Chapter 13
Zoe
There’s something familiar about this: me, recently deposited on the hideous-but-comfortable pink velveteen chair in Aiden’s living room, wobbly legged and faintly sweaty, waiting for him to bring me a glass of water.
The differences, of course, are key. I’ve been deposited here because Aiden and I did not manage to make it to his bedroom, because I came in his front door and he closed it behind me, pressed me right up against it and kissed me like he hadn’t seen me in days and days. Soon enough he’d stripped me of all my layers, tugging a condom from his pocket while I’d shoved his pants down. The wobbly legs and the sweat are dual earned—my legs wrapped around his waist while he took me, sure, but I’d also come here straight from a hot yoga class, red-faced and salty-skinned, and Aiden didn’t seem to mind one bit. He may have even liked it, judging by the groan he’d let out as soon as he’d put his tongue against my skin, licking up my neck like I was the best thing he’d ever tasted.
When he comes back in the room, carrying a big glass dripping with icy condensation, he’s flushed from exertion too, his jeans still unzipped, hanging loose around his waist so I can see his black boxer briefs—so I can see, surprisingly, that he looks like he could go again.
“You need a permit for that thing,” I say, taking the glass from him and hiding my smile behind a greedy drink.
He laughs, the sound low and easy, and I think of that first day I sat in this chair—how tentative, awkward, messed up it all was. “You say the nicest things.” He leans down, putting a hand on each of the chair’s arms, watching me drink. When I lower the glass, he presses his lips to mine, a hard stamp, and turns the chair, swiveling it toward the center of the living room.
“Fancy,” I say when he backs up, taking a seat on the couch that’s now across from me.
And this is it—this is the other newness we’re still navigating—what do we do now, in the aftermath of these interludes we’ve had every day since Ben’s party. That night, I’d driven over here, equal parts excited and nervous, worried I’d misread the signals. But even before I’d shut off the ignition of my car, he’d opened his door, leaned against the jamb, and watched me with a slight grin on his face. I’d smiled back, turned off the car, and lifted my hips, shimmying my underwear down my thighs, over my boots. By the time I was dropping them in my bag, he was opening my door, nearly dragging me out of my seat in the most perfect, desperate way. Afterward, I’d risen from his bed, unmoored in the hugeness of it compared to our twin bunks at the campground, and said I needed to get home to wash my hair.
That he didn’t laugh or argue suggested that I’d made the right call.
And anyways, I do use a special shampoo.
I hadn’t needed to bother with an excuse yesterday, as we’d only managed a single hot, fast quickie, right on that couch Aiden’s sitting on, in the two-hour break Aiden had before a second shift. The memory of that makes me flush anew, and I press the icy glass to the side of my face.
Aiden snorts, as if he knows exactly what I’m thinking.
Tonight’s different, though. It’s Friday, and we don’t go to camp until tomorrow. He doesn’t have to work, and I’m still largely plans-less, spending too much time per day checking my email to see whether Marisela’s gotten in touch, even though I’m not supposed to hear until next week, and even though I still don’t know what I’ll do about it, whether going back to the law in any form is the right thing, no matter how eager I’d felt on Monday.
I’ve felt eager before. I’d felt eager with Christopher, back when I’d learned he was in trouble, when I realized I could fix it. I’d felt eager when I’d started at Willis-Hanawalt, when I’d felt like I was finally going to reclaim the legacy my dad had wanted for me. Obviously my eager meter is busted.
Aiden’s loose limbed, a little heavy lidded over there on the couch, his eyes on me without any particular signal for me to leave or stay. I want to ask him how it’s been going, his presentation, now that he’s decided to take on the camp manager role. If I’m honest, I want to ask him a series of about ten hard-hitting questions that might get him to rethink the whole thing, and that’s when I remember I’d better get the hell out of here, because I’m meant to be keeping my distance, no matter that Aiden and I have broken the only-at-camp rule.
