Well, damn. Spencer hoisted the pack onto his back and the two of them hightailed it out to where a tiny car waited for them. The driver didn’t speak English, and Flynn’s Japanese didn’t go much beyond an exchange of courtesies, but the app knew where they were going. All they had to do was sit back and let the driver take them there.
They could’ve spent the ride talking about those kisses and what they meant, but instead they hunched over Flynn’s phone where he’d loaded a map of the climbing area they were heading for—a place called Tsuzura-iwa that sat high on top of the Mazukari ridge. It was hardly a destination crag, just a line of rock less than a hundred feet high, but it had the excitement of novelty. New rock, new routes. A new hike up and new scenery on the way there.
As city traffic gave way to prettier countryside, Spencer’s attention was drawn away from Flynn’s phone out the window. The ridge came into view, a long rolling stretch of green with the cliff band barely visible as a white streak above the tree line. The car dropped them right in the parking lot at the base of a trail marked with a sign they couldn’t read but which matched the picture on Flynn’s phone.
“I’ve got this.” Spencer shouldered the pack in deference to Flynn’s ankle and started up the hill between the straight grey trunks lining the path.
“You take better care of me than I do myself.”
“That’s sort of the point. You ought to take better care of yourself. Your body is your living.”
They had the trail to themselves, probably because it was a weekday. The sun already shone bright overhead, suggesting it was going to be a hot day up top, but under the canopy of leaves it was cool enough. The joy of being outside where the air was clear instead of clouded with chalk and the only sounds were their footsteps and the twitter of birds made Spencer want to screw around instead of train. How long had it been since he’d just climbed something? No agenda, no schedule, no recording reps or times or calories burned. Just climbed. Not in the last two years, for sure.
“You doing all right?” he called back to Flynn. The trail they were on wound steeply between pools of shadow and light over rocky ground where it would be easy to twist an already-weak ankle. He was having a little trouble with it himself. You’d think with all the running he did, he’d be in shape for this, but carrying a pack uphill was a different sport—one he hadn’t engaged in recently enough.
“This is cake,” Flynn said. “I usually have a giant bouldering pad strapped to my back.”
“And a film crew to help carry it.”
“No one carries my stuff but me.”
“I’m joking.”
“It’s just that I’d rather they weren’t there, that’s all. And they’re not always. The photographers come when I start working something new, in case I get it that first day, but then they leave me alone until I tell them I’m ready. Sometimes I oopsie and climb something when no one’s looking, then I have to do it again.”
“Such a rough life,” Spencer said, not really sympathetic. “Maybe appreciate the fact that you get paid to do something you love.” He stopped to let Flynn catch up, doffing the pack so he could fish a bottle of water out of it. He’d been right about how hot it was going to get.
“What if getting paid to do it ruins it?”
“Do you think it does?” He took a few swallows, then passed the bottle over.
“The things I’m proudest of don’t involve money.” Flynn downed about half the bottle and handed it back. “Or awards. What I love, what I remember—that all happens on real rock. The last time I was in Tokyo, what did I do?”
“You took fourth.” And qualified for the Olympics. He’d been there.
“See, that’s not how I remember it. The last time I was in Tokyo, I went bouldering with Mika and Shino at this sweet spot along the river called Mitake. Mika taught me the Japanese words for things and laughed at my pronunciation. Shino was working this crazy line. It’ll never go, but we tried until our fingertips were shredded and our arms were toast. Then we ate sushi and drank sake. A whole bunch of their friends were there, and Mika kept trying to translate for me, but she didn’t know half the words in English and it didn’t matter anyway. They were talking climber. You could read it in their hands.”
“Sounds like a good time.”
“You could’ve been there, but you went home. I’m not faulting you for it, Spencer. I understand being disappointed. But I don’t want that to be me in a few years, caring more about the competition than the climbing. Don’t you remember when you were doing this because you loved it?”
Yes and no. He’d started getting sponsorships young, and even before that, he’d never taken losing well. Climbing had been the first thing he’d ever been good at—maybe the only thing he’d ever been good at. A runty gay kid had trained himself into being a world-class athlete, only to find out the scale didn’t end there. There was always someone better than him, always a next challenge he wasn’t sure he could meet. Climbing had never been as carefree for him as it seemed to be for Flynn.
Flynn looked up at the sky through the scatter of branches overhead, like he was searching for something up there. “Sometimes I think about quitting.”
“Quitting climbing?” Panic ran through him at the thought. Not being able to climb was his worst nightmare, and if Flynn quit, they’d never see each other again.
“Not completely. I don’t think I could quit completely even if I wanted to. I am who I am, and part of who I am is a climber.”
That reminded Spencer that they needed to talk about how he was a gay man and Flynn was whatever he was. Whatever that might be, Spencer would honor it and keep it to himself. He just wanted to know. He stashed the bottle and lifted the pack onto his back. Some conversations were easier to have when you couldn’t see the person you were having them with. A narrow trail made a great excuse to avoid eye contact.
“So, about the other day,” he said when they’d established a slow but steady uphill rhythm again.
“You mean the other night?”
“Yeah.” The steepness of the trail made him sound breathy and uncertain, more seductive than he intended. “I don’t know what it meant to you—”
“It meant a lot. Please don’t tell me you’re taking it back.”
“What do you mean taking it back?” He turned around. Forget about avoiding eye contact. This was important.
Flynn closed the gap between them. “Are you about to tell me it was a mistake and we should forget it?”
“No! I was about to say I would forget it if you want me to. Or at least pretend to forget it. And I won’t tell anyone either way. If you were experimenting—”
“I wasn’t experimenting, and definitely not with you. I’ve had a crush on you since we met.”
“Oh.” Spencer headed uphill again, needing a moment. He hadn’t expected Flynn to meet his eyes so steadily. He hadn’t expected the hopeful lurch his heart made either. “So you’re gay or bi or…?”
“Just plain old gay. I’m not publicly out, obviously.”
“I probably wouldn’t have come out myself if I’d known what I was doing.” When he’d asked a classmate to a high school dance, it hadn’t occurred to him that his sexuality would ever be international news, but that was the year he’d won the British Columbia Junior Championship, and the papers had dug up his date and blared it to the world. “I didn’t know I’d be profiled as the gay climber for the rest of my fucking life. You’d think my sexually was part of my name—Sir Spencer Woolery, the Gay.”