“Did you hit your head?”
She crinkles her nose, looking sheepish. “Like, barely. I’m fine.” She shakes her head like that proves it. “Look, Ma, no concussion.”
“Okay. Can we just, like, double-check?”
Her grin falters. I shouldn’t have second-guessed her. I wrap my arms around myself. The air gets cold fast in the desert, with the sun going down.
Then she pushes her hair off her forehead, and the wary snap to her gaze dissolves. Before I can stop her, she scrambles back up the rocks.
“Fine,” she gloats, patting the smooth stone next to her. “Come up here and check.”
The rock is gritty and harder to climb than it looks. Veer laughs a bit, watching me skid on the slick parts, but she reaches a hand down to keep me steady for the final stretch. I cling to her, feel the tendons flexing in her wrists.
“The doctor is in,” I say solemnly as I settle next to her, and she laughs.
“Good news, Doc. There’s only one of you, and you look great.”
“So, not blurry.” I haven’t done this since nursing school. Veer probably knows how to test for concussion a lot better than I do.
She sticks her tongue between her teeth. “4K, baby.”
I snort. Oh, hand-eye coordination. I remember that from the textbook.
“Touch my finger, then touch your nose.” I hold it out in front of her face. She rolls her eyes, but taps my finger, her nose. I shift my finger side to side, and she does it again.
After a few times, she flicks my outstretched finger. “Want to do a balance test up here too?”
I laugh. “Fine, okay, you’re not concussed.”
“Told you.”
She musses my hair, tongue still wedged under an incisor. She smells like scraped knees and the primal grit of the desert. She smells like that lemon hair gel I want to bury my nose in. This feels good, sitting on a rock in the middle of nowhere with her.
I like her, I realize with a nauseous twist. I really like her.
Liking is dangerous. With love, at least it’s easy to know what’s owed. There’s no precipice of longing, no swirl ofwhat does she thinkandwhat if I’m wrong, no constant kinetic whisper that if she leaned in, she’d be close enough to kiss me.
I want Veer to kiss me.
The sun blazes orange as it sinks into the mountains, runny like an undercooked egg, furious as a funeral pyre. Its aftermath paints the mountains a wistful blue that fades suddenly into velvety blackness, and we’re still up here, watching it happen. I’m not ready to come down just yet. But it’s cold, and Veer’s restless beside me. I hear, rather than see, her scramble down to safety.
“Just climb down where I did,” she hisses out of the darkness. “It’s not scary, I promise.”
It is, though. The knot of hope tangled in my chest is scary, and the way it might gum up the lock on the cage inside me is terrifying. Also, I can’t see. The toeholds I used to climb up are invisible in this light. I smell the creosote opening its arms to the night, but smell isn’t going to stop me from a misstep that ends with my face smashed in.
Veer’s phone lights up, giving shape to the rocks and casting her face in ghoulish black-and-white planes.
“Just a couple steps.” She’s softer now, less teasing, more encouraging. “Then I’ll get you.”
I take a few tentative steps, then end up sliding on my ass the rest of the way, almost directly into Veer’s outstretched arms. I freeze for a second, not sure whether I’m supposed to use her as a step stool or what, but she’s already wrapping one arm around my lower back and the other around my knees and I guess it’s a princess carry.
When my arms settle around her neck, I find the phone light is very bright and our faces are very close. She’s also, I notice, very strong.
Then my feet are on the ground and she’s kissing me, quiet and tentative, like groping for a handhold in the dark. She pulls back, and I chase after her, pushing my fingers into the softness at the back of her neck. This, too, is what I want, the freedom to close my eyes, to kiss her slow without worrying that life will interrupt us.
When we’re done, she leans into me, her forehead meeting my cheek.
“Let’s get back to the car,” she mumbles. “There’s a hot shower waiting for us an hour down the road.”
