Chapter Twenty-Two
I yanked off my crampons, closed the tent door, and pulled my sleeping bag out of its stuff sack. I lay down immediately, burying my face in the chilly down.
The sleeping bag next to me was Luke’s. As the two junior guides on teams with an odd number of guides, we shared a tent at Camp One and at Camp Two. I was glad he’d continued on to the main tent to check in with Thom, because I needed some time to pull myself together.
My radio crackled. “Emily, this is Greg. You there?”
I didn’t have the energy to reach for my radio, but if I didn’t, someone from Global would come get me.
“Yeah, hi D—Greg.”
“Switch over to ninety-nine, will you?”
I sat up and spun the channel knob. “I’m here, Dad.”
“You okay? I heard about what happened.”
Dad would know about the serac falling and the snowbridge collapse, but none of the specifics of my actions. Only Luke knew that.
“Yes, I’m fine,” I said. “Everyone’s fine. I’m just warming up in my tent.”
He keyed the mic but didn’t speak right away, as if deciding what to say. “All right, I’ll let you go. Dinner when you get down?”
“Okay, Dad. Yeah, sounds good.”
“Love you.”
“Love you, too.”
When we got off this rotation, I wondered if I would confess the details of what had gone down. What would he think?
I dialed back to Global’s main channel and laid the radio on the ground. I was still shivering with a bone-deep freeze, so I hurried to take some ibuprofen for my shoulder and then crawled inside my sleeping bag.
Outside the tent, there were crampon-crunch footsteps coming my way. I pulled the sleeping bag over my face and pretended to sleep.
The tent unzipped, and Luke crawled in. He probably wouldn’t disturb me. The thinner air in the on-mountain camps made it difficult to sleep, and all of us were careful not to wake a person who had managed to doze off.
From the dark bag where I was now trapped, I listened to him settling into his sleeping bag, then digging through his backpack. There was a click, followed by the snap of earbuds into a jack and the faint trace of music beats.
I was lying on the shoulder that had taken the brunt of my ice ax, and after a while I couldn’t bear it anymore. I rolled over, sighing and smacking my lips a couple of times to make it seem like it was all in my sleep. Now I was facing Luke.
Sensing a bit of light, I cracked one eye open. I was still concealed by the sleeping bag hood, but there was enough of a gap that I could see Luke. I nudged the hood up a tiny bit more. His eyes were closed, but he wasn’t asleep.
What would happen with us next? He had the easiest excuse in the world to put the brakes on us. There’s a reason guides in relationships are not allowed to work on the same expedition: in an emergency, there is preferential treatment. Today had proven that. Luke had acted outside of Jim’s direction, leaving his own clients to come back for me, and in order to reach Phil and me across the crevasse, he’d taken a risk that Jim would have never allowed.
I wanted the relief of a good cry, but after endangering other people’s lives as I had today, I didn’t deserve relief. In defeat, I let the sleeping bag fall back across my face. The blessing about sleeping at elevation is that even though it is a struggle, when you add enough cold, terror, and exhaustion—like today—it’s impossible not to.
The sun was on the other side of the tent when I woke. I sat up with a start, my head crashing into a pole. I swore loudly, which made Luke jerk awake. He rubbed his eyes.
Then, everything came flooding back. The weight of Phil’s body hanging from my harness. Unzipping my backpack with my teeth. The relief at seeing Luke and how he hadn’t been able to look at me afterward.
I might have a long list of impressive summits under my belt, but I had not been a guide or the expedition leader on any of them. All I’d done was walk up mountains behind Dad. I was a sham, and Luke knew that now.
“I brought you some hot chocolate,” he said, reaching for a thermos in the corner. “It’s probably not warm anymore, but it might not be frozen yet.”
A lump of guilt lodged in my throat. He’d risked his own life to save mine and Phil’s.
“Thanks for the hot chocolate,” I said. “And for saving my life. You shouldn’t have. But you did, and I’m beyond grateful.”
“Of course I should have.”
“No. It was too dangerous.”
He looked at me oddly.
The shame. I pressed my fingers to my throbbing temple.
“Maybe we should talk about it,” he said.
He waited for me to look at him, but I couldn’t. Instead, I gently stretched my aching shoulder. “There’s nothing to talk about. Other than to apologize. I made a huge mistake today, and I’m sorry I put you in that position.”
“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.