason I never emailed you? You were too important. I was afraid that if I emailed, it wouldn’t be the same, and you’d stop Circ-ing with me, too.”

  His expression eased from doubt to hope. My breathing got a little easier.

  He tugged gently on my hand. I followed, letting him twist me so that my back was against his chest. His head dipped to my ear. “Thank you for telling me that,” he said.

  He dipped his head farther, kissing my neck softly, just below my earlobe. Beneath his warm lips, my nerves hummed in response.

  “Saying good-bye the way we did was really hard for me,” I said.

  “You mean the earthquake?”

  “Yeah. The aftermath. With so many people dead and hurt. How everything was destroyed. It’s not like we could pick up where we left off and pretend everything was okay.”

  My voice trailed as I realized I was telling Luke things I’d never said aloud. I didn’t have a group of girlfriends. And Dad and I certainly never talked about stuff like this. I didn’t keep a diary, either. I’d never talked about this with anyone—the earthquake or my feelings for
Luke, and especially not how the two things were tied together.

  “It was almost like everything between us had all been in my imagination,” I finished.

  “I know exactly what you mean.” He wrapped his arms around me.

  “Sometimes I think that if not for that earthquake, everything might have been different.”

  “It would have been. I mean, if it were up to me.” He nudged the collar of my down jacket aside to kiss the crook of my neck. The humming spread through my body.

  “But then you were gone.”

  “So were you,” he said. “And now we’re back.”

  My stomach did a little somersault. I twisted within his arms so that I was facing him. The tips of our noses brushed as I let myself get lost in all the shades of brown in his eyes.

  “Yes, we’re back,” I said.

  He drew a hand down the side of my face to cup my jaw. Any trace of doubt in his expression was gone. The bold, confident Luke I knew so well had returned, as evidenced by the slight dip of his dimples, which quickly faded as he studied my eyes, then my lips.

  My heart jumped to overdrive. I wanted his mouth on mine more than anything I’d ever wanted in life and, finally, he gave it to me.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  The next day, all four Global teams took a leisurely high-altitude walk between Camp One and Camp Two, where we spent the night. The following day, we climbed the grueling Lhotse Face to Camp Three, then returned to Camp Two to sleep. We were spending one more night at Camp Two before going back down to Base Camp tomorrow.

  Doc had grabbed me right after breakfast this morning for a chick-flick marathon in the tent she shared with Claudia. Now it was almost dinnertime, and I was sitting between Theo and Dorje, out on the snow field behind the dining tent. Dorje was whittling a snow leopard from a chunk of wood for his granddaughter, and Theo was reading a comic book. The temperatures were mild, and the sky was deepening with the first hints of sunset. The clients were mostly still in their tents from their afternoon naps, and the few who were near us were quiet as they typed on tablets or read. It was nice. Cush.

  April’s drone flew overhead like a nosy bee. I looked up and waved.

  Theo glanced up from his comic book. “Uh. No. Let’s not wave at the camera.”

  His Walkabout walkie talkie beeped, and he put it to his ear to hear better. “I’ll tell her, April,” he replied and then turned to me. “Don’t worry. She said it was cute. But only that once, mind you.”

  April wasn’t at Camp Two with us; she flew the drone from Global’s command center in Base Camp. She’d do the same for the next rotation and the summit bid, too. Theo and Ernesto helped her on-mountain as needed with launch, recovery, and maintenance.

  Theo handed me his open bag of nacho cheese chips. I took a handful.

  “So, has it always been your dream to climb Everest?” I asked between munching.

  He snickered. A few pieces of orange chips went flying onto the snow. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to laugh. No offense. Climbing Mount Everest is great, but, no, it’s never been on the top of my list. It’s a little…much.”

  “Oh, is that so? I can arrange for you to pitch your own tent and stop having the Sherpas deliver hot towels and tea to you in the mornings,” I threatened.

  “You do and I’ll have that drone stalking you 24/7.”

  I laughed and took more chips.

  “Rock climbing’s always been more my thing,” he said. “But given this opportunity with Walkabout paying my way, hell yes, I’ll climb Mount Everest.”

  I hung out on the sun deck for a while longer, then on a whim went to help Cook-Phurba and the other Sherpas finish up with dinner, which is what I would have been doing if this were Winslowe Expeditions. Phil was passing through the kitchen tent to get a cup of tea, and seeing me there, he offered to help. To my utter surprise, he asked this in Sherpa. Jerky travel-guide phrases, but Sherpa nonetheless. The Sherpas were so shocked that they actually allowed him to help.

  Outside of the A-Team Sherpas, whom I got along with really well, I’d had little opportunity to get to know the rest of the Global Sherpas. I was having a good time cooking with this group, but I couldn’t help feeling a little disloyal to Luke, seeing as they might not have been this lively and relaxed if it were Luke in here with me instead of Phil.

