The Memory Thief (11 page)

“No, not that. The other thing. Say it again.”

This time his eyes meet mine without reservation. I can see into their depths. I can lose myself there. Despite what he's done, he is still mine. He's all I want, and I curse myself for it. Look what happened to Patty Ellis.

“I love you,” he says, low and clear and sure.

“I forgive you,” is what I say. “Because I love you. Against my better judgment.”

A wave of emotions rolls across Aidan's face: fear, disbelief, joy. He leans forward and kisses me, deeper than he ever has. I taste salt on his lips. Before, his kisses always had an edge—hunger, lust, something that drove us forward toward an inevitable end. This is different. This is … tender. Every time his lips meet mine, I learn something new about Aidan James. He is letting me inside, and my heart leaps.

We kiss for a long time before he pulls back and frames my face with his hands. “You love me,” he says. He is smiling.

“I do,” I say.

“I could get used to hearing that.”

“If you act like a human being rather than an ass, you'll get your chance.”

“I'll do my best,” he says, and draws my face to his.

“I missed you,” I say against his lips.

“Yeah? What did you miss?”

“Oh, a lot of things. Your smile. Talking to you on the phone late at night. The way you raise one eyebrow when you think someone's full of it. I even missed watching you pore over those damn maps, trying to figure out what stupid thing you're going to do next. Just … you.”

His hand makes its way under my skirt, tracing the contours of my thigh. He trails his fingers over the thin fabric of my underwear, and I have a moment of relief that I'm wearing a decent pair. Desire curls in my belly, stretches like a sunning cat.

“Did you miss this?” he whispers, moving his hand in small, slow circles.

I don't answer. In response, he picks up the pace. I rise to meet his hand and he pulls it away. He lifts my shirt and kisses my breasts through the thin fabric of my bra, running one finger along the scalloped edge of the lace where it meets my skin.

“Aidan,” I say. I barely recognize my voice.

“What?” he replies, unhooking my bra with the dexterity born of long practice and letting it fall to the floor.

I know I should tell him to stop. For one thing, we haven't talked things through at all. For another, what kind of message does it send that I am willing to do … this … after what happened the last time we'd seen each other? I gather my resolve. “Wait,” I say to him.

“Why?” He lowers his head to my breasts again, catching the nipples with his teeth, flicking them with his tongue. His hands roam over me, tracing my back under my shirt, gripping my hips. “It's been a long time,” he says, his face against my skin.

I'd been celibate for a year after Andrew, a deliberate decision. Compared to that, two months is nothing. As my oh-so-Jewish mother would say, Aidan James doesn't know from long times. Still, the sound of his voice, the feel of his hands on my body, melts my willpower and brings back a rush of memories that I've been doing my best to forget. I want him to fill me, so strongly it scares me. Where is my backbone?

Ignoring the heat of his breath on my skin, I struggle to remember the way he'd acted, all the reasons why I'd been so angry. “What, you couldn't find a pretty girl to share your tent?”

He rises over me, putting one hand on either side of my head. “I don't want anyone else,” he says. “I've found what I'm after.”

I look up at him. His hair has gotten long, past his chin. The ends brush my cheekbones. He holds himself away from me, his weight on his arms. I slip my hands under his T-shirt, running my fingers over the smooth skin of his back. His eyes are fixed on mine. “Have faith,” he says, and bends to kiss me again.

It's the strangest thing. I come to myself again in our bedroom, but where have I been? I remember falling into the darkness and the cold, fighting it with everything I had:
I will come back. I will find you.
I could swear I heard a voice speaking in Latin, in the cadence of the Catholic mass that marked my childhood. Then there was warmth, and a sense of emptiness, of space waiting to be filled. Welcoming me.

Nicholas, I think, and wonder why.

Maddie is asleep, her head pillowed on her hair. For a long moment I just look at her, take in every detail of her face. Then I lie down on the bed, curving myself around her body. I breathe in her familiar smell, bonfires and chocolate and
home.
I say her name once, then again. She doesn't stir, not even when I put my hand on her arm through the blanket.

I don't understand this. Gabe saw me, I know he did. Why not Maddie? Why can't I tell her I'm sorry? Why can't I say goodbye?

I put my hand against her face, feeling the heat of her skin. And then, just like what happened with J. C. on the mountain, I'm inside her dream somehow. We're together again on the living room rug of her house in Durham, six years ago. Maddie kisses me, and for one glorious moment my mind goes blank. I'm not worrying about how I'm going to get her to listen to me, or obsessing over the choices I could've made that would've saved Ellis's life. I'm not thinking at all, really, and it feels great. My body's on a mission. It wants what it wants, and that's just fine with me.

Then Maddie gets both of her hands against my chest and shoves me, hard. “Seriously, Aidan. Stop,” she says.

I raise up on my hands so I can get a good look at her face. “What's the matter?”

