Page 24 of That Summer Feeling

I wanted to tell her everything was fine, but the truth fell out of my mouth first, surprising us both. “I’m afraid of heights too.”

Stevie looked from me, to the course, to me again.

“Oh,” she said. “Shit.”

The ropes were easily thirty feet up. Maybe more. I wasn’t good at estimating that stuff. Worse, they were designed to feel unstable. There was no way it was actually safe. If my vision weren’t starting to go black around the edges, I could better assess the hundreds of ways I’d surely die up there.

“I could help,” Stevie said. “I could hold your hand.”

“Maybe if I close my eyes, I won’t even notice that I’m holding on to wobbling ropes as I leap from tiny log to tiny log like Tarzan.”

“Exactly.”

I looked at her palm, soft and sure. If I disappointed her now, this early into our alliance, it would resurface later.

When Ethan served me papers, he referenced a moment that had happened before we even got married. We’d been in the grocery store together when a man started screaming at an employee. Ethan had decided to interject.

Ethan was a calm person by nature, but the adrenaline rush of his split-second decision gave him way too much nervous energy. He went in jittery and intense and a little uncertain of himself, and the angry man picked up on it immediately.The man left the employee alone and started screaming at Ethan instead.

I thought for sure Ethan would stay composed. He wasalwayscomposed. But for reasons I’d never understood, Ethan started screaming back. Next thing I knew, the man and Ethan were yelling at each other, almost fist-fighting, and neither of them even knew why.

I had to walk away. I was embarrassed the whole thing was happening at all. Ethan so rarely got angry at anything, I thought that moment wasnotthe time to suddenly test out the limits of his emotional landscape. The whole incident ended with Ethan and the man both getting escorted out of the store.

Ethan and I had driven home in silence, neither of us daring to mention what had just occurred. The incident didn’t come up again until that fateful Valentine’s dinner, well over four years after the fact. Ethan brought it up to explain to me how I’d never really been his teammate. I didn’t jump in to support him that day in the grocery store, which to him meant I never accounted for him in the way he accounted for me.

Nothing could have hurt me worse. It haunted me to know I could let someone down and not realize it. I tried to be so vigilant, never letting a moment pass by without playing it back and making sure I was the optimal version of myself—friendly and giving and considerate. I let small things slide in the name of keeping the peace. How could I have helped that day? What could I have possibly contributed to that altercation? Why did Ethan hold on to it for years and years without ever bringing it up?

If I didn’t go across the ropes with Stevie, would it change the fabric of our relationship in some small but significant way?

“Let’s go,” I said to her, lacing my fingers through hers and walking us back to the ladder.

“All good?” Captain Aja asked when we returned.

“All good!” I assured her, injecting cheer into my voice.

I would show up this time. I would be the person everyone needed.

Stevie couldn’t hold my hand as we climbed up the ladder, so I stared at her shoes instead, thinking of all the times she’d been here before. It comforted me to imagine young Stevie, scrappy and determined, chasing her big brother up this very ladder. Wanting so badly to beat him. To be seen as a contender.

The distraction worked until we got to the top and I saw the distance between me and the ground. I saw my sister and Mason as red blobs. I saw the end of my life. Worse, it wasn’t the highlight reel playing for me. It was all my failures. The moments I hadn’t shown up.

I saw Ethan, dressed in an ill-fitting suit, meeting me at the courthouse to file our divorce papers. I’d die without proving to him that he didn’t have to walk away from me. I could be a teammate. Iwasa teammate.

Stevie put her arms around me, hugging me from the back. The front of her helmet pressed into the side of mine as she said, “Listen. All you have to do is hold my hand.”

“We’re gonna lose if you do that,” I told her. “You have tograb the ropes to stay stable. If you hold me, you won’t have a good enough grip to move quickly.”

“You underestimate how good I am at multitasking.”

We got strapped into harnesses. But harnesses broke all the time, didn’t they? How many times did harnesses get used before they gave out? Were these ones brand-new?

When the whistle blew for us to begin, Stevie pulled me forward.

My feet did not move.

“Come on, Garland,” she said, the barest hint of annoyance in her tone. “Trust me.”

It wasn’t that I didn’t trust her. I did. More than made sense for how long we’d known each other. The problem was me. It always was. I didn’t trust that I could stay out of my own head long enough to finish the course.