Chapter Eighteen
Before I could respond, there was an arm lifting me out of my chair and pulling me onto the makeshift dance floor. It was Juan. I quickly shoved Luke’s message into my pocket.
I’d never Latin danced in my life, but it didn’t seem to matter, with Juan directing me like a life-sized doll.
“You’re a natural!” Juan yelled over the music.
My mind remained with Luke.
My heart still belongs to you.
I could have broken free of Juan and gone back to Luke, but I didn’t. Not yet.
Ever since our exchange at the puja ceremony, I’d been looking for certainty. I wanted to be certain that he was available, certain he was interested. And now I had it. But that next step! That’s what I wasn’t certain about now. What to do or how to go about it. Before this had been testing. Flirtations. But to take action? No matter what, it would change things, and it would put Luke and me in a dangerous position, given that any sort of relationship between two guides was forbidden.
“Loosen up!” Juan said, giving me a playful shake.
I thought about Luke and how he’d been giving me small clues all along, but even that moment in the pantry with the bracelet hadn’t been enough to truly make me believe it. Luke had always been the bolder and braver of the two of us, and tonight he’d had to literally spell out what his feelings were for me.
He’d written it out and…I hadn’t responded.
I shot a glance in his direction, but he wasn’t there anymore. He wasn’t anywhere in the tent.
“Excuse me,” I said to Juan, wiggling from his grip.
I went straight for the door. Luke wasn’t outside, either.
I didn’t have my headlamp, but the big top’s skylights were bright enough to dimly light the way to the UW section. God it was cold out here in short sleeves!
I shook his tent with our signature one-two shake.
No response.
“Luke,” I whispered.
Still nothing. My chest grew tight with panic. Did he think I’d blown him off?
After waiting a minute, I repeated his name, this time louder in case he had his earbuds on.
The UW Huskies pennant flapping from the top of his tent was my only response. Where could he possibly be?
Not knowing what else to do, I dejectedly started back to the warmth of the big top. I couldn’t think about it. I couldn’t analyze it. I just had to go with it.
“Emily,” Luke said. He was standing in the door of the UW team tent where I hadn’t even thought of looking.
All doubt was gone. My heart pounded out of my chest.
He stepped outside as I walked over to him. I was so caught by the longing in his eyes that I misjudged the distance and wound up practically on top of him, and then his hands were on my face pulling me the rest of the way in.
There wasn’t time to think about what I was doing, about how all the mechanics of kissing your best friend would work. As soon as our bodies connected, our lips were together, and it was just him and me, kissing with the exhilaration of climbing through a crux even as your mind is telling you that you won’t be able to do it.
We pulled away from each other slightly. My breaths were short and fast. I just kissed Luke. My Luke.
He nudged me around the corner to the dark side of the tent, and I didn’t have a chance to have any other thoughts because he was kissing me again, and I was kissing back like I needed him to live. Like it hadn’t ever been any other way between us. His mouth opened, and our tongues slid together. He tasted like the British wintergreen gum he always chewed.
He slid his hands down my shoulders until his warm palms were directly against the bare skin of my upper arms. Startled, he squeezed them and stopped kissing me.
“You’re not wearing a coat.”
I shook my head.
He unzipped his down jacket and pulled me in tight. I wrapped my arms around his waist as he zipped the jacket up my back. He pulled the knit hat off his head and put it on my head instead.
“Better?” he asked.
“Yeah.”
I had stupidly been outside in sub-zero temperatures in nothing but a T-shirt, and he hadn’t chided me about it. Further, he was sharing his jacket and hat, which was ultra-chivalrous. These things somehow struck me as more odd than us kissing, and it made me shy.
As if sensing this, he tightened his arms around me and twisted us so we both had a view of the sky. In the Himalayas, you’re ten-thousand feet closer to the stars than anywhere else in the world, and tonight I felt that more than I ever had before. The netting of stars was a canopy just for us, exactly as described in one of my favorite poems.
…heaven’s embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half-light…
The poem had been part of a sophomore-year English assignment, and Luke and I had been hanging out in my tent when I read it for the first time. I’d made him put down his book and listen to me read the whole thing aloud.
Luke exhaled softly, and his face pressed a little harder against mine as we looked up at the stars. This was Luke’s cheek, with the tiniest bit of stubble, warming mine.
We kissed again, this time more slowly and tenderly. Our first two kisses had made my body come alive, but this one touched my soul. The stars, they were more beautiful tonight because we were together. Everything was always more beautiful with him.
“Your dad,” he whispered, breaking the trance. “He’s at Global tonight.”
“I know, and I haven’t talked to him yet. I don’t want him to come looking for me.” Besides, there were eyes everywhere at Base Camp, and we both knew it.
Neither of us moved to go inside. I tipped my head up, letting my lips drift across his. His fingers slid through the base of my ponytail, pushing our lips together harder.
Slowly—carefully—he lowered his jacket zipper down my spine, and I stepped back, my hands not yet willing to release. He let his hands linger on my waist, his eyes solemn with the night.
Without the protection of his jacket, I shivered in the cold. Reluctantly, I slid his hat off my head and handed it to him. “Coming with me?”
He shook his head.
Just as we turned to go our separate ways, he yanked me back, grabbed my face in both hands, and kissed me one more time.