“Big love,” I mouth at her, too afraid to put a voice to it and break this perfect moment.
Raquel twists again, her hand fluttering where it rests at my hip.
“Love you,” she murmurs.
If there were a clock, I’d be able to hear in the silence how long this second lasts. How it stretches out endlessly, my heart still in my chest.
Love you.
I never thought I’d hear her say those words again. Not to me. Not after everything.
They made the word bittersweet for moments like this. Bitter, because she might not have said it if she were fully awake. Because it might be the last time I ever hear her say that to me.
But the sweetness is what matters. After everything my stupid, hoping heart holds onto this: the feeling of hearing that word from Raquel’s lips.
The feeling of holding the woman I love in my arms and knowing that now, in this moment, she still loves me. Even if it’s only a dream.
I hope this night lasts forever. That’s what they say in a hundred million songs.
For the first time, I understand what the songs mean.
If this is the last time that Raquel loves me—even if it’s dreaming, even if she decides it’s a mistake—then I need it to last forever.
I could die happy in this moment. Here with her.
I don’t know how I’ll live if she decides that this isn’t what she wants.
Because I’ve tasted loss. I’ve come face to face with the end of things.
And when I was under all of that snow, it was her face there.
Hers.
Kel.
* * *
For the first night in over a year, I don’t dream.
Just like every other night in over a year, I’m alone in the bed when I wake up.
My hands wander over the sheets, my body turning. Still learning the new ways it can move, the “more” from before. As my spine heals, I can twist now, can stretch and turn.
Raquel.
The thought hits me, and that one word is everything, not just her but all of it. The feel of being inside of her, the heat of her kiss, the preciousness of her heartbeat so close to mine.
Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.
I move toward the edge of the bed, shoving myself up and moving as quickly as I can. The pain hitches my breath, but I’ve had so much worse that it hardly matters. And I’d still move like this, now, if I had a broken leg.
’Cause I have to. I have to find—have to work out where—have to stop—
I cuss as I try to shove my legs into my jeans. Why am I so fucking useless? Why is everything still fucking broken and so stupid and Jesus H Christ, I can’t—I just can’t—
“Raquel?” My voice sounds steadier than I feel, and it doesn’t sound all that steady.
I zip the jeans up so quick I’m lucky I don’t catch my dick in the zipper. As I kick the door open I’m already pulling a t-shirt over my head, hissing at the tug of my wound.
Her clothes aren’t here. Raquel’s always been neat; she wasn’t the type to leave her panties on the floor or anything. Maybe for the night of passion, but as soon as she woke up she’d always compulsively neaten. So it doesn’t necessarily mean she’s gone. But…
Fuck, fuck, fuck.
The house is bright with sun. It’s a sweet day outside, bluebird and perfect weather to hit the trails. The part of me that notices that shit is smaller than ever. Way more important right now is to work out if it’s happened—if this dream is over.
If Raquel is gone, again.
There’s no sound as I head along the mezzanine landing above the foyer. I grip the bannister to swing myself around it at the top and launch onto the stairs, enjoying the way the motion makes my back twinge. Something in the pain is grounding, somehow. Makes me feel like I’m really here, when everything else is threatening to break apart. I can feel my heart, hammering out a stupid, breaking rhythm. Threatening to fuck even that up.
Luckily it gets a break, cause when my feet touch the entrance hall I can see her, and my heart skips a beat.
Everything falls away, just like in a movie, and for this still moment there’s only us. She doesn’t even know I’m here.
I look at her back, and the loose fall of her hair, and the way she flicks her wrist to move the whisk through the mixture in the Pyrex bowel she’s holding. My breath burns trapped in my lungs. At my side my fingers twitch, remembering the way I held her.
She’s not gone. She’s here. She’s stayed. She hasn’t gone back to Paris, or to LA, or anywhere else. She’s here. We made love, and she’s still here.
I don’t try to walk forward silently, but I do, because I don’t want to break this moment. Because I don’t know what I’ll say. All I know is that I’ve been the recipient of a miracle—something I am sure absolutely and utterly that I don’t deserve—and rocking the boat in any way sounds like madness.
As if she’s a bird who might jump onto the wing at any moment.
I come to stop behind her, careful to give her space, and swallow against the dryness of my mouth. She’s brushed her hair. She’s washed her face. I can smell her moisturizer. I can remember kissing the delicate line of her neck now revealed in the boat neck of her shirt, feeling the tendon tense and soften beneath my mouth as she relaxed into what she wanted.
Into me.
What should I say to her?
What can I say to her?
What would begin to convey what I’ve known. What I’ve learned. What last night I was taught again in the darkness when she moved with me and I felt like I was holding something sacred. A mystery I’d forgotten. A wonder I thought I had lost forever.
“Hey.”
I must start. Raquel smiles, softening, soothing, and tilts her body to show me a better view of the batter she mixes in the bowl. “I’m making pancakes.”
Another day I might have been sensitive. Stupidly sensitive. Worried that she was implying that I need to gain weight. But today I know: I fucking love pancakes, and Raquel knows that, too.
