Leaving Everest

by Westfield, Megan

  After dinner, the Sherpas converted the inside of the big top to a movie theater so we could watch the Yosemite rock climbing film April, Theo, and Ernesto had worked on last spring. It wouldn’t release until this summer, but their boss at Walkabout had given them permission to show it here. Our Global clients were beyond excited for this privilege.

  Doc handed back my heavily marked-up résumé as we stood in line for popcorn.

  “That bad?”

  “It’s your first one. Make those changes, and you’ll be all set.”

  “Thanks, Doc.”

  “Anytime. Still on for some primping and nail painting tomorrow?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Great. I’ll tell the guys to find a different tent for their morning video games.”

  Luke and I found each other when it was time to take seats, picking two chairs in the last row, up against the tent wall. The chairs were close together, close enough that nobody would be able to tell our legs were pressed together on purpose.

  The movie was breathtaking. Yosemite was beautiful, and the climbs were of a scale beyond anything I’d ever seen. If I could climb walls like that, the doors would be open to a whole new arena of alpine climbing. Mountains like the sheer-faced Meru in Pakistan, or even the notorious Compressor route on Cerro Torre. I exhaled wistfully.

  “What?” Luke whispered.

  “I want to go there.”

  “Me, too.”

  “Gotta learn to aid climb first.”

  “He could teach us.”

  At the moment, the he on the screen was Josh Knox.

  I elbowed Luke for being ridiculous.

  “He’s a good guy. He would, I bet.”

  “You know Josh Knox?”

  “Yeah.”

  “No.”

  “Yes.”

  Wow. I guess it made sense, considering Luke knew Theo, who was the coworker of Josh Knox’s girlfriend.

  We settled back into the movie, watching a scene shot at this gorgeous storybook lake on top of a cliff with trees, grass, and flowers, and a waterfall in the distance. It was beautiful here in the Himalayas but in such a different way than the scenery on the screen. Here, there was no plant life higher than the village of Dingboche. It was just rock, ice, and snow on a scale unlike anywhere else on earth. Yosemite, on the other hand, was alive.

  Ever so slowly, Luke snuck his hand into my pocket and threaded his fingers through mine. He traced the inside ridge of my thumb, making tingles run through my body. I pressed my thigh tighter against his, and he hooked his toe around my ankle. It was torture being this close to him yet being able to touch in only this limited way.

  We unhooked ourselves as the credits rolled. The Walkabout crew held a question and answer session afterward. Once it became clear the clients’ questions were never going to stop, Luke nudged me and then slunk out the side door. I followed a couple of minutes later.

  As soon as I stepped outside into the black night, Luke grabbed my hand. This took me by surprise and knocked me off-balance, but he caught me mid-stumble and pulled me into his body. I was sure he was going to blow it for both of us by kissing me right there in the open, but he moved his head to the side at the last moment. “I’ll come to your tent as soon as it’s clear,” he whispered.

  Then he let go and walked away.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Luke shook my tent with a one-two rhythm and then crawled inside. In an instant, his hands were in my hair and our mouths were together like it had been years since we’d seen each other.

  He was leaning in to me so hard that I fell back onto my sleeping bag, knocking a little of the air out of my lungs and sending a jolt of pain through my right shoulder. All of which was of no significance compared to the effect of him, planked over me with his intoxicating, freshly showered scent and his lips matching my yearning for him.

  I ran my hands down the rippled muscles of his back to the sliver of warm skin where his shirt had ridden up. I let my palm slip around to his stomach, where the band of bare skin was wider. I wiggled my hand until it was fully in contact with his stomach, warm and soft, taut and firm.

  What would it be like to have his hands on my stomach like this? Or his bare skin pressed against mine?

  I had a fleeting out-of-body memory of Luke and I as kids, licking lollipops on the stone wall behind Mingma’s. Sometimes it was as if my mind hadn’t caught up with all that had changed between us, like the two versions of Luke couldn’t be happening at once. He was the kid with the lollipop, but he was also this: the sexy, incredibly fit man with the warm skin that I uniquely had the privilege of touching in this most intimate way.

