Lessons In Gravity

by Megan Westfield

  “My wife sells Candlerama,” Danny explained to April sheepishly. “She swears by candles for group cohesion.”

  As they ate, the candles flickered gloriously against the black night. She was thankful Theo was dominating the conversation with his wild tales so she could eat uninterrupted, because she was starving after only eating one small hot dog for lunch.

  Without any warning, Josh Knox stepped out of the darkness and into the glow of the candles to dish up a plate of food. April dropped her fork.

  “Hey, guys,” he said simply as he sat down in the only open spot, across from April.

  He’d apparently startled Theo as well, because he stopped talking. In the silence, she was suddenly aware of the chirping of insects all around them and the whir of the lantern over on the cooking table.

  “So, April,” Danny said, “how do you like it here so far?”

  “It’s nice. It’s really beautiful.” She glanced at Josh. Something about him, or perhaps their silent exchange at the cafeteria, made her nervous. She wished she hadn’t turned down Theo’s beer earlier.

  “The guys haven’t been too hard on you, have they?” Danny asked.

  “Are you kidding? We’ve been fantastic,” Theo answered.

  “I’m sure,” Danny said, returning his attention to April. “Were you able to finish everything up at college?”

  “I’m done, but I don’t get my diploma until I finish the internship,” she said.

  “We’ll do our best to help you out with that,” Danny said.

  She’d better finish! The aftermath of the crash had kept her out of school fall quarter of her junior year, and with most of UCLA’s School of Theater, Film and Television courses needing to be taken in order and only offered once a year, she had been pushed two very expensive additional quarters into her fifth year.

  Without looking, April knew Josh’s eyes were on her. It was strange how someone who was being so quiet could have such a formidable presence.

  “Loftycakes for dessert, anyone?” Madigan asked.

  April hopped off the picnic bench to get them before Danny could hit her with another question. Concealed by the darkness, she observed Josh at the candlelit table. In person, he was just as aloof as he was on camera. Although he was currently laughing at something Theo said.

  She carried the marshmallow sandwiches to the table. She didn’t think Josh would be the type to eat such a juvenile dessert, but he took a lime-green one from her.

  “Thanks,” he said. Through the flickering candlelight, their eyes met. She pulled her eyes off him, but they rebelled, going right back and scanning across his torso, down to the large, strong hands that dwarfed the beer can he was holding.

  She froze. Oh, shit! She had just checked out the talent. Did he notice? Please don’t let him have noticed. But how could he not have? He was right across the table.

  “What’s with that jacket, Hollywood?” Theo asked. “I didn’t know they made down dresses.”

  “It’s Madigan’s,” she said. She fingered the hem of the jacket, which reached midway down her thigh.

  “Ooh, ooh,” Theo said to Madigan. “What a gentleman you are.”

  April blushed, even though most of the film majors at school were guys and they said stuff like that all the time. It was Josh being there that made it embarrassing.

  The guys inhaled their Loftycakes, and she escaped to the bear boxes to get more. Squatting in front of one of the lockers with her hands on the cold metal top, she chastised herself for the bad start with Josh: staring at him across the cafeteria, and then blatantly checking him out just now. She was going to have to interview this guy, and she could not keep gawking and getting tongue-tied around him. Sure, he was good-looking and intimidating, but this was also true for pretty much any film star, even in documentaries.

  There was something else going on in her body besides that. Something a little unsettling and irksome. What was it?

  She looked over at Josh, thinking about how he would be climbing that bone-chilling spire without a rope. That was it. She was still uneasy from her damned fight-or-flight reaction to the Sorcerer this morning.

  She had to stop getting wigged out when other people put themselves in danger. Otherwise it would be like that party junior year, when that drunk guy stood up on the roof. She knew he was going to fall, and her body locked up even though she and Sophie were in the middle of a crosswalk on a busy street. Sophie had been clipped by a car while trying to pull her the rest of the way across. April’s hands were sweaty just thinking about it. Sophie could have died.