Whatever I did to deserve her to stay—I don’t know. What I did to deserve pancakes is something else entirely.
I look at her, and between us the night rises, and I know she can feel it too. The echoes of what we did. The shadow traces of touches over naked skin. The intimacy we shared in the darkness.
She looks at me steadily, intently, with eyes so dark that I could fall into them and lose myself forever, and never want to come home.
“Yeah,” I say finally. “Yeah, I’d love pancakes.”
She smiles down into her mixing bowl, and I reach over to tuck that flyaway strand of hair behind her ear. My fingers linger at her skin, and her gaze rises to mine. Open, reaching. A question.
The words tremble between us unsaid. I don’t know if I’m brave enough to risk breaking this spell. What if this moment is too fragile to touch? What if it can’t last?
We come together on our own gravity, and after our kiss I keep my eyes closed, my body bowed so that I can press my forehead to hers.
The words are pressing at me. A truth so undeniable I can’t hide it.
She said it, in the dark.
In her dreams, she still feels it.
I’ve made my whole life out of taking risks, and yet somehow this is the hardest, even though Raquel still stays here close to me. As if she’s waiting for me to say it.
“I love you.”
A tiny breath escapes her, and then she pushes back against me. “I love you, too.”
It’s so much that we can’t look at each other. Can’t say any more. We just stand there, our eyes closed, together.
Part 3
Summer
Raquel
It’s so easy to slip back into the way that things were.
I am walking on air, and my old life welcomes me back with open arms. The house. JJ. It’s all just like it was—except for his injury, and now as the weeks of June unspool around us he’s getting better and better. Four months since the
avalanche, and he’s beginning to seem normal again. He can swim, he can hike, he can go out on his own for groceries and help me with tasks around the house that don’t involve too much twisting.
Not that we’re paying much attention to any of those things. Even the end goal of JJ’s recovery seems nebulous, something neither of us are looking too hard at.
We have each other again, and that’s all that matters.
We don’t talk about what it means. We aren’t looking that gift horse in the mouth. And the people we love seem willing to accept that, for the moment. Hanne doesn’t miss a beat when JJ starts to tell her on the phone about what “we” are doing. Chase doesn’t comment on the way sometimes he catches us kissing as he comes to visit. When I call her with updates, Meaghan only says: “Sounds like stuff is progressing,” and I don’t correct her.
It’s as if everyone knows this is delicate. But that’s not what we’re worried about. We’re just focused on each other. Like the first days of our relationship, we’re back to kissing every chance that we can. To spending long mornings in bed having sex. To cuddling, and holding hands, and spending all of our time together.
It feels like a beautiful dream, and both of us dive deep into it, never wanting to wake up.
Wanting to see if maybe—just maybe—this dream can last.
* * *
I’m still finding it hard to focus on my consulting.
It seems to matter less now, somehow. It’s easy to get distracted. This is the first time in two weeks that I’ve managed to draw myself back to my desk and settle down for a proper chunk of paperwork—billing old clients, considering requests from new ones.
Not that it’s done me much good. The cursor on my email client blinks at me, accusing, its slim black line seeming to highlight all the empty whiteness around it.
I’m trying to reply to a longtime client’s questions about pitching—about how to present to potential investors, how to psych himself up for an important meeting. How to go into a high-risk, high-reward situation and keep his head. It’s an important email, and yet for some reason I can’t bring myself to write it.
All the examples of risk I can think of involve snow and high places, and all the rewards I can think aren’t strictly related to entrepreneurship, either.
For some reason I keep thinking of JJ when I’m working. Not the obvious thing—though I do think of that often, finding myself drifting off and looking out of the window over the valley. The late summer evening is lilac and beautiful, the bugs emerging and the bats beginning to swoop out after them, away from the safety of the trees’ shadows, like explorers testing the limits of their ability and their dreams.
I want to write about bravery, and optimism, and grit—and I find that all of my examples are JJ.
But I’m not writing about that. It’s not what I want to think about.
Eventually, I give up. It’s easy to now, when all I want to do is get back into that house.
On some level I’m aware it’s a dream, and that we can’t yet discuss where this is going. But it’s a dream I never want to wake up from. I don’t want to risk having conversations about the future in case they break this precious thing we have now.
I came within inches of never having another moment with JJ, but that mountain gave us a second chance—and I intend to make the most of it.
It’s so beautiful that I walk around the house instead of through it—out the front door and over the grass to the deck. I can see as soon as I reach the back of the house that JJ hasn’t closed the blinds to the den. Of course he hasn’t: it makes me smile, just how much he hasn’t changed.
We look out over a valley, he said, baffled, when I mentioned it. No one can see us. I can dance here naked if I want.
And then to prove it, he did.
The memory makes me smile, and I wrap my arms about myself, as if I can squeeze this happiness here. I want to capture this moment, to make it last forever.
If I head in through the deck doors, I’ll be able to watch—to peek in. Just one glimpse at what he’s like.
