Chapter Thirty-Six
This morning, most of the UW team and some of the A-Team clients were departing for two nights in Dingboche. The higher levels of oxygen in the air at the lower elevation could be restorative, and it was some time away from the drudgery of waiting in Base Camp for the weather window to open that would kick off the summit bid. I stood behind the big top, holding a cup of coffee and watching the group disappear down the trail. The twins and Hulk were with them.
So was Luke.
We’d been able to overcome the blowup on Milam Peak, and everything about Amy was out in the open now, but neither of us had brought up the other part yet: what would happen with our relationship when the season was over. There was hardly any time left together as it was, and now we had two days fewer.
I went to the command center to check email. Barrett Browning had, indeed, emailed with a job offer as promised. I replied, thanking him and asking for time to think over his offer.
I didn’t want to go to Tanzania, but with CentralPoint being a new venture, there weren’t any other locations right now. Another problem was that out of the dozens of applications I submitted over the past weeks, Tanzania was the only job offer I had. In my inbox were lots of “application received” notices and auto-responses saying the positions were no longer open. I checked my junk folder just in case and found an email offering an in-person group interview. In Montana next week. Right.
I would apply for more jobs before our summit attempt, but it was unlikely I’d hear back from them before I needed to be on my way to a paying job. So my choice was a great job with a great company in an absolutely wrong location or…nothing?
What about Luke?
I ate lunch with Doc, who had opted to not go down to Dingboche, saying she’d get caught up on her oxygen during the trek back to the Lukla air strip after the summit bid. The next day, she and I hiked Kala Pattar together. She was a fast walker, but she was purposely trying to keep the hike low-exertion, which translated to no exertion for me, and thus my mind had all the energy in the world to wander.
I could have asked her what she thought about CentralPoint Tanzania, but I already knew what she’d say. She’d see Tanzania as something temporary—a Band-Aid that solved what I would be doing after the summit but offered nothing toward a long-term plan. Life as a series of Band-Aids was not Doc’s style.
The thing is, Tanzania was not actually a Band-Aid or temporary fix. I couldn’t just go work there for a few months until something better came along, not with Dad’s connection to Barrett Browning and how Barrett had been personally involved in hiring me. No, this was a program Esplanade was launching for the long run, and I’d need to be there two or three years before it would be okay to cut and run. Two or three years in a place without mountains.
If you don’t climb for yourself in the beginning, you might never get the chance.
Right. And I would be paying my bills how?
Sponsorship.
To get a sponsorship, I needed that seventh summit. But even then, it’s not like I’d get to the top of Mount Everest and find a magical sponsorship offer tied onto one of the prayer flags. There would still be a lot of time, work, and luck involved in this dream, and how would I pay for dinner in the meantime? How did Luke play into all this? It seemed impossible, but could he? Was there a way? And what about that white bungalow? That was a dream, too: having the permanence of a place of my own and people to come home to.
I pictured the house, this time with music playing outside on the porch for a group of people rather than me listening to it alone on my earbuds as I was accustomed. I wasn’t sure who all the people were in this vision. Roommates, perhaps? Neighbors? Friends? And, of course, my dog would be there. And a few hens. Maybe a goat?
Now I was getting carried away.
I pictured the house again, this time in the quiet, when I was the only one home. There were wet-with-dew gladiolas crowding the fence. I was fresh from a short hike in one of the state parks and, while I cooked lunch, I had the front door wide open to the fresh, chilly air.
I sighed. It would be a wonderful life.
When we got back to camp, I insisted Doc go get her nail polish remover for me. We met in the UW tent where she handed me the original bottle of polish. “You sure you don’t want to reapply?”
“Nah. I just want it off.”
She gave in and exchanged the polish for the bottle of remover.
“I’ve got something else for you,” Doc said.
She dug through her backpack. “I’m assuming you’re on birth control, since periods and climbing harnesses are such a bad combo. But birth control doesn’t protect against STDs.”
