Seventeen
Oh, glory be. Walker was shirtless. Again.
Call it Yosemite magic, call it her own mind-clouding hormones, but it didn’t even feel douchey—and it should have. A soaking wet, navy bandana was tied around his head, grimy hair curling off his neck. The clothing he did wear—dirty canvas pants and pack with rope, empty water bottles, and a bouncing helmet—made him look sort of homeless. Rilla kept her chin lifted, so she wouldn’t accidentally start counting his muscles and begin to drool. “Uh . . . Hello,” she said. Honestly, she’d expected him to ignore her. “You heading out?” she asked, thinking he might be heading to a climb.
“Coming home. I am supposed to be on a wall, but we had to bail. There’s a big storm coming and we were going slower than I thought.”
“Really?” She eyed the expansive blue sky and frowned. It’d been sunny nearly every day she’d been here. She’d almost forgotten about rain.
“I gotta drop this off, and then I’m going to get some hot food. I’m starved.”
“Cool.” She turned around and threw the garbage bag into the bin. He was still standing there when she dropped the lid. He looked at her expectantly. The silence an awkward beat.
Was he inviting her along?
She took a tentative step that let her follow or bail, depending on his face.
“You hungry?” he asked.
“Starving. What were you guys climbing?” She fell into step beside him, blood singing so hard it made her fingertips tingle.
“We were on Tangerine Trip. It’s usually pretty easy. A little wet. With a storm coming . . .” He shook his head. “We bailed.”
“Pretty easy, and a little wet?” She snorted. “I mean, that’s what they all say about me.”
Walker busted out in a laugh so booming, her face instantly flushed. Her comment had been more nervous tic than funny. The old Rilla coming out. But if he was laughing, she was going with it. Especially with the way his skin tightened over his stomach muscles.
“Oh is that what they call you?” he asked.
“Tangerine Trip is a little long for a nickname when my given is so short. They call me TT for short.”
He laughed.
Her brain wasn’t even working. “You’re laughing too much,” she said, hitting his arm. Because oh my god. If she couldn’t lick his arm from elbow to shoulder, she might as well take her chance to touch it. “I didn’t know you had a sense of humor.”
He gave her this look like of course he had a sense of humor.
She rolled her eyes. Okay. She swallowed and steadied herself. Pulled it together. She felt weirdly drunk.
“You climbing today?” he asked.
“Yep. I’m meeting Petra and Adeena later.” She flexed her fingers, feeling the ache in the tendons. “We’ve been working our way through the slabs.”
“They got you leading yet?”
Rilla shook her head. “Not really. Petra’s shown me how to place gear, but I haven’t led anything.”
“I’ll teach you to lead,” he said, just shyly enough to make her pulse skyrocket. “If you’ll ever go climbing with me again.”
“That’s a hard no,” she said quickly—though it wasn’t because it was a no, but because somehow the no gave her power, and she couldn’t resist holding on to it for as long as possible.
“Are you going to make me grovel?”
She shrugged. “Why do you care?”
“I need to redeem myself! The last thing I wanted to do was make you hate climbing.”
She rolled her eyes. “Don’t give yourself too much credit there.”
“So, you’ll go climbing with me again?”
She gave him a smile out of the corner of her mouth.
“I didn’t hear an answer,” he said, eyes falling to her mouth.
“No,” she said casually, looking away as if it didn’t really matter. They crossed through the parking lot, and into Camp 4.
It was mid-afternoon and as quiet as Rilla had ever seen it. It was still full somehow—people clumped around their picnic tables and unlit fires. Eating or reading. Talking.
Rilla walked side by side with Walker through the camp. As they passed, people glanced up from what they were doing. Some looked at Walker with recognition. Some watched them like they were trying to figure out what was happening. A surge of warmth hit Rilla’s chest—a thrill—walking beside him like she was part of this. Like they were the gods of this sunshine and granite world. She might be faking it just then, but she was determined to become part of this. This was how she wanted to be looked at, always.
