Chapter Twenty-Three
Henry and I walk through Hudson Yards, weaving among tourists clamoring to get a picture of the Vessel, the honeycomb-like structure at the core of this area of Manhattan. I haven’t told Henry exactly what we’re doing here, mostly because I want to surprise him, and partially because if I say it out loud, that means I’ll actually have to go through with it.
“I know you threatened me with Times Square,” he says, sidestepping a woman taking a selfie. “But this isn’t much better.”
“We’re playing tourists today,” I say. “I’m practically a tourist here, anyway. Figured we might as well go all out.”
He shrugs good-naturedly, plunging his hands into his pockets. “Are we going up in the Vessel?”
I shake my head.
“Walking the High Line?”
“No.” My pulse quickens. My heart feels like it’s trying to wrestle its way out of my chest.
He twists his mouth in thought. “I’m stumped.”
I squint up at a tall building, one of the many skyscrapers that make up the skyline. Jutting out from the side of this particular building, almost at the top, is a triangular platform—an observation deck a hundred stories high. It’s as tiny as a tortilla chip from where we’re standing.
“Oh no.” His face goes white as realization blooms across it. “Oh no, no, no.”
I nod slow-motion. “Oh yes.”
He looks grim, his ashen complexion replaced by an unsettling green. “We’re going up there, aren’t we?”
“Surprise!” I say, wiggling my fingers like jazz hands. “We’re going to strap ourselves to the outside and climb all the way to the tippy-top like King Kong and that lady in the pretty dress.”
After my rooftop conversation with Sonya and Jamie, I realized that I needed to really push myself. Really take a leap of faith. So I thought of the scariest things I could imagine: bear attacks, Henry, scaling a skyscraper, Henry, drowning, Henry. The only scary thing that I could actually, feasibly do was scale the side of a skyscraper, so I booked an appointment.
“Oh god.” His breathing quickens. “Oh man.” He rakes his hand through his hair once. Then twice. “We’re going to what ?”
“They harness us to the building so we don’t fall, but yeah. We’re climbing that baby.”
“Holy shit,” he says, rubbing his forehead.
“Are you scared?” I grab his free hand, prompting him to relax a little.
“Maybe,” he wheezes. “Oh man.” It would be a good time to admit that I’m also scared shitless, but seeing Henry freak the hell out makes me want to be the positive one, for once.
I turn to face him, placing both of my palms on his arms, rubbing up and down to try to calm him.
“Henry,” I say. “It’s okay.”
“Bennet, I’m afraid of heights.” He rakes his fingers through his hair, keeping his head low. I didn’t even imagine Henry being scared. Henry is fearless. I feel terrible that I picked something that would petrify him like this.
“You helped me through my fears, now let me return the favor,” I say in the most calming voice I can muster.
“Your fear was talking to people. Mine is falling to my death from the top of a skyscraper.”
“Both of those things are equally terrifying. And besides, don’t you climb mountains?”
“That’s different. That’s nature. Mountains are meant to be like that. This…this is completely man-made and completely un natural…. We’re not even meant to be that high in a building, you know. People just decided to keep going up and up and up. How high is too high? Oh god.”
He’s rambling. He’s actually rambling.
I take his face in my hands, forcing him to look at me, feeling the gentle prickle of stubble on my skin. I breathe in deep through my nose. Henry follows suit, breathing in with me.
“You can do this,” I say. “It’s going to be the coolest thing you’ve ever done, and you’re going to love me forever after the fact.” The look on his face is that of unbearable fear and desperation. “And also I’ll buy you an ice cream after.”
He blinks slowly and clenches his jaw. “Rainbow sprinkles.”
“Deal.”
It takes some coaxing to get Henry to the actual building and up the hundred stories in the elevator, and he can’t even look out the windows when we get to the check-in area. As we sit and listen to our instructor, Roscoe, give the safety demonstration, Henry’s leg is bouncing up and down like a jackhammer. I put my hand on his knee to steady him.
“Has anyone ever died doing this?” he blurts.
“You’d be the first,” Roscoe grunts through a mouth shrouded in facial hair. His partner, Matthew, is much scrawnier, with red hair and a freckled face. “If you slip off the side of the building,” Roscoe says, holding up a thick cable, “the harness will catch you.”
Henry shifts uncomfortably in his seat. “What if it snaps?”
Roscoe shrugs. “You go splat.”
He was trying to be funny, but Henry turns almost green.
Roscoe notices Henry’s grim mood and follows up. “It is perfectly safe. We’ve got a one hundred percent success rate.”
Henry’s knee starts jerking again. “It doesn’t comfort me knowing that one mistake ruining that one hundred percent success rate would mean a one hundred percent chance of falling out of the sky and being flattened out like a pancake.”
Roscoe scratches his beard. “Look at your girl. She’s cool and collected. Be like her.”
Your girl. A small smile creeps onto my face. I bite the inside of my cheek.
“When I did this the first time, I pissed my pants,” Matthew chimes in.
“Lovely,” Henry says flatly.
“But I loved it so much that I kept coming back. Now I work here. Best thing I ever did.”
Henry takes a shallow, gravelly breath, like there are stones in his lungs.
“Hey.” I swivel to face him. “If you don’t want to do this, we won’t.”
He takes another shaky breath, toes still tapping on the floor. “I want to.”
“I’ll be right there the whole time,” I say, trying to keep my tone light and fun. “I will not leave your side.”