The light of the TV is a muted glow on the stone flagging on this side of the glass. For some reason I’m holding my breath as I step up, hovering just out of sight, behind the line of the couch inside.
JJ isn’t leaning back relaxing like I expected. He’s hunched forward, his forearms resting on his legs. One of his hands is up over his face, rubbing back and forth over today’s stubble.
When I step carefully forward, not wanting to alert him to my presence, I see that his face is creased with something—a yearning sadness, a sort of painful happiness that makes me ache.
JJ watches himself on the screen, and he looks as if his heart is breaking.
From this distance, most people couldn’t tell that the man on the screen is JJ. They’d just see a dark figure in bulky snow gear, curving wide arcs down a broad, steep slope. But I’d know him anywhere. I know how his body moves. As a lover, and as someone who, once upon a time, was more interested in his career than anyone else.
He rides beautifully.
I’d forgotten, almost, what it looks like. How could I have done that? When he is poetry in motion. Such elegance. Such beauty.
Hanne rides with a joy, a punkish sense of fun; Chase shreds, hard and aggressive.
JJ looks like he’s relaxed. In his element. He couldn’t possibly board in a way that isn’t effortlessly stylish.
The more you understand about boarding, the more you appreciate it. But you don’t need to know anything at all to be able to see that JJ is so very, very talented at it.
He moves over the snow of the past, and to watch him is to have a sense of exactly where someone was born to be. Of someone achieving the thing they were always meant to do.
When did I last breathe? I only realize I haven’t when the ache of my lungs forces me to suck in a deep breath, reaching out to steady my hand against the seam of the glass of the door.
Why are my eyes blurry?
Because of how beautiful JJ looked when he rode?
Because he’ll never do it like that again?
I look between the man on the screen and the man on the couch, and it’s almost unbearable.
Not because I look at the skinnier, paler JJ, with his face worn with new lines, and think that he’s lesser.
Because I look at him and I love him so much that it is a physical pain inside of me. A starving need.
What is love if it isn’t a desperate bargain with the universe?
Let me keep him. Please, let me keep him beside me.
Because this thing JJ is watching himself do—that beautiful thing—is also terrible. A dangerous, ravening thing. Something that could catch him up and tear him apart and snuff out the light of his life in a moment.
The mountains are a beautiful horror which would take the man I love away from me.
JJ looks up at the creaking glide of the door as I open it. His smile is immediate, though that thing still lingers in his eyes. The depth that’s a lot like sadness.
“You’re done with work?”
I nod, still trying to find an evenness to my breathing. Slipping the door shut, I move over to perch on the edge of the sectional beside him. I keep my voice light.
“Is this…?”
I don’t know what to say, only tilting my head at the screen where a grinning JJ is speaking to whoever’s holding the camera.
JJ’s eyes move to the screen, and then to me.
“Yeah.”
Sometimes silences hold far more than words ever could. We look at each other, and there’s so much between us—so many miles of snow. And yet at the same time, there’s no distance at all, all the space between our two experiences meaningless in the face of the link that we have. The ties that bind us.
JJ slides into the corner of the couch, raising his arm.
“Come here?”
It’s a question. It doesn’t need to be. I slide over the couch to him, turning to settle with a sigh into
the safe harbor of his hold. He wraps his arm about me, reaching for my legs to tuck them over his where he slides them up over the chaise.
At the crown of my head I feel his cheek coming to rest, and at my side I can feel the slow furl and unfurl of his ribs as his breath goes on and on.
This is the place that I want to be forever. The one spot in all the world where everything is exactly as it should be.
Whatever’s out there in the world—in the future—it can’t reach me here. So long as we stay exactly where we are now, nothing bad can ever happen.
Together we watch JJ doing the thing that he loves, and I can feel the silence teaming with things that neither of us want to address. Like out-of-focus shapes beneath deep seawater, they move in deeper, darker places than we’re yet ready to swim.
And yet those things we’re not ready to dive for still tickle at our awareness. I can’t be the only one thinking things, in this pregnant silence, heavy with the past.
This moment. I want to hold on to this moment so badly. When we’re here, when we’re happy. I try to swallow down the terror clawing at the edges of my happiness and focus only on this: being held by the man that I love. Watching his past self move over the screen in front of us.
Funktionslust.
One of the German climbers at High Performance HQ taught me that: Franziska, with her bloody fingers and her chipped teeth and her grin. After she climbed she would glow, suffused with light, radiant in a way that I recognized.
Funktionslust. It means the joy of doing what you were made to do.
And within it too, the joy of watching someone do the thing for which they were made. The silky, shivering pleasure of seeing a dolphin ride a ship’s bow-wave. The held-breath excitement as a motocross rider slams round the corner.
The way Franziska looked up on the wall, climbing as if it were as much a function of her body as breathing, or blinking, or walking. Gliding up that wall with a grace that seemed beyond the human. Preternatural, otherworldly beauty.
Crash: The Wild Sequence, Book Two Page 19