  I put my other hand on his stomach, sliding both hands up his shirt and around to his shoulder blades. He followed when I directed his body down fully on top of me, his tongue reaching deeper into my mouth.

  He didn’t stay this way for long, shifting to his side as if not wanting to squish me. I immediately missed his warmth.

  “Want to try something?” he asked, his voice low and husky.

  “Yeah.” I had no idea what was about to happen, but I trusted him.

  “Okay. Shine your phone over here.”

  I picked it up from where it had slipped to the side, facedown and still open to the book I had been reading. I aimed it at him. He was pulling a sleeping bag out of a stuff sack. I’d been so preoccupied that I hadn’t realized he’d brought anything with him.

  He examined the zipper on my sleeping bag, and then the one on his.

  “It should work,” he said. “It’s a good thing Winslowe Expeditions and Global both use Esplanade gear.”

  He unzipped both our bags, then connected one side of his to the corresponding side of mine. He took off his down jacket and crawled inside. I turned off my phone light and followed suit.

  We lay on our sides facing each other. We weren’t touching, but the heat radiating from his body was as strong as a caress. I scooted closer. Tentatively, he reached out and pulled me against him. We both had clothes on, but in a world where we were perpetually in puffy jackets, windproof pants, Gore-Tex, crampons, and helmets, we might as well have been skin-to-skin.

  Without the usual bulk of our layers, Luke was physically smaller than he always seemed, but he was strong. I mean, of course he was strong. Look at the pace he could keep on the mountain. It’s just that with us being practically the same height, I tended to think of us as the same in everything, but here in the conjoined sleeping bags, there was no denying that with the solidness of his torso and the mass of his shoulders and back, physiologically, he was man to my woman. No wonder he’d beaten me at ice ax pull-ups: his body was as dense as a boxing bag.

  It occurred to me that I had never seen Luke in less than a T-shirt and shorts. Oh, but to be in Railay Beach together someday, wearing practically nothing as we swam and body surfed after a day of rock climbing. To stand chest-high in that warm aqua water with my legs wrapped around his waist as we kissed, our mouths and bodies an indecipherable swirl of skin and heat and wet.

  I rested my head on his lower arm, intoxicated by that thought, his proximity, and the true form of his body. He put his arm around me, and we lay like that for a long time, simply holding each other as our body heat blended and surrounded us inside the sleeping bag.

  Again it hit me that this was Luke lying with me in this perfect paradise high in the Himalayas. This was the same Luke who liked to tease me about babying Tinkerbell and using English measurements instead of metric, and who attempted to pull sneaky moves in cards and checkers whenever I was distracted.

  As he absentmindedly twisted a lock of my hair, my heart swelled with such happiness that it was deliciously tight against my breastbone. Everything between us still baffled me, but I loved it. I tucked closer into him.

  “How did this happen?” I whispered.

  “This as in us?”

  I nodded.

  “It’s hard to say.” His voice was slightly husky and unfamiliar again—a
voice I wanted more of, a voice I wanted to know intimately. “There have been so many times over the years, where we were together in the Khumbu, then apart for a long time. But for me, anyway, every time and all the times in between, I guess it was the fact that my feelings didn’t disappear just because you did.”

  I smiled.

  As if he could sense this, he ran his thumb across my lower lip, tracing my smile lines first on the left, then on the right, which made me smile even wider. When he kissed me, his lips were pulled tight, and I knew he was smiling, too.

  It took me a second to get oriented. The sun was starting to light the tent—my Base Camp tent with all the pictures and decorations—but Luke was here with me, in the same sleeping bag, with his body curled around mine and our heads sharing my pillow.

