1
238 Words
1
PAUL HAS ASKED HIM, more than once, if climbing feels like flying.
“No,” Alex always tells him. “It feels like being a very tiny bug on a very big rock. And a lot like almost falling.”
“Please don’t fall.”
“The entire point is to not.”
This high up it doesn’t feel like bugs or falling. It feels like rock and his ropes and the wind in his hair, even if Paul will yell at him again for not wearing a helmet.
He slips, just a little, and his palm stings on stone. One more scrape for Zach, his character. Victor will be thrilled. For Alex, it’s a reminder that he wasn’t quite careful enough. For Victor, it’s pain for one of his beautiful things, which, as a rule, he delights in. It’s a mark of how long Alex has had this impossible life that Victor’s inevitable reaction doesn’t even seem that f****d up anymore.
When he gets back to the ground there will be a dozen things to worry about, from the Fourth Estate renewal that is taking longer than it should, to Paul’s pilot that he’s hoping anxiously for a pickup on, to the trip to South Carolina they’re finally taking now that they both have time. But while Alex is up here, there’s nothing to worry about except not falling. He happily puts all of his concentration into that and lets the rest of the world fade away.
On the descent, he startles a family of cliff swallows. Alex grins as they swoop away.
- Writer