“So, you’re enjoying climbing with Petra?” he asked, loping up the gentle, rocky slope to the cluster of canvas tents, pulled away from Camp 4, under the shade of incense cedars.
“Yeah, she’s been great. I know you don’t like her, but . . .”
“I like her,” he said defensively. “Clearly she’s better than me at teaching.”
He dumped off his pack into the canvas tent. The breeze shifted and a heavy wall of the smell of his sweat hit her full in the face.
He must have smelled it too, because he touched his chest. “Sorry.”
“You’re fine.” She swallowed and tried not to breathe deeply.
“I need a shower.”
“I assume it’s in your plans.”
“Do you think a clean shirt would help?” He frowned and looked away thoughtfully. “On second thought, I’m not sure I have a clean shirt . . .”
Was he asking just for her? She couldn’t tell. It made her nervous. He made her nervous. Even when he smelled disgusting. “If you meet anyone you want to smell nice for, tell them you just came back from your assault on El Cap. It’s an aphrodisiac.”
“Well, duh. I crushed it and rescued a kitten. While baring my biceps.” He flexed, and she wasn’t sure if she was going to die from the smell, or the aesthetic.
“Well, you’ve been warned. Don’t get downwind.”
She shifted and pretended to inhale, clutching her throat and tipping back as if she’d died.
“Very funny. I’m getting a shirt.”
He disappeared into the canvas tent, leaving her awkwardly standing by herself at the picnic table outside. The wind felt cool on her arms, as the sun disappeared behind clouds. She shivered and looked around.
Standing in the middle of the SAR site tents pulled away from Camp 4, where only the search and rescue climbers lived, felt like standing in the middle of someone’s house. Everything was lived out in the open. Like HUFF. But the tents here, like the one Walker had disappeared into, were lived in and ragged on the edges in a way the ones at HUFF were not. Faded tarps were strung up over the roofs—leading one to presume they leaked—and tied to the cedars or tall wooden stakes to make overhanging porches. Under the tarps were all manner of earthly possessions, similar to Thea’s overstuffed cabin and closet and the house in the Grove. Bikes leaned against the trees. Milk crates were stacked as shelves. Worn chairs waited for missing occupants. A fire smoked between two of the canvas tents, its coals all banked. A box of cereal sat out on the picnic table under one of the tarp porches. It looked like someone’s leg hung off a cot through a ripped screen door, but she couldn’t be sure.
Walker came back out in a wrinkled white undershirt smudged with dirt at the hem. He winced, running his hand down his flat stomach. “Okay, let’s go.”
He pulled a bike from the side of the tent and got on. “Lady’s choice.” He grinned and looked back and forth between the back axle and the handlebars in front.
Laughing, she hopped lightly onto the back of the bike and gripped his shoulders.
He kicked off and her teeth chattered as they rode down the rocky hill and back onto the footpath of Camp 4. Thank god he couldn’t see her face. All that white T-shirt against tanned skin and dark blond hair curling on his neck . . . ugh, how could he be this disgusting and disgustingly hot? They were going to eat. Were they on a date? Her stomach flipped and she couldn’t help the grin that threatened to split her face in half.
He abruptly turned.
She yelped and clutched at his neck.
“You’re choking me.” His hand pulled at her fingers and she loosened them, cheeks hot and heart all aflutter.
They rolled into Yosemite Village, parked the bike, and headed into the grill.
“I’m starved,” he declared, tipping his head to the menu and lacing his fingers behind his head, arms up, before he caught sight of Rilla’s face and lowered his arms with a sheepish face. “Sorry.”
“Seriously, man. You could kill everyone in here.”
His cheeks flushed; but before she could decide if he was actually blushing, he stepped to the counter to order.
Trent lazily leaned on the counter. “How’s it hanging, Skidmore?” He asked while Walker signed the clipboard.
“Good.” Rilla muttered, avoiding eye contact. Trent was in his mid-forties and one of the long-time employees that seemed like he was there because his main passions in life included collecting dolls and being a serial killer, and this was how he funded his needs for tarp, rope, and mint condition dolls.