  The double-wide opening at the top of the sleeping bag let in too much cold air, and sometime during the night, we’d put our down jackets and fleece hats back on, but our legs were still nothing but long underwear.

  “Morning, MiniBoss,” Luke said. “Just so you know, you have drool all over your cheek.”

  Oh god. I slunk down in our double sleeping bag so that my head was hidden inside.

  “Ems!”

  I didn’t move.

  “Oh, come on.” He pulled back the sleeping bag.

  My hair flew everywhere from the static when I sat up. I patted my face, checking for drool but didn’t feel anything. I shot him a scowl. “Maybe you should get out of here before everyone wakes up and catches us.”

  “It’s five a.m. We have some time.”

  I lay back down in our cozy cocoon. Finally I could look at him. Really look at him, for once, in daylight. One side of his face was crosshatched with pillow wrinkles, and his bangs stuck out oddly from beneath his hat. His smile was light and playful.

  He glanced at something on the ceiling. I followed his eyes to the photo of the snowy rhododendron. I wondered if he recognized it as the same flower he’d held steady for me. “How come you never post any of this kind of stuff on Circ?”

  I shrugged.

  “And you’ve never posted a single Circ with you in it.”

  I groaned. “Let’s not go into the self-Circ thing again.”

  “No, not a self-Circ but one where you’re in it for a second. You don’t even have a picture of yourself on your profile.”

  “Not my thing.”

  “It’s probably good.”

  “Why?”

  “Well, you know my ex-girlfriend? If she had seen a picture of you, she wouldn’t have been cool with #YCCM.”

  “Luke!” My face was on fire.

  “It’s true. I had to tell her you were like a sister to me.”

  “Eeew.” I started to scoot away, but he wouldn’t let me.

  “So…I was walking by the Swedish camp yesterday, and they have a bunch of skis here. What do you say we borrow some and go ski Milam Peak today?”

  “Nope. Sorry, I can’t. We’ll have to wait until tomorrow.”

  “Why?”

  “Doc and I have plans,” I said.

  He scoffed. “For what?”

  “Hanging out. And painting our fingernails.”

  “Seriously? You’re going to skip Milam Peak for nail polish?”

  “Not skip. Delay. And, yes.”

  He grabbed my hand and held it up for examination.

  “What?”

  “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you with nail polish.”

  “That’s probably true.”

  I don’t think I’d had nail polish on since…the day of the arrest, actually. Being right-handed, Amy had trouble painting that hand with her left, so she always had me do it. When I was done, she would paint my nails and toes despite my silent wishes that she wouldn’t. I was in Nepal with Dad before the last of the flakes from that final application had chipped off.

  My stomach grew restless at the memories, and I hated that it did. As a child, Amy’s arrest and my role in it had been traumatic, but in the bigger picture, it had been a godsend. So many years had passed between then and now. Why, then, did thoughts about my past life in Washington have a strong enough effect on me that I now wanted to go sprint hills until I’d sweated all the icky feelings away?

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Doc had successfully commandeered the UW team tent for the morning, and when I arrived, she already had her cache of beauty supplies spread out on the table along with a lit lilac-scented candle.

  “Don’t give me that look,” she said. “I carried all this to Everest Base Camp with my own two legs.”

  I’d only ever known Doc here at Base Camp, on those Alps trips with Dad, and that one time she’d joined us in Railay Beach. Seeing her with all these products made me wonder what kind of primping she did when she was at home in Seattle. I guess I’d assumed that, being a surgeon, she didn’t fuss with all that stuff, but perhaps she wore makeup and dyed her hair and spent an hour each morning in front of the mirror like Amy had.

  “Don’t you feel bad about not inviting Claudia?” I asked.

  “Not at all. She’s a great woman, but we won’t see her again after this season. You and I, we go way back.”

  We took our camp boots and socks off and washed our feet with medical wet wipes before coating them with a travel-sized bottle of nail conditioner and filing the tops of our toenails.

  “Emily, what are you doing?”