I stand, setting my glass on a coaster, stretching as I head down the hallway toward the house’s only bathroom, so I can clean up a bit before I go. It’s a good reminder, this hallway. Aiden’s bedroom door is wide open, his bed tidy, but he keeps the door to his home office partially closed, keeps another door along the hall shut—Aaron’s old room, I’m sure—all the way. If there’s a more potent metaphor for the two of us and what we’re doing together, I don’t know what it could possibly be.
When I come out, my phone’s ringing, muffled by the sound of my purse, which Aiden’s holding out to me. “Didn’t wanting to go rustling through there.”
“Thanks,” I say, reaching a hand in and peeking at the screen before I even have it all the way out, my stomach fluttering when I see the name there.
I answer before I have time to think better of it, before I register that now I’m going to have this conversation in front of Aiden.
“Zoe?” comes Marisela’s voice on the other end, so wholly cheerful that I already know what she’s going to say.
“This is Zoe,” I reply, holding up a finger to Aiden while I back slowly toward the kitchen, putting some distance between this and him.
“I’m sorry it’s taken me a few days to get back to you. I practically wanted to put you on calls on Monday, but you know how it is.”
“Oh,” I say first, but correct with a quick, “oh, sure. I know how it is. Paperwork and all that.”
“Exactly!” And then she’s off to the races. She’d love to have me join the team; I could start next week, maybe six hours a week or so at first; if I sign on I’ll need to bring a copy of my driver’s license, my diploma; if I don’t mind she’ll send over some documents I can look over while I decide.
I’m nodding, the occasional uh-huh thrown in, so aware of warring impulses: first to shake my fist in the sky in victory and tell her I’ll be there Monday, second to drop this phone like a hot potato and run like hell from everything she’s offering. But I do neither. I stay careful. I don’t commit to anything. I tell her to send the documents, tell her I’m excited to look them over. I tell her I’ll be in touch as soon as I can.
When we hang up, Marisela’s final I really hope I can convince you ringing in my ear, Aiden’s leaning against the doorway, looking at me. “You got it,” he says, his voice even, but his eyes light, a hitch at one side of his mouth that feels about ten times more exciting than the damn phone call. I am in all kinds of trouble with him, and I know it.
“I did.”
“Get your sweatshirt on,” he says. “We’ll go to your friend Betty’s place and celebrate.”
What.
I look after him, slack jawed, while he moves back into the living room, grabs his jacket off a peg on the wall. “I didn’t say I was taking it.”
He shrugs into his jacket. “Didn’t say you were. Still, you got a gig. Worth a beer, at least.”
I think back to that night at Betty’s, Kit telling me about Aiden not going out with his crew for months, and now he’s basically—I don’t know what. Taking me on a date? What are we going to do, make a pro/con list about me taking a potential first step back into my legal career? I don’t even want to do that with Kit and Greer, let alone Aiden. In my mind is a picture of my condo—all its clean, white-gray stillness. I should feel something like longing, thinking about all the quiet, careful ruminating I could be doing there while I turn Marisela’s offer over in my mind.
Aiden turns to look back at me, his eyes scanning my face while I’m just stuck, stuck again, stuck forever. “Zo,” he says, his voice half-weary, half-amused. “I just fucked you against this door and came so hard that I’m pretty sure I saw stars. I’m running on about half as much sleep as usual, and that’s down to what we’ve been doing too. Let’s get some food and play a game of darts. We don’t even have to talk about your new job.”
“It’s not a job,” I say, moodily, but everything he’s said is what I need to get unstuck, to start me moving toward the door, to my sweatshirt. It doesn’t have to mean anything, that I don’t so much want to go back home now. We’re still keeping our distance, whether we go to Betty’s together or not. “I’ll take my own car,” I tell him, as I zip it up.
“Whatever you say.”
* * * *
“No,” I say, and then repeat it for good measure. “No, this is not what I agreed to.”
Aiden’s answer is a low grunt as he tightens the straps of the harness around my thighs, stepping back to look me over. He nods to himself, as if this is all perfectly normal, A-OK, another regular Sunday morning.
It is none of those things, even aside from the fact that I’m strapped into a harness.