It took a second for it to register that the handful of colorful, individually wrapped items she was holding out were not some sort of candy but condoms.
“Oh. Doc. No.” I wanted to die. “Not on Chomolungma!”
“You don’t believe all that, do you? You’re not even Buddhist.”
“Well—no, but it is a holy mountain.” The Winslowe Expeditions Sherpas were always linking hanky-panky on the mountain to ill-fated expeditions of years past. “Luke and I just barely started being more than friends. It’s not like—”
She rolled her eyes.
“Are you encouraging this?”
“No. Not at all. But I’m not not encouraging this. Actually, I should officially go on the record here as saying you should not do this. Since I’m old enough to be your mom and all.”
Was I supposed to be doing this, Chomolungma or not? Regardless of the minuscule length of time Luke and I had been more than friends or how little time there was left until the season was over? If this had been anyone but Doc having this conversation with me, they would assume I was playing dumb, but Doc knew me and what my life was like. Surely she knew I was dumb in this area. Was this talk a hint? Is that what Luke expected? He was twenty-two, after all. Had he had sex with Olivia?
She shoved the condoms into my jacket pocket. I was still too stunned to resist.
“I can’t even… I’m going to leave now.”
She patted me on the shoulder. “Don’t worry. I won’t tell Greg.”
I went back to my tent. It should have been funny. I should have been able to chuckle about this.
But instead, the whole exchange had left me ungrounded. I was all too aware of my inexperience in not just that but everything. My remaining time with Luke was slipping through my fingers. All I wanted was him, back here, in my tent under the concealment of a black and starless sky.
There were a thousand people squished onto this island in the Himalayas that was Everest Base Camp, but remove just one—one certain one—and I might as well be a castaway.
A Circ arrived from Luke as I was lying down to sleep the following night. It showed a dimly lit teahouse and a whole line of recognizable faces from Global, a few of whom were holding cans of Everest beer. Luke would have to be standing on a chair to get that angle, and this made me smile—it was a high point.
At the end of the Circ, he swiped the camera across his own face, giving me a quick nod before the Circ ended. He’d tagged it #YCCM #ICYS.
I’ll catch you soon, I guessed.
In return, I sent him the Circ I’d taken of the highest point Doc and I had reached on Kala Pattar yesterday, which he would appreciate because it had not been taken from the top. Both of us are a little superstitious about turning around before standing atop the highest point of any hike we are on. I added a secretive code of my own after #YCCM: #MYL for miss you lots. Then, I replaced my profile picture of Tinkerbell as a calf with an actual picture of me. A picture Dad had taken in Kathmandu before we started our hike to Base Camp. I’d showered at the hotel the night before, and my hair was down and nice, my smile large and natural. Which was because, if I recall correctly, I’d just received a Circ from Luke.
The next afternoon, Luke wasn’t with the group as they trickled into the big top. I went outside to see if there were people still on the trail. There weren’t, but as I looked around, I noticed a speck down by the Everest Base Camp signs that could be a person. With a pair of binoculars, I could make out this person’s yellow jacket and guessed that it was Luke.
I grabbed my own Yellow Yeti jacket from the tent and walked toward the signs. He was sitting on a rock with his back toward Base Camp, but as I approached, the angle was just so that I had a peek of his profile beneath the bill of his Huskies cap. I was dying to see him but also a smidge intimidated. Two days apart and it was like seeing him again for the first time. It reminded me of when he was standing in the doorframe of his house and I could barely speak because he was so handsome and worldly. Except now, he was more handsome because I knew him even better.
I knew more about him than I ever had before, yet there was so much still to discover, and with everything about our future up in the air, I might never have the chance to discover.
Sensing someone behind him, he twisted around.
“Hi. How was it?” I asked.
He raised his elbow and coughed into it before answering. “The trip was good.”