  “What?”

  “You’re going to shred your nails doing that.”

  I watched her for a minute, then mimicked how she was working the file. Doc laughed and shook her head.

  She had brought foam toe-spreaders, and we put these on before applying two coats of a ridiculously bright red-orange called My Chihuahua Bites. Just as we were switching to our hands, my phone chimed with a #YCCM Circ.

  I was dying to see it but resisted so as not to be rude.

  “Aren’t you going to get that?” Doc asked.

  I glanced down, quickly recognizing the location as the start of the Kala Pattar trail. There were clients in the background, which meant Luke must have gotten suckered into leading a hike today. At first, I was confused because this Circ wasn’t a high point, real or contrived. But then, I realized it was a job-related #DawgsOnEverest post in which he’d snuck #YCCM into the hashtag list. I couldn’t help smiling.

  “Oh, a guy! You didn’t tell me there’s a guy. You’re just like Greg. Unless you ask point-blank, you’ll never get an answer. So, where did you meet him? Let me guess, a super sexy Aussie climber from your last trip to Thailand?”

  My cheeks heated. I shook my head.

  “Oh, wait a minute. This is all making sense.”

  Shit. What if she suspected Luke? We’d both be fired.

  “What’s making sense?” I said to stall while I tried to think of a diversion.

  “Luke.”

  “No.”

  She gave me a look. “I was noticing how well you two were getting along as you cut those eggplants the other day.”

  “No! It’s nothing. We’re just—”

  “This is adorable.” She put down her nail file. “So adorable. Don’t worry. Your secret’s safe with me. You guys are perfect. He used to ask about you every time he came over to my house for dinner.”

  She hopped out of her chair and was soon digging through the first aid box in the corner of the tent. “This calls for extra primping. We’ll do your hair, too. How long has it been since you got it cut?” She found a pair of surgical scissors and raised them victoriously in the air.

  “A long time,” I said, self-consciously stroking my hair. At least I’d showered yesterday, otherwise she’d probably recommend I shave it all off.

  “It’s not your fault. Greg treats you like a guy. But I’m serious about the trim. You could use it. Not that you need to do something other than be yourself for a guy. There’s a happy medium. Let’s find that.”

  “All right, Mom.”

  “I’m not old enough to be your mom
.”

  “You could be, if you were a teen mom.”

  “Emily, I was one hundred percent focused on grades in high school. I didn’t sleep with anyone until…well…your dad. I was never going to be a teen mom.”

  I almost dropped the bottle of top coat. “Did you just say you and Dad—”

  “You know this.”

  “No, I don’t know this.”

  “Does that man tell you anything? No, actually, I’m not surprised. The president should give you two the nuclear release codes. You’re harder to crack than a safe.”

  I didn’t know what to ask first. It made perfect sense, but how could I have never picked up on it, even if Dad hadn’t said anything?

  “He always said you were his friend,” I offered. Actually, he’d always said that she was our friend.

  “That Greg!”

  “I can’t believe Dad has a girlfriend.”

  “Had. It’s been over for a while now.” She put my hands on the table and brushed the polish across my fingernails.

  My head was still playing catch-up. When had it started? When had it stopped? Those trips to the Alps, where we’d stayed in an actual hotel? She had probably been paying for everything! This was horrifying. My dad was such a kind spirit—how had he let her do that?

  “Don’t feel bad for me, I’m the one who broke it off,” she said, misjudging my expression.

  “When did it stop?”

  “It was the winter before the icefall avalanche.”

  I frowned. That’s when the Alps trips had stopped, and Doc hadn’t come to Railay that year as planned.

  “The long distance was too much, and there was never going to be an end to it,” she said.

  No wonder Dad was adamant about me exploring careers other than guiding. He’d started Winslowe Expeditions as a way to support me, and in doing that, it had cost him a relationship with a beautiful, accomplished woman whom we both adored. I covered my face with my hands.