“Oh, I don't know,” she says, sarcastic as hell. “What could be the matter? You cheated on me. You nearly broke my heart. You almost died. One of your best friends did die. I didn't know if I'd ever see you again. Now here you are. You say you love me. Which is fantastic, because I love you too, goddamnit. But I just went from thinking you were the world's biggest ass to making out with you on my living room floor. Can you honestly tell me that you don't think I should be somewhat unsettled?”

I knew this was too good to be true. Somehow or other, I am going to pay for being such an asshole. It's only fair, I know that, but does this have to be the moment? “Now who's being melodramatic?” I say, trying to make light of things.

“I am not being melodramatic, Aidan. I am being serious.” She rolls away from me, onto her side, and props herself up on an elbow. “Do you have any idea what the past two months have been like for me? First there was that stupid blond slut. You had your hands all over her. It made me sick. It made me want to kill you.”

Guilt shoots through me, which is new. Usually by the time I fuck up one of my relationships—if you could even call them that—I am so over it, I could give less of a shit how the girl feels. In fact, the madder she is, the better, since that'll expedite my trip through Splitsville. Hearing Maddie talk about this, though, I feel awful. I don't deserve her, that's for sure. I do my best to arrange my features in a listening mode so that she won't be able to tell what I'm thinking, which is that I could have that skirt off in about three seconds and be inside her in another two. Luckily she's so invested in what she's saying, she isn't even looking at me.

“I am not a jealous person,” she goes on, “but I'd have to have been
dead
not to react that way. It felt like you'd pulled the ground out from under me and stuck a knife in my back, all at the same time. How could you, Aidan? How could you do that to me?”

I hang my head. “I'm sorry,” I say.

“You sure are,” she says, yanking her shirt back down, which is too bad. I was enjoying the view. “So who was she?”

I am on my feet before I realize it, and I start glancing around the room for the nearest escape route. It's instinct, okay? But this is Maddie, and if she wants to put me through the grand inquisition, I pretty much have to deal. I make myself walk over to the couch like that was my plan all along, and I sit down. “She was just … some girl. I don't even know. Some random girl.”

“Did you know her before that night at the party?”

“I guess, sure. She hangs around with Patty and Beth. But we weren't friends, if that's what you're asking. We didn't have anything going on. Kate was there. She was interested. End of story.” I can feel my jaw tighten up, and that stupid muscle starts jumping the way it always does when I get upset. J. C. calls me the Meteorologist of Fuckupsville, because whenever anything bothers me, it's all over my face like a weather forecast. Not him. The world could be ending and he'd be on his second cup of coffee, debating whether hellfire would precede or follow brimstone.

“All right,” Maddie says. “I just wanted to make sure you weren't going to run off with her or anything.”

Christ on a crutch. Run off with her? I'm lucky I remember her name. “Maddie. I love
you.
She was like a … I don't know, a convenience.”

She grimaces, and I realize too late that maybe my phraseology left something to be desired, from a feminist standpoint. “Sorry,” I say, shrugging, “but it's true.”

She waves her hand, like she's dismissing this whole train of thought. I have a moment of relief, until she continues: “The thing is … I just keep thinking about Patty. Like you said, Ellis was experienced. He's been climbing for as long as you have, longer maybe. And I just … it could have been you who didn't come home, just as easy. I think of you as … invincible, almost. Like a force of nature. But the truth is, next time you might not come back.”

“What are you getting at?” I fold my arms over my chest.

Maddie looks me right in the eye. “I won't ask you to stop climbing, Aidan. I would never do that. It would be horribly selfish of me, like you telling me that you didn't want me to write. I just want to get that out there.”

I stare at her.

“I guess I just—I need to understand why you do it, better than I do now. Because climbing like you do—it's selfish, too. You know what you're doing puts your life in danger, you spend months away from home, and half the time you're here, you're gearing up for one expedition or recovering from another. Then you take off with a bunch of other people who are risking their lives just like you, just because they feel like it. It's like you're in the army or something, except the higher cause is yourself.”

Oh, not this discussion. I have had it before, and I hate it. I open my mouth to interrupt, but she holds up a hand to stop me. “I'm not done. Climbing is such a big part of you, if you didn't do it, maybe you wouldn't be the same person I fell in love with. I get that. I just need you to tell me why, so I can try to understand. Is it some kind of ego thing? What makes it worth the risk?”

I don't say anything at first, because I want to give her a real answer. I've dated some girls who think that being with a mountain climber is fucking sweet, and some who get all pissy because I disappear for months at a time—which, of course, has served as my ideal exit route. When the former type of chick asks me why I climb, I generally feed her some bullshit about reaching the top of the world, going where no man has gone before, yadda yadda yadda. Then I watch her eyes get all moony, and the rest is history. As for the latter type, the second they start whining, I lose patience for being in their immediate vicinity. I've never tried to answer this question honestly, not in this context, and it takes me a little while to figure out what I want to say. “That's a tough question,” I say, joining her on the floor.

She doesn't look up.

“I guess there's a number of answers I could give you, Maddie. And I don't know if any of them will make sense.”

“Try me.”