I walked the rest of the distance until I was as close to him as I dared, being that it was daylight and we were in plain sight of anyone on the trail or in possession of binoculars. Even from here, I could smell fresh shampoo and soap on him. Being this near but unable to touch—my body screamed in protest.
“Lucky, you got a real shower,” I said with a pout as I planted myself in front of him.
I could tell something was grating on his mind because he didn’t even crack a smile. My adrenaline kicked up a couple of notches. Why had he stayed down here instead of coming all the way up with the group?
“You’re quiet today,” I said eventually.
“I’m just thinking,” he said.
“What about?”
“Olivia. My ex-girlfriend.”
I stiffened.
“I was thinking about when we broke up.” He shifted, adjusting his cap, then pulling it back down low. “Remember when we were talking about Townsend College and you said that sometimes you have to get something out of the way to see what it was blocking?”
I nodded.
He reached for my hands. “I know exactly what you meant by that because that’s how it was with Olivia. I wasn’t thinking about it like that at the time, but looking back it’s clear she and I broke up because of you. Things were fine with her. But I was so aware that I’d be seeing you this spring, and at the time, I thought you’d be starting at Townsend College a few months after that. Subconsciously, I knew if there was any chance of this happening, I wanted to be free. She was that thing I had to get out of the way so I could see you.”
My blood rushed inward to my core, making my limbs tingle.
“It made me realize that even if I wasn’t leaving for Nepal soon, that it wasn’t right to stay with her any longer,” he continued. “Not once I truly admitted to myself that I was still dreaming about you.”
He used his thumbs to trace the lines on my palms. “Deep down, this was what I was hoping for all along.”
My face cracked in a smile that freed my spirit from all it had been weighed down with: worry about why he was being so quiet and the decision I needed to make about Tanzania and my immediate future. I wanted him to say those words again and again. Why could we not be somewhere private right now? I needed his arms, his body, his lips.
“It’s an odd thing to be in love with your best friend,” he said. “It’s like you’re operating on different planes. It’s like a dream. Like it’s happening only in your imagination. You need this person so much, even if they are halfway around the world and probably not thinking about you at all. You’re just so happy to hear from them, to be around them, and whatever they give you, it’s enough.”
My heart was happy-crying. I knew exactly what he was talking about. I nudged the toes of my camp boots against the toes of his hiking boots, the best I could do while in the public eye.
“Now, all the planes are together in one,” I said.
“Yes.” He looked off to the east with an expression that was unbearably sad.
He was sad because all this—the crossing of planes—was only temporary.
“Thom thinks Jim’s going to send us out on Friday,” Luke said.
It was the earliest possible day of our estimated weather window, just two days from now.
“No,” I whispered.
“Yes, unfortunately.”
He stood, stepping directly in front of me so that his back mostly blocked me from Base Camp. I stood, too, slipping my arms beneath his open Yellow Yeti jacket and wrapping them tightly around his waist.
“I’ll come by tonight,” he said quietly.
“But we can’t risk someone seeing.”
“I’ll come late, and I’ll leave well before dawn. Is that okay?”
I answered his question with a single nod as he ran the side of his thumb along my cheek. Then, we had to step apart in case anyone was looking our way. He coughed some more as we started back to Global City. It was a cough that had gotten much deeper than when he’d left, and I made a mental note to keep tabs on it to see if it got worse.
“I brought something for you,” he said as we walked. He handed me a small bouquet of greenery, the stems tied at the bottom with a bit of white cord.
It had been five weeks since I’d seen anything alive other than humans, yaks, an occasional stray dog, and crows. This small touch filled my heart to the brim.
“You’re the best,” I said.
He didn’t respond, but when he glanced over at me, his eyes were crinkled and happy, and it felt like a kiss.
As we finished the walk to Global City, I fingered the leaves and stems of the bouquet and the cord holding them all together. I thought about what Luke had said about the crossing of the planes that were all the different ways we knew each other. Now, we knew the bliss that was their combining, but what would happen when we had to pull them back apart?