Page 117 of Full Contact

“It’s yours. How did you start climbing?”

“My daughter had her eleventh birthday party here. The parents were supposed to sit on this bench.” She patted it. “I got up to climb. That was sixteen years ago.”

I got up to suggest a better start on Trier’s next route. He was already chalking his hands, and Tess had already told him. I sat.

Felix launched into a story about a man at his office who ran a slow cooker under his desk, and Trier leaned in to listen. I had nothing to add, so I clipped into the yellow route I’d done twenty times and climbed it. My feet landed on the edges without me looking.

When I rode the belay down, Trier had stopped listening to Felix. His eyes were on me.

“You made that look easy,” he said.

“I’ve done it a lot.”

“It didn’t look easy from here.”

I sat beside him, our shoulders touching. Across the room, under the new overhang, the orange route waited. Before Trier decided to come, I’d planned to spend an hour on it. Instead, I stayed with him. The orange route could wait one more week.

Dana sat beside me during a water break. Trier had gone to the desk, and Felix was halfway up the gray wall, swearing quietly at a crimp.

“Anders and I had the conversation,” she said.

“About your place?”

“He started assuming I’d be home on nights we’d never talked about. He’d text at five asking what I wanted for dinner, as if it was already decided he was invited.” She unscrewed the cap of her water bottle and screwed it back on. “Some nights I did want him there. That was the problem. I couldn’t tell which nights until he’d already asked. So I finally said something, and it went badly in a way I didn’t expect.”

“How?”

“He wasn’t angry. I could have handled angry. He—“

“Mark.”

Trier returned from the desk with a printed sheet. Dana stopped talking and looked up at him.

“Tess says I need to book next time,” he said. “Do I book as a beginner, or as your guest?”

“As my guest. It’s cheaper, and they’ll let you on any wall.”

“Any wall?”

“Any wall you can climb.”

Dana slid over to make room. “Book as his guest. Then you can blame him for everything.”

“I was already planning on doing that,” Trier said.

She asked whether his hands hurt yet. He showed her his fingertips. She showed him hers, with calluses like small coins, and he examined them with professional respect. She chalked up and headed for the gray wall Felix was still swearing about.

I’d ask her to finish the story about Anders later.

Trier tried a route with a long sideways move near the top. He paused under it and found a foothold on his own. I didn’t say anything. He didn’t need me to.

Felix came over patting his pockets. “Has anyone seen a small key on a green band?”

We checked under the bench and behind the cubbies. A teenager at the desk finally pointed up. Felix had looped the key around the auto-belay carabiner so it wouldn’t slip off his wrist, then unclipped, and the line had reeled it all the way to the top of the gray wall.

“I put it there for safety,” Felix said, squinting up at it.

“Now it’s safe from you,” I said.