Page 86 of Free Heart
I can easily picture us staying in here for the rest of winter. Especially if Peggy Jo lets us park outside her house—and I have no doubt she will. I’m way too spoiled by Peggy Jo’s amazing water pressure to go back to the misery of the campground shower facilities.
Plus, Dan’s got most of his recovery equipment set up here, including the bouldering wall he and Lowell have decided to put together in Peggy Jo’s empty garage. He’s spent some of his ad revenue funds on the supplies, and the doctor cleared him to start using it next week.
Watching Dan breathe, I touch his curls lightly with my left hand, admiring the shimmer of my new ring. The polished wood band is comfortable and light. I use my thumb to flip it around so I can see it from all angles again.
It features a blue inlay in the shape of mountains running along one edge of the band, and, in the middle, above them, a tiny white moon is pressed. The design is in tourmaline and opal. It doesn’t look that expensive, but I can feel it was chosen with love. The instant I saw it, I’d flashed back to the night we spent on Pothole Dome when I told him we’d end up like this if we kept seeing each other.
He’d seemed skeptical then, but look at him now. Jumping feet-first into a commitment, no hesitation, no questioning the strength of us. Just a nervous hitch in his breath as he asked me, a little human worry I might say no, thinking only of spending his life with me.
In the quiet, I can hear the almost nonexistent sound of snow piling up outside. I listen to it, noting the blue tint to the light coming in the van’s windows, and I ponder how strange it is that I hadn’t seen this proposal coming. After all, Dan has mentioned marriage a few times since the accident so it’s not as though itcame out of the blue. But I’d chalked it up to adrenaline and painkillers, and being in love with me after having had a close encounter with the hereafter. I hadn’t imagined he was serious about it.
So, there together on the paved trail, his dark winter coat strewn with snowflakes and his cheeks red with cold, I’d been taken entirely by surprise. I know he wasn’t sure I’d say yes. His eyes had brimmed with earnest anxiety as he held up the box with the ring.
Here, in bed, I turn it on my finger again.
“Why did you say yes?”I know Leenie will ask me later. I can hear her voice in my mind.“He’s going to hurt himself and break your heart.”
Because I love him. That’s the simple truth.
During those few moments when I’d hesitated, it’d come down to so much more than love, though. I said yes because we’re good together. We support each other. I make him moderately more careful, and he makes me a lot braver. We’re getting through one of the hardest things a couple can face—injury and recovery—and we’re good.
No, we’regreat.
We’re a team. We think as a team. We live as a team. And, when he’s recovered, and he makes his next attempt, it won’t just be Dan going up that wall. It will be me too. Figuratively, if not literally.
We’re yoked, and somehow it feels equal. We each pull our part of the relationship load. Everyone thinks I do the lion’s share of the work, but no one knows better than I do the simple way Dan holds space to accept all of me—my feelings, my fears, my love, my needs, and my desires. For a damaged man with a rotten past, it’s amazing he’s not running.
But he’s not. He’s staying by my side, and he’s asking for me to stay by his.
I’m always going to say yes to that.
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
Dan
In Peggy Jo’sliving room, I stand on the foam balance board Lowell scored from Goodwill to further our “physical therapy” sessions. It helps me exert my joints and regain my strength and balance. It’s frustrating because it’s harder than it should be. Before the accident, balancing was no problem for me. Now it’s a real challenge.
“Dan,” Sejin says from the sofa, with a frown of consternation on his face. “Look at this.”
“What?”
He points toward the TV where I’ve been rewatching the KDrama I enjoyed back while convalescing. It keeps my mind off how annoying the balance board work is and scratches some little itch in my brain I’ve been trying to identify and name. Even if only so I can find more TV shows like it that I might enjoy in the future.
I’ve narrowed it down. I think the appeal of the show for me is a male lead who isn’t the typical cold and cool type. That’s boring. Snoozy. Yawn. I like a character who’s a chaotic mess of a man—arrogant and confident, and sometimes soft, but always crazy about his love interest straight from the start. Maybe I find that relatable.
“What?” I ask again, not seeing anything unusual happening on the screen. It’s just the same scene I’ve watched a half-dozen times before.
“This,” Sejin says, and the TV suddenly fills with a scroll from his social media account. “It’s us. We’ve gone viral.”
Sure enough, it seems we’re trending.
A video labeledCLIMBER WHO FELL FROM EL CAPITAN PROPOSES TO BOYFRIENDstarts to play. There’s Sejin and me on the bench, both of us looking earnest and emotional. I suddenly remember the teenager who had been there holding up his phone at the park that day. This must be his doing.
Then it starts to switch. Someone’s edited a bunch of my old climbing clips and my YouTube channel’s videos together, along with photos from Sejin’s public social media accounts. They’ve placed it all over a sweet love song to create a storyline. I cock my head, realizing. It’s edited like a music video.
“What’s this song?” I ask.
“‘Love Story’ by Taylor Swift,” Sejin tells me.