I might’ve known an ambush was coming, might’ve known there was a reason this weekend’s been so easy and pleasant. On the way here on Saturday morning, Aiden had pulled over in Coleville—So you’ll stop making calf eyes every time we drive through, he’d said—and walked us to a cafe with gingham curtains and the best hot chocolate I’ve ever tasted. We’d drank it while we’d walked down Coleville’s main street, aimless, unpressured conversation and the kind of taut, fun arguing that frames almost all our interactions, the only thing other than sex that had taken my mind off Marisela’s offer.
At the campground that afternoon, he was as loose as I’d ever seen him, his body moving in some new, relaxed way as he’d helped fold up chairs from the wedding. Later, I’d watched him work with Paul to remove a temporary dance floor that had been snapped together over the flat clearing on the lodge’s east side, and he’d been all easy calm, laughing once so loud that I’d heard it from where I stood on the porch of the lodge, uncoiling strands of tiny lights from the railings. He’d caught my eye and smiled, as though we had a hundred secrets between us.
It’s all the sex, I’d told myself. I’ve uncoiled him.
But no. No, he’d been uncoiling me, on purpose, so much so that last night, after pizza delivery to the lodge and a late, laugh-filled game of euchre with Paul, Lorraine, Sheree, Tom, and Val—Hammond having taken over putting the girls to bed—I’d barely noticed when Paul had tipped his chin to Aiden and said, “Still nine thirty tomorrow morning, then?” Aiden had nodded, and now that I think of it, Sheree had hidden a smile behind one of her hands.
Now I realize they’re great betrayers, every one of them, because here I am, strapped into a harness and about three seconds away from a profanity-filled diatribe about how shit the entire concept of team building is, anyway.
It’s different here at the farthest edge of the camp, the trees more sparse and the ground red-clay dusty and flat. We’d only skirted along it during our tour a few weeks back, and then, Paul and Lorraine had told us that a lot of the more advanced team-building exercises took place over here. The only thing I’d noticed at the time was what looked like a couple of shorter than usual telephone poles and wires. Now—now I’m finding out Aiden wants me to climb up one of them.
I swallow a lump of dread, staring up at it. This isn’t like the zip line, which wasn’t even all that high off the ground and which only required horizontal movement. This is so—vertical.
“Perfect day for it,” Paul says, coming over to check Aiden’s work on my harness. “No clouds, not too cold. Sun’s been warming the pamper pole for a good couple hours now.”
“The what pole now?” I say.
“The pamper pole.” He pats the one closest to him, like this is something I should have heard of. It is nothing I have heard of, let me tell you what. I don’t see anything on this pole that would pamper me.
“I’m about to rock this,” says Sheree, beside me, swinging her arms back and forth as though she’s loosening up for competition. “I used to be the fastest kid at camp on this pole.”
“Now, Sheree,” Paul says, shaking his head. “Remember, we don’t use the pole for competition. This is about challenging ourselves, not each other.”
Jeez, these self-affirmations. I love this guy, but he’s so earnest it makes my teeth hurt sometimes. Plus, despite or maybe because of my fear, the pole jokes are stacking up in my brain like cars on the highway. I think Aiden senses it, because he moves beside me and places his big, calloused hand on the nape of my neck, strokes his fingers on the skin there. I shiver, forgetting for a minute all about my jokes, but then I shift away, angry at him for ambushing me with this.
Paul curls his fingers around one of the little metal U shapes stuck in the side, explains to me that these are the hand- and footholds I’ll use to climb to the top of the pole. And I’m not just supposed to climb it. I’m supposed to climb it, stand on the tippy-top, and then jump off, trying to hit a rubber ball that’s hanging from one of the wires.
“Paul,” I say, hoping he doesn’t catch the nerves in my voice. “The thing is, I’m not much of a climber. I’m very careful about moisturizing, is the thing. Touch my hands— they’re like satin!” I look up to Aiden, pleadingly. He can’t possibly, truly want me to do this. If I die we’ll never have any more of all that amazing sex we’ve been having. But he’s not speaking up on my behalf; this was his idea, after all. “Got a surprise for you,” he’d whispered in my ear this morning, his mouth right against me as he leaned over my top bunk, not even needing to stretch to do it, and my toes had curled in pleasure.