  The climbers in the film were choosing to take risks, and she couldn’t let her body react to their danger. Besides, from all Madigan had said throughout the day, it didn’t seem like climbing was nearly as risky as she had initially thought, with the all the ropes and safety equipment involved. Except Josh, of course, when he climbed the Sorcerer.

  Josh.

  What she needed to do in order to stop being all weird around him was go back to the picnic table and have a normal conversation. Like Madigan said, Danny had picked her for her people skills. The better she could get to know him beforehand, the smoother the interviews would be.

  But when she stood up, Josh wasn’t at the table. He was over by the dish tub, drying his dishes. He said a quick good-bye, then disappeared into the blackness of the forest.

  Her heart sank. Back at the table, his absence was palpable.

  “April,” Danny said, “I asked Josh to pop over here for a quick interview tomorrow at ten.”

  Oh, no. Already? There was still so much to do. All those magazines to read so she could get up to speed about rock climbing and Josh’s background…

  “We’ll go over the exact content we’ll need for the film later on,” he said. “This is just to test the location Madigan picked out, and for Josh to start getting comfortable with you.”

  “Oh, okay. Sure.” There was no way she was going to admit to the great Danny Rappaport that she wasn’t ready. She had the whole night ahead, during which it was doubtful she’d be sleeping anyway. By tomorrow, she’d be ready.

  Chapter Three

  After helping with the dishes and hanging out around the fire with the guys, April made her final trek to the bathroom building and then retired to her tent. Lying on Theo’s thick bouldering pad and being toasty warm with her thin sleeping bag zipped inside Madigan’s extra one made the tent almost cozy. It was kind of like being in a blanket fort at a sleepover, except instead of a teenybopper magazine in the beam of her flashlight, it was a rock-climbing magazine.

  The issue she chose had Josh on the cover, climbing the underside of a rock arch in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea. She turned to the story, “Deep Water Redpoint Soloing With Josh Knox.”

  The opening photo was a steamy close-up of Josh that could have easily doubled as a page in a hunk-of-the month calendar.

  Wow.

  He was shirtless and dripping wet from a fall into the ocean. His eyes were fierce, his jaw determined, and his wet hair spiked in an array of defiant points. And his back! She couldn’t stop looking at his back, which was an incredible patchwork of muscles, from the waistband of his low-slung shorts all the way to his powerful fingertips stretching for a hold.

  Now, tomorrow was going to be even harder. Knowing what an amazing body Josh had would make her even more intimidated by him.

  The next page, with a close-up of him facing forward, revealed that the front of his body matched his back, with his taut, defined stomach, and the intricate, naturally derived muscles of his arms that were so opposite of the puffy-buff, gym-going frat guys at school.

  She skimmed the rest of the article for anything that would be useful in her interview, but there was nothing. Absolutely nothing. This was not the case for the other climbers in the magazine. They shared all sorts of candid details about themselves—stories about their dogs, favorite foods, mishaps, and climbing goals.

  Despite flipping through several mo
re magazines, she found nothing but hunky climbing photos of him and dry write-ups. It was almost deliberate how little he revealed of himself.

  The beam of her flashlight was growing gradually dimmer. In a panic, she snapped it off. Hopefully, there would be just enough power left in case she needed to get out of the tent tonight because of, say, a bear attack.

  She flipped onto her back, trying not to imagine the sound of Freddy Krueger bear claws ripping through the nylon of her tent, and how the tent poles would creak and snap as the massive creature forced its horrible, ursine head inside.

  Despite the extra sleeping bag, her blood grew heavy and slow in her veins. She hated this feeling—it was exactly like the paralysis she had experienced immediately before she consciously realized the free fall was not part of her father’s air show act.

  She curled into her tight, protective ball. Why had she assumed her father’s crash wouldn’t follow her all the way out here in Yosemite? Would it follow her everywhere, for the rest of her life?