“I've told you some of this before … but when you're up there, you just feel so … alive, I guess. You're pushing yourself to the limits of your abilities and that's all there is. There's no worrying about the stupid stuff, bills, taxes, messed-up car, whatever. There's no place for that. You're just doing what you're doing for as long as it takes you to do it. It's … I guess what I'm trying to say is, it's pure. It's the purest thing I know.”

She mulls that over. “Okay, I get that. Go on.”

“Answer number two … I'm a restless person. You know how hard it is for me to stay still. And in normal life, there's no way for me to channel that, you know? But when I'm planning a climb, and then when I'm doing it … it focuses me. My mind is calm. And that's … I don't know, addictive, even.” I bite the side of my index finger, trying to sort out what I want to say next. “When I'm putting together a team, giving talks, raising money, planning a route, the whole deal, it's like I have a purpose. And when we get there and start going up the mountain, everything comes together. All of my energy gets channeled into a point somehow, instead of being scattered all over the place. It fills me and I can do something good with it. And everything makes sense.” She isn't saying anything, and I worry that maybe I'm coming off like a complete idiot. “Do I sound totally insane?” I ask.

“Not totally. Go on, please.”

“Okay. Number three. This is the simplest one. I love it. I feel the most like myself when I'm climbing. I get to travel all over the world. I meet incredible people and I see places that most folks will never see. It's impossible to me that I should be so lucky. And to get to do it with my friends, to go places like that and then come back and do it all over again … I feel like it's what I was put on this earth to do. Cheesy, huh?”

“No … not cheesy. Kind of moving, actually,” she says.

Huh. This honesty thing is going pretty well so far. Who knew? I pull her toward me so she sits between my legs, her back against my chest, and breathe in the bonfire smell of her hair. “A couple of years ago, I was reading some magazine in a doctor's office. There was this interview with Beck Weathers, the doctor that Jon Krakauer's team left for dead up on Everest in ‘96. He talked about how in a disaster like that, you find out what people are made of. It's impossible to pretend. And I think climbing's the same way, even when things are going well. You put your life in your partner's hands, or the hands of your team. You have to trust them completely, and they have to trust you. It cuts through all the bullshit, and you get to see who people really are.”

“That makes sense. Like a personality litmus test, or something.”

This makes me smile. “Sure, something like that.” I take my thought process one step further, and then I don't feel like smiling anymore. “That's part of why I feel so awful about Ellis. He trusted me to do the right thing, to come through, and instead I let him die. Him and J. C. both, almost.”

“Aidan, you can't control the universe,” she says. “How could you know that cornice would collapse? If you hadn't gotten your axe to hold, all three of you would be at the bottom of that crevasse right now. When it counted, you did come through. You saved J. C.'s life.”

Maybe. But I sure as hell ended Ellis's. “If I'd made a better decision about where I anchored the belay, his life wouldn't have needed saving,” I say. The creepy thing is, I can hear my dad's voice behind each and every word that's coming out of my mouth right now. If this had happened on his watch, with one of his men, he would've nailed their ass to the wall. No matter what Maddie—or anyone else—says, I can't shake the feeling that I could've changed what happened on the mountain that day, rockfall or no rockfall. He was my responsibility, I think, biting my lip. It was my fault.

Maddie is staring at me with big, concerned eyes, and I try to do what I do best when things get heavy—laugh it off. “I'm sorry to dump all of this on you,” I say. “It's like you're my emotional Sherpa, or something. Maybe I'll start calling you E.S., for short.”

She knows me well enough to recognize the attempt for what it is, and ignores it completely. “Why are you so hard on yourself?”

“That's a long story, and I don't much feel like getting into it now. I've got other stuff on my mind.” I slide my hands around to her breasts, trying to change the subject.

She's not having any. “Stop, Aidan. I'm not finished talking.”

“So talk. I'm a good multitasker.” I pull her tighter against me.

“I can't concentrate when you're doing … whatever it is you're doing.”

I undo her shirt buttons for the second time tonight. “Is it that big of a mystery? Besides, I can concentrate just fine. Go on, please. I'm listening. It's only my mouth that's occupied.” To demonstrate, I take her fingers and suck on them one by one. She draws in breath, sharp, and I turn her so she's facing me. I lift her onto my lap, her legs on either side of my hips.

“You are unbelievable,” she says, but she doesn't sound mad anymore. She sounds into it, and I entertain the hope that we can pick up where we left off earlier, without further interruptions.

“Unbelievable good, or unbelievable bad?” I say against her neck, and she shivers. I have her shirt off now and am working on her skirt. She refuses to move to make it easier for me, so I settle for tugging her underwear off instead. Removing her skirt would be a bonus, but it doesn't have to happen. I'll take what I can get.

“That remains to be seen,” she tells me, playing coy.

Not a problem. Coy I can handle. At last we are in territory that I know how to navigate, and I intend to take full advantage of that fact. I pull off my own shirt, evening the score. Then I stand up with her wrapped around me, unfasten the button on my khakis with one hand, and kick them and my boxers off. Leaning against the wall, I slide into her. “To answer your earlier question,” I say, “my ego is gigantic. And talking about climbing turns me on.”