Because I am an idiot.
“I’m sure you’ve got nice hands,” says Paul. “I’ve got gloves if you want to wear them.”
“You know what I like about you, Paul? It’s how you’re always so prepared.”
He gives me a look I’ve come to recognize on him, a mixture of amusement and confusion that suggests he’s not quite sure what to make of me.
“I’m up first,” says Sheree, bouncing on the balls of her feet while Tom beams at her in pride. Easy for him, he’s got Little Tommy strapped to his chest and also a diagnosed heart arrhythmia. No one’s going to make him go up. “You can watch me, Zoe.”
Ten minutes later and I’m wringing my hands, my eyes on Sheree’s rising form, the space I’m keeping between me and Aiden pointed, deliberate. Little Tommy is making wet, happy gurgling noises while Tom uses his own hands to guide his son’s chubby little ones into a rhythmic clap. “Go, Mama, go!” he says, over and over, hoping Little Tommy might repeat after him.
“Aiden,” I say, as quietly as I can so that he’ll still hear me, “I don’t think I should go. I might faint again.”
“The fainting was a one-off,” he says, echoing what I’ve said to him so many times. I barely manage a hmph of disagreement, boring holes into the side of his face with my eyes. “Watch Sheree,” he adds. “She’s good.”
I do watch, especially as she nears the very top. It’s not so much the climb that gets to me. It’s this part right here, this part that I know I need to pay attention to if I’ve got a hope in hell of getting up there and not making an ass of myself. But it’s hard to see, from this distance, by what magic she makes it up, even though Paul’s doing his best to narrate it for me—Notice the way she moves slowly to a crouch, watch how patient she is before she attempts to stand.
She does it beautifully, her arms extended out in front of her at first, parallel with her bent knees, before she slowly spreads them out to her sides, pushing up to her full height. She looks simultaneously small and larger than life up there, and it seems like an eternity that she stands, balancing herself, her legs tight together, her body as still and patient as the pole itself. She looks as if she could wait up there all day, as if it doesn’t bother her at all to be there, anticipating that leap.
When she jumps, I slap a hand over my eyes, let slip a gasp of surprise and terror, my heart in my throat. It’s that moment, that leap, that terrifies me.
But all I hear is her proud shout, Tommy’s shriek of delight, Paul and Aiden’s applause.
I pull at the straps of my harness. I know I could get out of this. I know I could look Aiden in the face and tell him no again—and he’d listen. But I’m in this harness, everything this weekend has been so good, and I have the strangest sense I’ll disappoint him, and Paul, and most of all, worst of all, myself.
While Paul’s helping to lower Sheree, Aiden moves in front of me, sets his big hands on my shoulders, and then he waits. Waits until I look up, meet his eyes. “Took me three tries to get up there, the first summer I did this. Kept stopping at the halfway point.” “I won’t do that,” I say, sure of it already. It’s not the climb.
“I know,” he answers, and I feel a jolt of something so affectionate, so desperate—something inside of myself that’s jumping out toward him in sudden, simple gratitude for his confidence, for the way he sees me, for what he sees already about this. It’s scary, the way Aiden and I know each other, when we’ve spent all this time trying not to.
“It’s being at the top,” I say. “What if I get up there and can’t do the jump?”
He shrugs. “Dunno, Zo. Guess you’ll have to figure how easy it is to climb back down.”
* * * *
It’s pretty easy, at first.
I almost enjoy the part where I’m getting familiar with the movement, the crab-like crawl I have to adopt to get from one handhold to the next. There’s a comfort in feeling my muscles work like they’re supposed to, in being strong from the strength training I do, in being flexible from yoga. Even my breaths are careful, focused—in through my nose, sharp and noisy out of my mouth. All that physical work, all that gym time—one non-worthless thing I’ve done with my hazy, unstructured existence, I guess.
