Page 100 of Valley Girls
“Some things are harder. But then I can reach things you can’t. Your awkward off-width is my perfect hand jam. Your perfect hand jam is my finger crack. Everything is equal on the wall. And it’s not like my hands are freakish and can’t hold a pencil.”
“It’s not equal,” she said. “But I get what you mean.”
He squeezed her hand and pulled her on a bend in the path. “Mountains do not care who you are, they will kill you all the same. That’s what I meant.”
“At home the mountains always felt personal,” she said. “Here it feels like they don’t even notice you. They feel young and brazen and new. Not old and full of secrets and shadows. It’s beautiful. Like, beyond beautiful. Every day feels like a dream drenched in sunshine. I love being here. But sometimes I miss that old feeling of ... brutality, or something. Where everything is terrible and great all at once. It feels strange to live without it. I didn’t even know I would miss something like that. I wonder sometimes if Iamthat, and that’s what I like about climbing.”
“Stop,” he groaned. “Ugh. Why you gotta be like this?” He pulled her under his arm, tight to his chest.
It was too easy to roll into his hug, to slip around in his arms and push up on her toes with her face tilted toward him in a patch of moonlight pouring through the silver leafed oaks.
They still held hands, twisted behind her back. He pushed her fist into the small of her back, driving her closer.
The breeze rustled the leaves above them.
She felt his breath pull and ease. His chest expanded and relaxed. The rhythm. A cadence. His gaze flickered over her face and came back to her eyes, his long body hard and alive against hers. She closed her eyes and her lips parted in a smile.
“There it is,” he whispered. “Open your eyes.”
But she couldn’t. She tightened her mouth, trying to bite down on the smile.
“Open,” he whispered, softly kissing between her eyes. A flush of heat drove down to the base of her spine.
She laughed. “No.” But she parted her eyes just enough to reach for his neck in the moonlight and pull his mouth to hers.
He kissed her slowly.
She pushed back with urgency.
He pulled away, his laugh tinged with a growl and he cinched her fist tighter into her back, against him. This time he kissed her with that intensity that she’d seen rippling under his skin since the bus stop in Merced. An intensity that made her stagger, even as he held her pinned.
It felt like a thing she expected to know, suddenly bigger and wider and taller, the world expanding inside her own chest.
It was almost too much. She needed to breathe. She pulled away.
He held her there as she caught her breath. His thumb circled lazily on her neck.
“You okay?” he whispered. “Am I okay?”
The oaks rustled a papery sound.
“Yeah,” she breathed. “More.”
The sky turned pink and found them still kissing in the shadows of the black oaks.
Thirty One
Forget climbing El Capitan, surviving a day in the service industry was what was going to do her in. Especially since she’d been up all night, making out with Walker. Rilla’s stomach rolled with excitement at the fresh memory of his hands on her.
“Do your hair,” Allie said, her messy top-knot bobbing.
They stood in the warm laundry room—the machines all quiet. The sun had not yet risen. Rilla buttoned the skirt of the uniform and rolled her eyes. “Yeah, yeah. I know how tips work.”
She stood on her tiptoes to use her reflection in the small, dark window to do her best old-people makeup—a nice pink lipstick, mascara, and blush. Her concealer didn’t work anymore because of her tan, and her hair had gotten so long she had to ask Allie for scissors to cut off six inches of straggly ends, but finally she turned from the window, slipped on the borrowed flat dress shoes, and waited for Allie to approve.
Allie shrugged. “It’ll do. I’m going back to bed.” She handed over her badge. “Don’t get me fired.”
Rilla threw on a sweatshirt and headed across the Valley, her bare legs pricking with the chill. She’d never been inside the big hotel, and her heart beat a little faster as she crossed through the meadows and headed up the paved and landscaped drive.
