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She squeezed the top of his leg. “I love that you want to work on it, but you didn’t answer my question. Are you okay where you are?”
“I’m not close to a panic attack. I’m probably as okay with it as it’s possible for me to be, but I’m not terribly relaxed.”
Marcus wrapped an arm around Kyle. “I think perhaps you should consider doing one of those indoor climbing walls again. Heather can probably make arrangements for us to get you in before or after normal hours, with the goal being to start out at maybe ten feet, and then to increase some amount every time you go — whether it be a foot, or six inches, or two inches.”
“We have to work on my claustrophobiaandmy fear of heights for me to fly with Heather. We mostly worked on my claustrophobia to get me into a commercial airplane, because I could sit in the center and notseehow high up we were. I won’t have that luxury in a helicopter.”
Heather felt Kyle tense, relax, tense again, and he finally changed the subject. “Marcus, I think we need to talk about you and Heather. Something beyond you saying you have affection for her. You called yourself a mentor, but I see you as more than that. I see her developing feelings for you, and I see you starting to treat her as if you care about her. I’ve assured Heather I’m good with it, but maybe if we all talk about it together?” He shrugged and gave Heather a brief squeeze. “It just feels like we need more discussion.”
Marcus looked from Kyle to Heather, and reached across Kyle to brush his hand over her cheek. “He’s right. I’m starting to care about you enough that I don’t think we can say I’m just a mentor. I don’t know what that means for the three of us, but Idocare about you a great deal.”
“It feels wrong to have feelings for two men, but I’m starting to care for you, too. I’m not really one for talking about feelings, but I’m glad it worked out for the three of us to spend the day together.”
Kyle chuckled. “My work here is done. Now, are ya’ll getting hungry? Shouldn’t we head back?”
Heather looked back to see if she could see her pack, and realized Marcus or Eric must’ve brought it back to the point, because it was only a few feet away. “I have a few granola bars in my pack if you need energy now, but if you’re ready to go we can certainly head back towards the car. I want veggies, so maybe we can stop and get Chinese at the bottom of the mountain?”
“No,” Kyle said. “We need to get you in a shower and properly clean your leg before we worry about food.”
Marcus stood and offered his hand to Heather. She accepted his help, and they both offered their hands to Kyle. He blanched and asked, “Can ya’ll move away from the edge and help me from the other direction, please?”
Kyle spun around, they helped him up, and Heather dug her shirt out of her pack. Kyle took her pack from her while she put her shirt on, and she reached to take it back, but he held it away from her.
“You said you wrenched your shoulder. I didn’t bring a pack — let me carry yours.”
“It’s a child-sized pack. It won’t fit you.”
“Won’t the straps let out?”
While he was looking at it, she took it from him, slung it onto her left shoulder, angled her right arm into it, and shrugged it up. She buckled the chest strap while Kyle pulled the waist strap around and fastened it. She realized she’d hurt his feelings, but she’d brought the pack in and she’d take it out. Still, she needed to say something. “I’m okay. I like that you offered, but I can handle it. If I was hurting, or if I thought there was damage, I’d tell you. I’m not so stubborn I’ll cause injury to myself to be macho.”
He nodded, kissed her on the forehead, and they headed down the trail. The first couple of hundred yards were hard for Kyle, and they were silent while he navigated his way from tree to tree. She wanted to tell him to stop focusing on the sheer drop, but he knew what to do.
When they finally reached a section of trail far enough from the edge Kyle was mostly okay, Marcus asked, “Do you mind if I ask you some questions about your adoption?”
Yeah, she minded, but she wasn’t surprised. Still, she wondered whynow. After a short internal debate on the best way to respond, she asked, “Why?”
“Because it’s an area of your life I don’t know much about, and there are things I want to know. Remember, I’ve helped lots of people deal with adoption issues. I’ve never heard you say anything that would tell me you have any specific issues around it, but that doesn’t mean I don’t want to check in with you, see where you are.”
“And pick at it until it bleeds?”
She could hear the caution in his voice as he said, “No, I don’t want to pick at anything. It sounds like someone else has wanted to do that, though.”
“Oh yeah. I’ve seen so many specialists about my sensory stuff, and more than one along the way has tried to convince me that I reallydohave issues around being adopted, even if I don’t think I do. And the fact that I don’t think I do? Well, that just means I’m repressed. Or in denial. How in hell do you argue with something like that?”
“How old were you when you found out you were adopted?”
She looked to make sure they were both behind her and doing okay, and turned back to the trail. “I’ve always known I was adopted. My mom told me my story from the very beginning — about how there was a room with babies who needed families, and how there were these people who wanted to be parents, so they wrote a letter asking if they could adopt one of the babies and be their parents and love them forever. As I got older, she added in appropriate adoption language. Once, when we were shopping or something, someone asked her if I missed my “real mom”, and she told them she was my “real mom”. I asked her about it later, because itreallybugged me.”
Heather stopped talking to navigate a steep downhill grade with loose rocks, and picked back up at the bottom. “My mom said that sometimes people who don’t know much about adoption think my biological mother is my real mother, and they don’t understand that I have two real mothers, not just one. And then when I was older and curious about where I came from, she made plans to take me back to Korea that summer, when I was eight years old, and we visited the orphanage I came from. When I was fourteen, we went again, and I got to spend three days volunteering at an orphanage. Not the one I came from, because they didn’t allow that, so my mom found another one that did. She also made arrangements for us to board with a Korean family, in their home, so I’d get an idea of what it was like to live in a home in Korea. The son in that family spoke some English, so we could communicate with them, and I learned so much during our stay. My mom wanted me to be proud of being Koreanandto be proud of being an American.
“What about your dad?”
Heather smiled, even though the guys couldn’t see it. “My dad is just my dad. He talked to me about adoption when I brought it up, but he never brought it up. I’m his daughter in his eyes, end of story. My mom knew I needed more than that, so she gave it to me. My dad has always been there for me, but he’s not really into that whole ‘talking about your feelings’ stuff. Something happens, you deal with it, you move on. I think the way they handled it was perfect. My mom taught me how to deal with crap. My dad taught me that sometimes you just live your life and don’t sweat the small stuff.”
“I wouldn’t call being adopted part of thesmallstuff.”
“No, but it’s also not something that…” Crap, how to explain it to a psychiatrist? “Think of it in terms of Maslow’s hierarchy. It’s pretty far down on the list of importance when it comes to real life, right? It isn’t a small thing, but once I was adopted and part of the family, all those safety issues were taken care of. If you treat adoption in the past tense, so Iwasadopted and now Iama part of a family, then the issues only need to be as big as you make them.”