But then I look down, and my mind stutters with the incongruity of it—me up here, and everyone else below. Where I’m going, there’s no wide, steady platform waiting, there’s no cheerful companion to send me across a zip line, where there’ll be someone waiting on the other side. The higher I go, the more alone I get. My stomach clenches with fear, and I refocus, resolving not to look down again.
“Hey,” says Aiden, calling up to me. His voice is close enough still that he doesn’t quite have to yell, and this soothes me slightly. “You doing all right up there, Satin Hands?”
Dick, I think, but my mouth curves in a smile. “Can it, Boy Scout,” I mumble back, too afraid that if I speak louder I’ll come right off this thing.
“You know that’s not how we do it here, Aiden,” says Paul, his voice sounding farther away. “You’ve got to encourage her.”
“Oh, I am,” I hear Aiden say, and without thinking I cast my eyes back to him, see him smiling up, arms crossed over his broad chest.
“Don’t distract me,” I say, some of the nerves falling away from me like loose rocks on a cliff face. “I’m making this pole my bitch. Sorry, Paul!”
“That’s all right,” he says, chuckling.
I loosen my grip on one of the staples, watch my hand tremble as I pull it away, my other hand and my thighs around the pole tightening instinctively while I reach up.
“Relax your legs,” Aiden says. “You don’t have to hold on so tight.”
You didn’t mind it before, I think, remembering the way I’d clutched my thighs around him last night once we’d gotten back to our cabin, fighting to get closer to him even as he’d thrust his weight into me. “Surprised I have any strength left in these babies,” I call to him, seeking his face again, and I laugh when he registers my meaning, his brow lowering. Up close I’ll bet there’s a little flush on his neck, just under his stubble.
I get up another length—next hand, right foot, left foot.
“You’re doing great,” yells Sheree, clapping. “You look like you belong on that pole!”
“That—I don’t know if that’s a compliment, Sheree!”
“I heard it,” she says. “I heard it as soon as it came out of my mouth. Sorry!”
“You’re halfway,” says Paul, his voice calm as always, but I notice now that everyone sounds even farther away, and this brings a new sheen of sweat across my back.
“Don’t think about what you’ll do when you get there,” calls Aiden, and I get a secret thrill that he knows what I’m thinking. Though, what else does anyone think about when they’re on this damn thing? Probably it doesn’t take a genius.
“Can I think about what I’ll do when I get down?” I say, ignoring the shaky quality to my voice. “FYI, it involves one of these carabiners and your testicles!” That was probably a bridge too far for Paul and Tom, but I hear Sheree’s crack of laughter.
“Can’t wait, baby,” he calls back, and oh. That stupid nickname. He’s such an ass. Such a pompous, offending ass.
I like him so much.
I close my eyes, briefly, take a steadying breath, and keep going. There’s a point at which it starts to feel good again, the climb. Tiring, but a reminder of my strength. Despite my earlier longing for the horizontal comfort of the zip line, something about the vertical progress is satisfying in its own way, the feeling that I’m not running from something but that I’m climbing out of it. Below me, Sheree and Tom and Paul are cheering me, clapping and calling out words of encouragement. Aiden is quiet, but when I look down, I see he’s moved just slightly away from the group, to the other side of the pole, his head back to watch me. He’s too far away for me to see much about his facial expression, but I can see in the lines of his body that he’s focused. He’s rooting for me as much as everyone else.
And I want to stand on the top and jump, I do. But when I reach the last set of staples, I freeze. Suddenly I can’t think how—even though I watched Sheree do it, even though Paul’s words are ringing in my head—I can’t think how to get my feet up there. I reach up to rub my palm over the top of the pole, and it’s—it’s so small, that space, no room for error. I won’t be able to stand there. My legs feel so tired now, shaky and clumsy. Isn’t it something I’ve made it this far? Doesn’t that count for something? I could let go now. I’ve still done the climb, after all, and that’s more than Aiden did at first.
I rest the front of my helmet against the pole and close my eyes, my body tightening up again, my breathing shallow from a combination of exertion and anxiety.