  She needed to sleep. She had to sleep. In just a few hours, she would be interviewing Josh, and she had to do well so she’d make a good first impression on Danny. Not only would she not get her degree until she was finished with the internship, but her out-of-state college debt had crossed into six figures last term, and there was no way she could get a steady job in this ultracompetitive field without a recommendation from a director like Danny. Not to mention her secret hope that this internship might lead to a permanent job with Walkabout.

  There was a refill left on her sleeping pills from last year, but she wouldn’t be able to get it filled out here in the middle of nowhere. Besides, sleeping pills were just a temporary solution. This was a problem that had implications for her whole career. Documentary crews never had the budget for nice accommodations, especially in remote—and hopefully someday foreign—locations. She had to learn to sleep somewhere other than a familiar, comfortable bed.

  She needed to be rational about the bears. All the food and toiletries that would attract them were locked away in the bear boxes. There was a reason none of the other campers were lying awake, petrified about bear attacks—although it happened, likely, it was rare. It was probably similar to the rattlesnake warning signs on the Hollywood Hills jogging trails. In four years of running there, she’d never seen a single snake.

  Turning her mind to a relaxation technique she’d learned back when she was still seeing a therapist after the crash, she focused on the soft foam of the bouldering pad beneath her sleeping bag, and how the damp nylon of the tent smelled a little like the common room in her freshman dorm. She listened to the pine tree branches shifting in the breeze before remembering her plan to listen to music to cover up these noises.

  There wasn’t much battery left on her phone, but she’d happily drain it if it helped her fall asleep. She closed her eyes and recalled, one by one, the few details she’d learned about Josh from the magazines tonight.

  Grew up in Las Vegas

  Started climbing at five, at local rock-climbing gym

  Six feet two inches

  175 pounds

  Isn’t afraid when free soloing

  Favorite place to climb: Yosemite

  Favorite type of rock: granite

  Hazel eyes

  Very fit

  Very, very fit

  She visualized the close-up photo of him in the Redpoint article, the one where he was sitting on the rim of a rickety boat, looking up at a column of rock that rose from the water.

  What was it about him that was so striking? She thought hard about his eyes, which were large and surprisingly communicative despite his bored expression. The tropical sunlight overpowered the flecks of green in his eyes, turning them instead into deep pools of chestnut. With his tan torso and sun-lightened hair, he was as much a part of the landscape as the palm trees around him.

  Perhaps that was the X factor that had kept her looking at him today. He was the human equivalent of an indoor tropical plant. Wild and beautiful, but a little out of place.

  …

  The guys had just left to scout a rock formation called Flying Sheep Buttress, and she was alone in the campsite, savoring the sauna-like heat of Madigan’s down jacket in the morning sun as she prepared for the interview.

  She was treating herself to a second look at a Josh Knox hunk-of-the-month centerfold in an older magazine just as Josh himself walked into the campsite. What was he doing here so early?

  Remembering what was in front of her, she slammed the magazine shut and thrust it under the picnic table. Kill me now!

  “Hi, April.”

  She couldn’t help being flattered that he remembered her name.

  “Are you free?” he asked.

  His eyes, in person, were even more magnificent than in the close-up in the Redpoint article. A little tingle ran up her spine.

  “How about doing the interview right now?”

  What? No! She needed this hour to prepare. “I still have some stuff to get together,” she said. “Is it okay if we stick to the original time?”

  “Sorry, but I need to get on a climb before it gets too late,” he said, his eyes falling down her body to where she was still hiding the magazine under the table. She blushed.

  “We could do it tomorrow if you want,” she offered.

  “I’d rather just get it out of the way today.”

  He was the talent, and he was clearly not willing to budge, meaning she no longer had a choice in the matter. “Okay, but can you give me a half hour?”

  He looked at his watch. “I’m sure it won’t take that long. I’ll just wait.”

