INTO HIS HANDS

Still Here

The trust session starts at two.

He is already there.

One fifty eight and he is checking the mat configuration with the clipboard and the focused attention of someone who has thought about this and made decisions and is now verifying that reality matches the decisions.

He looks up when I come in.

He says: two minutes early.

I say: I'm always early.

He says: so am I. He adjusts the left side of the mat. Neither of us is early then.

I say: that's not how early works.

He says: stand here.

He points to a spot on the mat.

I stand there.

He positions himself behind me.

Close.

The specific close of someone who has calculated the exact required distance and has positioned himself there with the same precision he brings to everything and the precision is somehow more charged than if he had simply stood wherever felt natural.

He says: whenever you're ready.

I fall.

His hands find me.

The rough warm specific reality of them under my shoulder blades before I finish falling. The calluses present and specific against my back through the thin fabric of my training top. The warmth that keeps arriving as a surprise no matter how many times I have felt it now.

He holds the catch.

Not one breath.

Two.

His hands warm and rough and present and the specific weight of someone who has decided this catch deserves the full second before the return.

He rights me.

I face forward.

I say: again.

We run it eight times.

By the fifth my body has stopped bracing for the fall. By the seventh it has stopped tracking the catch. By the eighth I am simply moving and arriving and the movement and the arriving have collapsed into one continuous thing that requires no conscious participation.

After the eighth he holds me longer than the others.

Much longer.

His hands warm against my back and the specific grip tightening fractionally. Not adjusting. Not correcting.

Just holding.

Like he has decided the catch is his to keep for a moment before returning it.

I say: Zane.

He says: yes.

I say: you're holding this one.

He says: yes.

I say: for a while.

He says: the catch needs to land before you can feel it landing. He says it against my hair. Low. The warmth of his breath specific. He says: sometimes that takes longer than one breath.

I say: it's landed.

He says: has it.

The big top is very quiet.

His hands still on my back.

The warmth of them.

The roughness of them.

The specific weight of someone who is not moving and has made a decision about not moving and is entirely comfortable in the decision.

I say: step back.

He does not step back immediately.

He says: yes.

He says it first.

Then he steps back.

The cold air arriving immediately in the space where he was and I am acutely aware of the arrival of the cold in the specific shape of his absence.

He goes to the equipment rack.

He picks up his clipboard.

He says without turning around: platform tomorrow.

I say: we've been on the low rig for a week.

He says: and now we're going to the platform.

I say: you've decided we're ready.

He says: I decided three days ago. He makes a note. I was waiting for you to feel it.

I say: and now.

He says: now you just held the eighth catch without stepping back.

I say: I stepped back when I asked you to step back.

He says: yes. He says it with the flat certainty of someone making a point without making a point. He says: you asked.

I stand on the mat and think about you asked.

You asked.

Not you stepped back.

You asked.

The distinction sitting in the air between us with the specific weight of something he has noted and is returning to me.

He turns around.

He crosses the apron.

He stops in front of me.

Close.

Closer than the post-catch distance.

The dark eyes finding mine with the full weight of the assessment that is not the professional version.

He says: the shoulder.

I say: quiet. Best it's been.

He says: yes. He looks at me steadily. He says: your body is learning to trust the catch.

I say: yes.

He says: the rest of you is catching up.

He says it with the low voice and the dark eyes and the close proximity and the rough warm hands at his sides and I am aware of all of it simultaneously.

Very aware.

He reaches out.

His hand finds my jaw.

Not gripping.

The back of his fingers against my jaw. The roughness of the knuckles. The warmth underneath the roughness.

He tilts my chin up.

Just slightly.

Just enough.

He says: platform tomorrow. He says it with the dark eyes from very close and the back of his fingers still against my jaw. He says: you're ready.

I say: you decided three days ago.

He says: yes.

I say: and you waited.

He says: you needed to feel it yourself. He says it simply. Pushing you toward something you weren't ready for would have been.

He stops.

I say: would have been what.

He says: wrong.

He says it quietly.

He drops his hand.

He steps back.

He goes to the catch bar.

He climbs.

I stand on the apron with the specific warmth of the back of his fingers still present on my jaw like an afterimage and I think about wrong said quietly and the decision made three days ago and the waiting and the you asked and I think:

I am in serious trouble.

The specific serious trouble of someone who has been building toward something for ten days and can feel the building accelerating and does not know whether to be afraid of that or not.

I go find Mira.

She is in the cookhouse with Theo.

They are at the corner table and Theo has apparently been telling her something that has made her laugh the real laugh. The twelve year laugh. The one she saves for things that actually earn it.

She looks up when I come in.

She reads my face.

She says: sit down.

Theo looks at me.

His eyes do the quick assessment of someone who reads people the way he reads animals. Immediate. Accurate. Then the warm smile. Specific. Just for me.

He says: bad session?

I say: good session.

He says: you look like someone who has had a very good session that has also complicated several things.

I say: the platform tomorrow.

He says: full height.

I say: yes.

He says: Zane decided.

I say: three days ago apparently.

Theo looks at me with the warm brown eyes.

He says: he waited for you to be ready.

I say: yes.

He says: without telling you he was waiting.

I say: yes.

He is quiet for a moment.

He says: that's. He stops. He picks up his coffee. He says: that's patient.

He says it with the specific weight of someone giving credit for something honestly.

Mira beside him says nothing.

She is watching me.

She says: sit down Ivy.

I sit down.

Theo shifts on the bench to make room.

The warmth of him immediately present at my side. Easy and comfortable and specific. The way warmth is when it is on the surface rather than underneath everything.

His arm brushes mine as he reaches for his coffee.

Warm.

Different from Zane's warmth.

Not the rough specific warmth of callused hands and anchor checks and wrong said quietly about something that was never going to be wrong regardless.

Easier than that.

More available than that.

Real in its own specific way.

I am aware of it.

I am aware of both things simultaneously and the awareness is its own specific kind of problem.

Theo says: full height tomorrow.

I say: yes.

He says: you're ready.

I say: everyone keeps saying that.

He says: because it's true. He looks at me with the warm eyes and the something underneath. He says: you've been ready. You just needed someone to be already there before you arrived.

He says it simply.

Without agenda.

Without knowing that already there is the specific phrase that has been living in my chest since the third trust fall.

Or maybe he knows.

Theo notices things.

He is warm and easy and he notices things.

Mira says to her coffee: the energy at this table is extremely interesting.

Theo says: extremely.

He says it with the warm eyes on mine.

I look at my coffee.

I think about the back of rough fingers against my jaw.

I think about the warmth of Theo's arm against mine.

I think about platform tomorrow and full height and already there.

I think about two completely different kinds of dangerous and what it means that both of them are doing something to me and neither of them is simple.

I drink my coffee.

The coffee does not help.

It is not supposed to help.

It is supposed to be coffee.

I am the one with the problem.