“Zo!” Aiden calls up to me, and I don’t move, can’t move. My hands itch to release the staples, to fall back into the bouncing security of the harness, to let my limbs go slack. “Don’t you quit,” he shouts, and I wish he were right here next to me, talking into my ear like he does when he’s inside me. I wish I could hear it like his gruff whisper, the voice that’s only for me.
To call back to him—even to say, I can’t, or I want to come down—feels too hard at the moment. I do what feels most manageable, which is to open my eyes, and even as I do it I’m expecting it to be a mistake, seeing everyone from such a great height and knowing fully where I am in relation to them. But all I see is Aiden, far below me, his arms still crossed over his chest. I feel something, when I look at him, some...I don’t know what. An exchange, I guess, something physical in his body that seems to charge my own. I can’t see his eyes, of course I can’t. But somehow I can. Somehow I can see him looking at me, challenging me, pushing me. It’s funny, how I once wanted to shrink under that stare. Funny how the first time he looked at me, really looked at me, I literally fell at his feet—sick, shamed, overwhelmed. But right now he’s looking at me and all I want to do is get bigger, get out of my cramped huddle against this pole and stand, rise to my full height, stretch out my arms, and reach that damned ball.
So that’s what I do. I take one last look at him, wonder if I imagine him nod his head at me, and then focus. Not on the pole itself, not on the jump, not on the ball. I focus on my own body, on how I can set my hands on either side, on how I can raise one foot, and then the other, between them. I focus on how it feels to crouch there, everything about me compact. If I bunch up my muscles too much, I tip a fraction to one side. If I hold on too tight, everything feels like it’s shaking—my body, the pole, the very air.
It isn’t perfect. It’s not Sheree’s slow, balanced stand, her five full seconds of poise before she jumped. It’s a little rushed, my arms coming out recklessly to the side as I press my quads up, the hardest, most intense squat I’ve ever done. But I don’t slip. I don’t make the leap because of momentum or a slip of my shoe or lost balance. I make the leap because I decide to.
I feel the ball slap against both my palms, maybe a little clumsily. I hear the shouts of victory from below. I’m smiling, leaning back in my harness and letting it spin as it lowers, looking up into the blue sky and feeling lighter than I have in months—in years, maybe. I feel fucking great. I feel like I could climb that pole again.
I feel the furthest thing from stuck. Spinning there, I know what I’ll do about Marisela, about Legal Aid. This is it. This is the beginning of me getting unstuck.
Strong, warm arms come around my legs, and I know they’re not Paul’s. I know it’s Aiden come to get me, but he makes no move to unsnap my harness. He pulls me down his body so we’re chest to chest, all the snaps and carabiners pressing between us. His smile is bigger than I’ve ever seen it, but I only get it for the briefest second, because he tucks my body into his so we’re as cheek to cheek as my helmet allows, and says, right into my ear, “I knew you wouldn’t quit.”
My answering smile feels huge, too big for my face, and my arms squeeze him with all the strength I didn’t think I had left. When he pulls away I try to school my expression, to look a little less like I’m a child bursting with glee, but before I manage it he leans in, presses his lips against my smiling mouth—a hard, firm kiss that catches me on the teeth at first until I shape my mouth to kiss him back. And it’s so good, that kiss—quick but intense, one of his arms banded around my lower back, the other coming up so he can unsnap the closure underneath my chin.
It’s the first kiss he’s ever given me in front of other people. And it’s not for show.
“You did so good,” he says, and kisses me again.
“Okay!” says Paul from somewhere behind us, not quite embarrassed but maybe on the edge of it, and I realize I’ve got one leg hitched around Aiden’s hip. I can’t blame the harness for it—I’m just pressing close to him, getting to where I know him best, where we say everything best. “That was a wonderful job, Zoe,” Paul says, “just wonderful! How do you feel?”
“I feel awesome,” I say, my too-big smile back. Sheree and Tom congratulate me as Aiden and Paul help me out of the harness, and I can’t stop looking up at the pole, at the height I scaled, the dive I made. I can’t stop thinking about the press of Aiden’s lips against mine, the way it felt to have his arms around me after coming down.
If I had a gratitude jar, I’d put this day in there.
I’d fill it with slips, all for this day’s memories.