  “I’ve got to get all the equipment from the van and—”

  “I’ll just go with you. That way I’ll be ready as soon as you are.”

  He hadn’t said anything mean, but she felt bullied. His demeanor was making her rush, and being rushed made her flustered.

  She put her study materials away in her tent and walked out to the parking lot. His eyes burned a hole in her back as she struggled with the van’s rusty door. When she came out of the van loaded down with the padded camera bag she had prepacked, tripod, collapsible interview stool, and all the sound equipment, Josh was seated with folded arms on the bumper of someone’s car, like she’d taken so long he’d needed to rest his legs.

  Had she done something wrong? Or was he just being a jerk? Theo was dead wrong about not calling climbers talent. Josh acted exactly like an A-lister.

  She cut diagonally across the parking lot to the trailhead. Without a word, he fell in beside her. When the trail tapered, he took the lead, even though she didn’t think he knew where they were going.

  Her equipment was heavy and hard to balance, and she struggled to keep up with his long-legged strides. Chivalry from anyone but her dad made her uncomfortable, but damn it, would it kill him to take one of the bags?

  The jacket that had been so comfortable just minutes ago was now a superheated torture device, but she refused to ask Josh to stop so she could take it off. With more determination than ever, she jogged to close the gap between them and then kept right at his heels.

  As they rounded a sharp corner, she noticed his T-shirt. It was red, with a huge logo on the front from Esplanade Equipment, one of his sponsors. There was no way he could wear it for the interview.

  Danny said he had talked to Josh about what to wear, but Josh had either forgotten or chosen to ignore him.

  She took a big breath. “Josh?”

  “Yes?” he asked without slowing down.

  “Can you stop for a second?”

  He stopped and turned. She rested the tip of the tripod carefully on the dusty trail. “Your shirt—it’s not going to work.”

  Silently, he sized her up. How had they gone from the almost-friendly interaction at the picnic table to this? Clenching her jaw, she held her ground.

  “We’re all the way out here,” he said. “What do you want me to do?”

  She forced herself to
keep looking at him. “I’m really sorry, but can you go back and change?”

  He frowned. “I can just turn it around.”

  There was writing running diagonally across the back of his shirt in bright yellow typeface. She shook her head. “I’m sorry, but we’re wasting both of our time if you wear that shirt.”

  “I live in a truck,” he said. “There’s not much room for clothes.”

  “You can keep your pants, but your shirt, it can’t have any logos,” she said. “It should be a muted color and there shouldn’t be any loud patterns. It’s going to be the same shirt you wear for all your interviews, so it has to be something you can keep clean and wrinkle-free.”

  She hardly dared to look at his face. “I’ll go on ahead and start setting up. I should be ready to go by the time you get back.”

  After adjusting her grip on the tripod, she lifted it off the ground. He didn’t move when she started to walk, and with the trail being so narrow, she had to brush against him to get by.

  “No,” he said, almost too quietly to hear.

  She stopped. Dread filled her.

  “Sorry, I have places I need to be,” he said, keeping his eyes carefully off hers. “We’ll have to try this another time.”

  …

  April sat in the van, killing the time that should have been used for interviewing Josh. She would have normally been comforted by all the familiar equipment around her, but seeing as she didn’t have any footage to download, it just made her feel worse.

  The van door slid open. “Done already?” Madigan asked.

  Theo pushed inside and started munching on some trail mix. “How’d it go, Hollywood?”

  “Well—” It was too awful to admit aloud. “It didn’t go well.”

  “I’m sure it wasn’t as bad as you think,” Madigan said.

  “We didn’t even do the interview. His shirt had a huge logo on it, and I asked him to change it and then he walked away.”

  Theo choked on his trail mix. “Classic.”

  “Don’t be too hard on yourself,” Madigan said. “I was there when Danny told him what to wear. It’s not your fault. Flying Sheep Buttress is still damp from the rain last week, so you’ll have plenty of time to try again before we start filming any of his climbs.”