Chapter 19 #3
I raise myself up from the ground, carefully unsticking myself from the bush, and feel a sharp pain in my shin.
A two-inch stretch of skin looks like it’s been scraped off by a cheese grater.
It isn’t deep, but it’s a bleeder. I watch, stone still as the deluge of rain mixes with the blood and sends it spidering down my leg in pink rivulets that stop at the top of my waterlogged shoe.
I survey the final five feet between my face and Caleb’s. There’s a slight slope, and even with the wet rock, I’m still confident I can scramble my way back up to the top somehow. That is, until I make the fatal mistake of looking down.
You’d think that in moments like these, the human body would go into autopilot, freezing itself in place to avoid making any wrong moves.
Mine, apparently, just loses its shit. I sway forward towards the cliff edge, dizzy from the drop below me.
Only this time, it’s not the ocean I’m looking down at.
It’s forty plus feet of jagged, unforgiving rock.
“Oh my god,” I gasp. I drop down to my knees, gripping the offending bush like a life preserver.
“Stella, don’t move. I’m coming down!”
This time, I don’t protest. It’s not that I want his help, but that I’m too afraid if I open my mouth, everything I didn’t eat for breakfast will come pouring out and I’ll not only be wrapped in the fetal position, but surrounded by my own vomit.
I hear Caleb’s heavy boots drop down beside me and hope to God this cliff is strong enough for two.
“Are you okay?” he asks as he squats down beside me. I’m definitely not alright. But something about Caleb asking makes it worse. This man needs a medal for inopportune timing.
“What are you even doing here, Caleb? Aren’t you supposed to be chaperoning a pool party?”
“Tracy was worried about you being out here alone with the rain. Things can get dicey pretty quickly out here.”
I’m not sure what he sees first as I sit up—my puffy eyes or my bloody, gravel-filled knee—but whatever it is is enough to set off his alarm bells.
“What the hell happened?”
“Oh, you know, just my life falling apart.” I try to wipe my eyes. “Standard Tuesday.”
Caleb looks me up and down, probably deciding whether to help me up or finish the job I’ve already started.
“C’mon, Free Solo,” he says, offering his hand. “Let’s get you back up.”
“I don’t need your help,” I protest, scrambling up and slapping myself to the cliffside like a starfish. My breathing intensifies as I mutter into the slippery rockface, “I can do it myself.”
I expect him to laugh at me, but when Caleb’s stormy eyes meet mine, they don’t betray even a hint of doubt.
“I know you can,” he says, hand still extended. “But you don’t have to.”
I can feel my lip starting to tremble, but I quickly shut it down. I’ve been on this trip for a week, and how many times has Caleb had to save my ass? Whatever the number is, it’s one too many. Especially after I shut him down last night like the heartless cow I am.
But he doesn’t move his hand.
“You’re going to have to climb up on my shoulders,” he tells me.
I look down at the very steep drop beside his foot.
“Are you insane?”
“Stella,” he touches my shoulder and I turn back to him, letting the rain splash against my eyelashes. “As cavalier as you seem to think I am about my job, I am absolutely not going to let you die on a Fijian cliff. You’ve got this.”
Caleb cups his hands in front of him, creating a stirrup for me to step into.
I take in a deep breath and step up.
It takes Caleb and I a few minutes to navigate back to the top, but as soon as I’m over the lip, I throw myself into the dirt the way I imagine Arthur and Patricia like to throw themselves into piles of money on the weekends.
When Caleb joins me (looking as effortless as a calendar fireman despite having just taken a size nine foot to the face), he helps me up and leads me to the covered gazebo.
When we reach cover, I plop down on the wooden bench. Caleb sits as far from me as possible on the other side, which leaves a grand total of eight inches between us. He pulls down the hood of his raincoat and shakes out his damp hair.
“You gonna tell me how you ended up down there?” he asks, holding out my destroyed phone. I take it from him and slip it into my pocket before spitting out the words like a couple of moldy blueberries.
“I got a bad email,” I growl. “About work.”
Caleb doesn’t say anything. Of course he doesn’t say anything. What kind of emotional support can I expect from the man I brutally rejected just yesterday? A man who, I’m reminded every time I look at him, has probably been rejected exactly zero other times in his beautiful life.
“Do you know what it’s like to be around people who wipe their asses with hundred-dollar bills when I’m eighty-thousand dollars in debt from a degree I can’t even finish?
” I continue, the failsafe on my blabber faucet malfunctioning completely.
“Or when Matthew’s bragging to Steven about which Ferrari model he just totaled when I can barely afford the insurance on my Prius?
And don’t even think about suggesting I borrow money from the Warrens, because let me tell you, I would sooner throw myself off this cliff and into the mouth of that freaking tiger shark than be indebted to them for anything. ”
More silence. He’s infuriatingly good at that.
“The worst part is, I didn’t even get suspended for something interesting,” I choke out. “I wasn’t sleeping with a professor—not anymore, anyway, and I didn’t plagiarize anyone’s research. I just sucked. And apparently, so does my dissertation.”
Caleb doesn’t say anything, just sits there and stares into the deluge. If he wasn’t regretting coming to find me five minutes ago, I’m sure he is now.
He waits in silence for what seems like three hours before he asks, “Do you want my opinion?”
I nod. Because, I realize with a jolt of surprise, I actually do.