He stops jerking his knee and unclenches his jaw. I watch his face morph back into the man I know through a series of deep, steadying breaths. Finally, he smiles weakly.
“I can’t promise I won’t piss my pants.”
···
We get zipped up in jumpsuits, strapped into harnesses, and buckled into helmets. We are clipped to a railing by safety cords, so that if we god forbid slip and fall, we’ll dangle off the side of the building instead of plummeting to our deaths. I test the cord by pulling, hard. Henry smiles at me, as if he were thinking the same thing. He looks like he’s about to pass out as Roscoe and Matthew guide us to climb up a metal staircase. We’re still inside the building, but the boundary of danger and safety already feels paper-thin up here.
We climb, one by one, up the winding stairway. Henry follows behind me. Light pours onto my face as we come to a door that opens out to the side of the skyscraper, completely exposed to the world, no safety net, a thousand feet above the city.
“Here she is, folks,” Roscoe says, stepping out onto a teeny platform. “Stop one on the journey to the top.”
My fingers are sweating as I clutch the railing as tight as I can. My throat tightens and my breathing gets shallow, and I find it difficult to take a step forward out of the safety of the stairwell, but I think about Henry behind me, how terrified he must be, and I take a tentative step onto the metal platform.
The wind whips my face as Henry comes up next to me. I grab his hand, clinging to his trembling fingers as we look out onto the Hudson. Henry, I notice, is barely able to look at the view, so he keeps his eyes locked on me.
“Almost to the top,” I say to him. He blows air out through his lips and nods as Roscoe points to another set of steep stairs, this one on the outside of the building, that will lead us to the highest platform. “We can do it,” I say, squeezing Henry’s hand.
The buildings below us get smaller and smaller as we climb the metal stairs—they remind me of risers at a high school football game, except way freaking higher in the air. My thighs and lungs burn as I try not to look down through the slats on each step, only up. The sun hangs low in the sky, reflecting gold off the windows of the buildings around—and below—us.
My entire body is shaking when we get to the final platform on the building, perched so high in the sky I feel dizzy.
Slowly, I turn toward the horizon and open my eyes. It takes every molecule of breath out of my lungs, being able to see everything so high up, no barrier between me and the world. I glance to Henry, whose eyes are closed as he continues to breathe steadily, calming himself.
I brush my fingers along the sleeve of his jumpsuit. “Want me to describe it to you?” I ask.
He nods without opening his eyes.
I scan the horizon, the sun gleaming on all the buildings I couldn’t name if I tried. “It’s gray,” I say. One edge of his lip curls up into a tiny smile that flickers away as soon as it comes. “The city is…god, it looks like teeth, or like stalagmites or something. The buildings look close together, like they’re one thing. And I suppose they kind of are, one big massive thing made up of a bunch of littler things. It looks like I could reach out my hand and smooth all the buildings over. Like if I stretched a finger out I could prick it on the top of the Empire State Building.” I turn to face him, my nose stinging from the wind and from the view. “The sun is so gold, Henry. It’s one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen, and it’s so scary and it’s so powerful and I really want to share it with you. You should look.”
Slowly, he opens his eyes, but keeps them trained on me, still not daring to look at the view. I take a breath and tell him the truth. “Being up here makes me feel small, but being with you makes me feel significant.”
We stare at each other, zeroed in, his green eyes glittering. There’s something between us in this glance. Something electric, something that says, You are safe with me . He takes one last shaky breath before turning to the skyline and taking it in. I know he feels the same way I do, because his eyes start to well up.
“Holy…wow,” he says.
“I know,” I say, looping my fingers through his.
Roscoe and Matthew explain that we can lean over the ledge if we want, letting our harnesses hold our lives more than a thousand feet in the air. Henry is smiling now, and I know he wants to do it too.
We step up to the ledge, our toes right at the line where the building meets air, and we slowly lean over the city, putting all our weight in the tiny piece of rope holding us up. I don’t know if the air is thinner up here or if I’m just losing my mind, but I feel drunk and loopy and so light .
Tears begin to flow down my cheeks and I start to laugh. I open my arms wide, like wings, and I scream at the top of my lungs, feeling true freedom for the first time in such a long time.
I’m hanging over the city, bearing my heart to her, and for once, I’m not afraid.
I wipe my face, unable to stop laughing or shaking. I imagine a tear falling off my nose and evaporating before hitting the street below.
Henry lets out a whoop beside me, and when I look at him, he’s downright goofy with glee—face full and bright and so painfully gorgeous, I no longer feel like looking at the view. We slowly reel ourselves in and retreat back onto the safety of the platform.
Henry looks at me, his eyes as wide as saucers, his cheeks pink from the wind. He closes the distance between us, enveloping me in his arms, clutching me as if I’m the solid ground and safety he craves.
“Oh my god.” His fingers dig into my back.
I cling to his neck, pulling him closer. “I’m so proud of you,” I say.
His arms tighten around my waist. “I never would’ve done this without you. My whole life, I never would’ve.” We breathe deeply against each other, letting our hearts race. Maybe it’s the adrenaline, maybe it’s the sunset, but I’m not afraid of this. Not right now. He loosens his grip on me and I lay my head against his racing heart. “Thank you for making me do this,” he says, still holding me against him.
Normally one of us would pull away. One of us would remind the other that we’re just friends. One of us would say this is too much. But neither of us do. I let him hold me, drenched in the golden summer sun at the very top of the world, for once not thinking of the consequences of that action. I let it be.