She ordered, signed the clipboard with Thea’s initials, and joined Walker at the table, where he leaned on folded arms, watching passersby.
Rilla pulled her leg up on the chair and leaned back. “How’s the rescue business?”
He smiled. “Good. Not too busy yet. How’s Ranger Miller?”
She groaned. “Oh no.”
“Oh yes. I thought that was you streaking past. I knew for sure when I saw him running after you.”
Rilla wanted to put her face in her hands and hide from embarrassment, but she just poked at the salt shaker. “Well, it’s an unorthodox exercise program for him, I must admit. But it seems to be working.”
Walker laughed, lacing his fingers over his stomach.
“Are you originally from Colorado?” That’s where he’d gotten on her bus. Her fingers had smelled like beef jerky and her hair a little bit like the joint she’d smoked outside a gas station in Salina, Kansas.
Then, he was just a boy. Who came down the center aisle with the slanted evening light casting long streams across his chest and face. His eyes had roved over the bus, looking for an empty seat—their true color distorted into an intense purple in the deep gold sunlight tipping over the edges of the still snow-covered Rockies.
He shook his head, no. Then said, “Yes.”
She gave him a confused look.
He stretched his fingers, still looking at people around them. “I’m from southern Ohio, but I’ve been living in Colorado since I left home at seventeen. With summers here.”
She tried to control the eagerness in her voice. “Did you move out at the same time as Caroline?”
He nodded. “She’s only a year older than me. We moved to Colorado together.” He paused a moment, then glanced at her. “You’re seventeen?”
She nodded, dropping her gaze. “I’ll be eighteen at the end of June.” It felt weird to say it so specifically. As if he knew she was thinking about them together. That thought only made her brain immediately conjure up a question about what he looked like naked, and then she was blushing. “What brought you to Yosemite?” she asked quickly to cover her embarrassment, even though it was an overly stiff and formal question.
He laughed. “Are you kidding? Other than the climbing, perfect weather, and great people?”
“Yeah.” She nodded, still trying to control her blush.
“I bet your friends back home are jealous,” he said.
She shrugged. “Sure.”
He narrowed his eyes. “You and Thea have the same mom, right?”
She nodded, hesitant at this new vein of conversation.
“You two are pretty different.”
She shrugged. “Thea’s dad is Mexican.”
“Oh. That’s not what I meant,” he said hastily. “Thea’s talked about your dads.”
“What do you like to draw?” she blurted out before she could think how to say it better.
It was his turn to flush, and he shrugged. “Copying route maps helps me remember them better. That’s all.”
It wasn’t all—that drawing of people that she’d stumbled across wasn’t a route map. She frowned and raised her eyebrow. “Bullshit.”
He snorted. “Like you’re not. Full of bullshit, I mean.”
“I’ve been very forthcoming.”
He rolled his eyes. “I think it’s safe to say we both have things we don’t like talking about.”
She stuck her tongue at him.
He leaned forward and laughed.
The silence was awkward. She rubbed her ear.
Walker stayed maddeningly quiet as he stared at her with this grin half-cocked.
“What?”
“You don’t like safety,” he said, that shit-eating grin still plastered on his face.
She primly picked up her burger. “And you’re full of crap if you’re trying to convince me you’re safe.”
“I’m not safe?”
Her gaze flicked to his. That pulse of intensity in his blue eyes.
His eyes, which tightened at the corners.
She wanted him. Badly. It’d been easy in West Virginia—to avoid this. This real thing she couldn’t help but feel when looking at him. No one had been the things Walker was. A boy from places she knew the shape of, who’d made his mark in a world still foreign to her. Maybe that’s why he had that shell around himself always. Maybe it’s what made him full of it. She bit her lip and tried to come up with words to talk to the boy from Ohio. But she didn’t want to talk about who she’d been in West Virginia either; and instinctively she knew that to get intimacy, she’d have to exchange it.
That wasn’t what she wanted. Not right now. He was right.
She was afraid.