“I think it’s a good thing you lost your fellowship.”
I whip towards him so fast that little water beads fly towards him from my sopping hair.
“Excuse me?”
“I think you’re lucky. You don’t have to make excuses anymore to stay in a career you clearly hate.”
“Clearly hate? How would you know what I hate?” I protest.
“Stella, c’mon,” he laughs humorlessly. “When you talk about work, it sounds like you’re talking about dental hygiene or waiting in line at a government office. There’s no passion in it at all. I’ve seen you hurl insults at me with more energy.”
“I don’t… I didn’t…”
Caleb takes a deep breath.
“Look, you can lie to me all you like. But don’t try to lie to yourself. Trust me, it’s a losing game.”
I thumb through my mental rolodex to find some evidence to prove him wrong—any evidence—but come up short.
Is Caleb right? If I really think about it, I do kind of hate my job.
I hate zoning out over the computer for hours learning about the career evolution of a bunch of dead white dudes.
I hate staying up late grading papers written by horny freshman who care more about keggers and rushing than the nuances of impressionism.
There hasn’t been a weeknight in four years I haven’t gone to bed dreading the next morning: the workload. The sterility. The grey Chicago sky.
When I left for college, I wanted to be an artist, not a professor. But I didn’t have the luxury of a safety net—I needed something practical. A trodden career path. And I was so busy trying to succeed, I never took the time to ask myself if I actually enjoyed it.
I bury the sudden urge to throw my broken phone at him for being so infuriatingly spot on, and try a different approach.
“It’s not that simple, Caleb,” I tell him with frustration. “I can’t just not work. I’m not a Warren.”
“Clearly not,” he laughs, but for some reason, it doesn’t sound like an insult this time.
“But you’ve got the world open to you. Sure, you’re a pain in the ass, but you’ve also got talent.
Education. A sister who loves you no matter what.
If you ask me, you need to stop thinking about what you don’t have and start focusing on what you do. ”
“Which is?” I ask.
“Freedom.”
Our bodies are closer, now, in the way they always seem to become, and his salty, woodsy smell is amplified by the rain that still gathers at the tips of his hair.
“The ability to choose your own path. Guys like Harry Warren are born with their whole life planned out for them. Inherit the company. Spend their entire lives pushing papers to turn a billion dollars into billions more. But you? You have nothing stopping you from doing whatever it is you want. Don’t you see how lucky that is? ”
I look down at my cheese-grated shin to avoid staring at the adorable way his curls are sticking to his forehead.
I chose academia because it was safer than becoming an artist. Because it came with prestige and a paycheck and the possibility of putting “Dr” in front of my name on every form I sign until the end of time.
But what do I have to show for my choice?
A Master’s degree in a subject I’m lukewarm about?
Four years of living like a hermit and grinding myself down to something unrecognizable?
I chose the steady path, the responsible path, because I didn’t want to risk falling on my face. But I’m still in the same place I was before I started. Give or take thousands of dollars in student loans.
Maybe Caleb is right.
Maybe setting aside your passion is the biggest risk of all.
“I know I’m probably the last person you want to hear it from,” Caleb cocks his head down until I’m forced to look at him.
“But you can’t waste your life doing something you’re not crazy about just because you think you should.
And just so you know, if you think anyone’s going to lose respect for you just because you’re not spending your whole life researching dead artists, you’re crazier than I thought you were. ”
A laugh ripples through me, fighting for airtime with my tears. I let it win until I feel a snot bubble creep out of my nose.
“You really are disgusting, though,” Caleb smirks as I wipe it away with my sleeve. I punch him lightly in the thigh.
“Leave me alone,” I whine. “I’m trying to have a meltdown here.”
“Well, when you’re done packing a sad, whaddya say we head back down for a couple coconuts?”
“Packing a sad?” I ask skeptically. “Is that some Kiwi term for losing your marbles?”
He chuckles, the skin around his eyes crinkling to highlight their striking blue.
“Something like that.”
I look down at Caleb’s open hand, his fingers resting only a few inches from mine.
If this were a Lifetime movie, this would be the scene we’d all been waiting for: the one where the clouds part and the sexy hero reaches towards the once-reluctant object of his affection, pulling her close just as the cinematographer angles in on the ray of sunshine that’s perfectly haloing their heads.
She would forget about all the terrible things he said to her, and he would forgive her for being so closed off, and they’d ride off into the sunset on his shining black stallion, their arms wrapped around each other, never to be parted.
But this isn’t a movie. And just because Caleb came back for me after what I said to him yesterday doesn’t mean anything has changed about Patricia’s ban on fraternizing with the crew.
So instead, just as the magnetism between us feels so strong I can barely keep myself from throwing myself at him like a waterlogged jungle cat, Caleb stands.
“We should really get back,” he says, taking a step towards the slick, chalky mud. But the spell is broken.
Still, he doesn’t make it to the mouth of the gazebo before he turns back and adds:
“If there’s anything I know for sure, Stella, and trust me, it’s not much, it’s that we only get to do life once. And the best we can aim for is to get out of our own damn way so we can actually start living it.”
Then he reaches back and helps me to my feet.
I hope Caleb doesn’t notice my hand trembling as he grabs hold of it. Because truthfully, it’s not the ledge this time that scares me.
It’s that my list of reasons to pretend to hate him is becoming shorter and shorter.