Page 118 of Full Contact

Tess fetched it down with a long pole. She’d clearly done that before. Felix thanked her with both hands on his heart.

At the smoothie bar, Felix slid a napkin across to Trier.

“Rule one,” Trier read. “Beginners are exempt from the loser-buys rule on their first night. Rule two. Beginners who are also professional athletes are not beginners.” He set the napkin down. “Those are in conflict.”

“Rule three covers it,” Felix said.

Trier turned the napkin over. “There’s no rule three.”

“It’s a temporary rule. It says I’m buying tonight.”

We traded stories about the worst instructional advice we’d ever received. Dana’s first climbing instructor had told her to climb with confidence and nothing else. Felix’s driving instructor had promised that other cars would get out of his way if he believed in himself.

“A youth coach told me to be bigger,” Trier said.

“How old were you?” Dana asked.

“Twelve. Five foot one. I asked him how, and he said it was attitude. I went home and ate everything in the refrigerator.”

“Did it work?”

“I grew eight inches in two years. He took credit for it.”

Felix snorted mango smoothie up his nose and spent the next minute recovering with a stack of napkins.

Across the gym, a man in a blue shirt started up the orange route, and I lost track of what Dana was saying. At the move that had stopped me last week, where the wall tipped back and the next hold was a sloper at full reach, he didn’t reach. He brought his right foot up high onto a tiny chip by his hip, one I’d never noticed, and stood up on it. The sloper was easy from there.

“Do you want another climb?” Trier asked. He’d followed my gaze across the room.

I checked the time. Almost nine. “I think I’m finished.”

“You only went up once.”

“I studied the rest.”

He considered me a second longer, then nodded and finished his smoothie.

Dana was pulling on her coat. I walked over to her while Felix congratulated Trier on his first climbing experience.

“I owe you ten minutes,” I said quietly.

She glanced at her phone. “My daughter’s outside. She’s been circling for five minutes.”

“Okay.”

“Next time.” She squeezed my arm. “It’s not an emergency. It’s just a lot.”

She waved to Trier and Felix and was gone. The door let in a gust of cold that lifted the corner of the paper snowflake still taped to the auto-belay by the door.

Trier held the door for me, and we headed out into the parking lot. The wind found a gap at my collar. My legs were pleasantly tired. My forearms had barely done any work.

It was a good evening. I still wanted to know what Anders had said that Dana hadn’t expected. And I wanted to try that chip by the hip and see whether it would take my weight.

Our cars were three spaces apart. The snow along the edges of the lot had turned gray and hard. Trier stopped beside my car, with his hands in his jacket pockets.

“I liked that,” he said.

“It looked like it.”