  After dinner, Luke and I went straight back to our tent. The sun had already dipped behind Lhotse, but the sky was still bursting with color, making the inside of the tent glow. I crawled over to him, and when his lips touched mine, it awakened places deep inside me.

  We kissed and kissed, and it was just like those first breaths of bottled oxygen when climbing higher up on the mountain. Replenishing, energizing, and making me feel like I could do anything.

  He tugged off my hat, freed my hair from its ponytail holder, and ran his hands through it. I tried not to think about how long it had been since I’d washed it. The shadows from his eyelashes fluttered beneath his eyes as he scanned my face. From this close, he was surely seeing the light freckles across my nose and cheeks that he may not have noticed before.

  I stared into his eyes. The same eyes I’d seen so many times facing me across the checkers table—triumphant after a move or in contemplation after one of my moves. They were the same eyes that urged me faster when we were in the mountains or made me laugh just when I needed it most. Now they were simply steady, like his arm that was holding me tight.

  My breath stilled, but the rest of my body surged with desire. I kissed him with hunger.

  The light was fading fast now, necessitating us to turn on my headlamp and hang it from the ceiling. We made final trips outside to brush teeth and go to the pee area.

  “How’s your shoulder doing?” he asked as we settled in our sleeping bags.

  “Better. The ibuprofen helps.”

  “Good. No more ice ax pull-ups this season, eh?”

  “Probably not a good idea.”

  As long as I took it easy, Doc said my shoulder would be healed by the next rotation. My waist was tender where my skin had blackened into a girdle of bruises from the force of Phil’s fall, but that would soon ease up.

  Luke pulled World’s 19ers out of his pack.

  “I can’t believe you hauled that all the way up here,” I said.

  “This, coming from the person who backpacks across Southeast Asia carrying glitter and craft supplies?”

  I sat up and scooted closer so I could read the book along with him. It opened naturally across our laps to our most sacred page: a map of the routes on Cerro Torre.

  “Think a paraglide descent would work there?” I asked.

  “Maybe,” Luke said, “but you’d have to be really good at paragliding.”

  “Ever tried it?”

  “No, but I’ve thought about it. You?”

  “Dad’s a purist. He would never. But I want to.”

  “My roommate does it a lot. There’s a place up on Snoqualmie Pass. He’ll do parasurfing out in the Sound, too. He’s even experimented with paragliding in combination with backcountry skiing.”

  I laughed.

  “What?”

  “You have roommates.”

  “Seattle’s expensive. Everyone has roommates.”

  I laughed again. “I know. It’s just funny to think about.”

  “Two rooms, four guys. What could be more fun than that?”

  “Yeesh.”

  “Really, it’s not that bad. We have this awesome covered courtyard in our building where we hang out with our neighbors when it’s not raining.”

  “Sounds fun.” It was odd thinking of Luke having friends who were not me.

  “I’m sure you could find a similar setup. The UW outdoor rec center has a roommate board for Seattle. Or if you’re going to stick closer to Port Townsend, you could probably find a board like that at a climbing gym or gear shop over there.”

  “Yeah, that’s a good idea,” I said dismissively, turning to the next page of World’s 1
9ers.

  What he’d said the other night about not wanting to be a doctor had made me feel better about my own uncertain future and more on equal footing with him, but how could I account for all these other things that I couldn’t relate to? How he had a job, paid bills every month, and probably had a driver’s license, too. And the trips he did with his friends…it was total freedom in a way I’d never known and might not ever know considering that I had no money. All of this was intimidating in an entirely different way.

  “Tell me more about your life in Washington,” I said.

  “Like what?”

  “Anything.” Everything.

  “It’s nothing exciting. Classes and trying to work as many hours as I can during the week so I can be in the mountains on the weekends.”

  “It’s exciting to me. More detail, please.”

  “Like what?”

  “Which classes you’ve taken, where you study, what kind of bike you ride, what you think of McDonald’s—”

  He burst out laughing. “Okay, here goes. I mostly study at my apartment, sometimes at work if it’s slow. I bought my roommate’s old mountain bike, and I put slick tires on it for better riding in the city. I detest American fast food—they pretty much have nothing on the menu for people who were raised Buddhist and still don’t eat meat. And as for classes, I don’t want to think about school right now.”

  “Why not?”

  He groaned. “Somebody’s persistent today. I don’t want to think about it, because I register for classes in a few days, and next term is going to suck.”

  “Because of changing your major?”

  “Yeah. Instead of thermodynamics and climate science next term, I’ll have to take genetics and human anatomy.”

  “You’re really going to go through with the medical school plan even though you don’t want to?”

  “It’s not about me. That’s the whole point.” His voice was a touch rough.

  The shadows from the headlamp seemed to deepen the turmoil on his face.