Chapter 2
Before
Frankie
Finally, the Seventh Street door to the bar opens.
But instead of Noah, another man steps in—nondescript, black sweater, jeans, baseball cap.
Aggressively generic. He heads toward a table in the shadows at the back, sits alone.
He doesn’t belong at Joyface. Or even downtown.
And just like that, I am thinking of Richard, imagining him here. He’d be out of place, too.
“Who are you staring at?”
I startle and turn. Noah. “Nothing. No one.”
“Well, that was believable,” Noah says as he takes the stool next to me.
I motion dismissively toward his sports jacket, trying to change the subject.
“You look like Clark Kent.” Noah is ridiculously gorgeous, with a Superman jaw, perfect arms, and longish, prematurely silver-streaked hair.
Thick eyelashes that make it look, intriguingly, like maybe he’s wearing just a touch of mascara.
He somehow gets better-looking with each passing year—and he knows it; it would be impossible not to.
“I came straight from work,” he says, stripping off the jacket and revealing his arms. “Full-day conference. No one likes to hear themselves talk more than a bunch of psychiatrists. I swear I fell asleep six times.” He motions to the bartender and orders a beer.
Then, after taking a sip, he finally turns to face me. “So, what’s wrong?”
“Nothing’s wrong.”
“You’re all…hunched.” He imitates the way I’m sitting. “Plus you put all these emojis in the text asking me to meet you. Something is wrong, obviously.”
I am not an emoji person. It’s true. And deep down I know why I called Noah.
Noah is who I always call when I need someone to give me advice.
Especially advice I don’t want. A therapist by profession, Noah is very good at letting you talk your way into a corner where you’ll have no choice but to face the music.
“I said I’d see him.”
“Ahh,” Noah says.
“What?” I ask sharply.
He raises his palms. “I didn’t say anything.”
“You said, ‘Ahh.’ Like you’re fucking Sherlock Holmes. Like you have it aaallll figured out.”
“Seriously?” He raises an eyebrow. “You invited me here. On a Friday night, when my adorable husband is home on our cozy couch. With our even more adorable dog.”
“You’re the one who recommended the climbing company!”
“You asked me to ask my parents. They recommended it.”
“Still, we could say this is all your fault.”
“We could also say you’re delusional. We could say all sorts of things.”
I dig the heels of my palms into my eyes and sag into the stool. “Ugh,” I say finally. “I’m obviously conflicted.”
“I’d say.” He takes another swallow of his beer and waves his phone in the air. “I have about twenty texts from you saying you’ll never see him again. Just want to remind you that someone has the receipts in case you need to reference them.”
“Okay, that was passive-aggressive.”
Noah smiles, then reaches over to squeeze my hand. “I think just aggressive.”
We both start to laugh, hard enough that soon my eyes water.
It’s such a relief. It releases the tension that’s been building inside me since Richard texted yesterday and suggested getting together.
We’ve been texting occasionally ever since we got back, but we haven’t seen each other.
And I promised myself I wouldn’t see him, promised Noah, too, after I told him about the texting and how conflicted I felt.
Richard is married. Sure, some of the messages have been a tiny bit flirtatious, but there is nothing about the texting that makes it specifically wrong.
I flirt with Noah, too, and our other NYU friends. It’s harmless.
But now Richard has asked to see me. I’ve had a feeling this was coming ever since he texted from Atlanta about a week ago.
He was in his hotel room after the memorial service, feeling grief-stricken and alone, even though his wife was there.
At least it seemed like she was. I didn’t specifically ask, and Richard didn’t specifically say anything—don’t ask, don’t tell.
It’s a surprisingly effective strategy for making inconvenient realities—like a devoted wife—disappear.
Avoiding Richard’s wife wasn’t the only reason I skipped the service.
My being there would have been presumptuous.
And I could tell everyone else felt the same way.
At first, there was a single group chat after the climb, which included the memorial service details and other specifics about the accident’s aftermath—whether there would be an investigation, what True Altitude had to say.
But soon, the climb chat petered out, the final messages suggesting that it was being picked up elsewhere, probably on their college group chat, which had existed long before they met me.
I understood, but it still made me a little sad.
I didn’t belong in their shared grief, but that left me all alone with mine.
“Richard just wants to talk,” I continue after we stop laughing. “He’s upset about the memorial service. He needs a friend.”
“A friend, right.” Noah nods thoughtfully. “Listen, you know I’ve got my opinions about Richard and—”
“You haven’t met him.”
“You’re right, I haven’t. But I have met you, Frankie.”
“So you know better than anyone how unusual this is for me.”
“But maybe that’s a sign you should, you know, inquire about why?”
“You’re saying it’s not real.” My voice catches in a way that seems to prove his point.
“Your feelings are real,” he says. “Of course they are. Real and important. I just don’t know if he’s worthy of them.” He squeezes my hand until I look at him. “I love you, and I don’t want to see you get hurt.”
His eyes are so soft and sympathetic, it makes it even harder to breathe. Noah knows the extent of my damage, the depth of my carved-out core. And so he makes me feel safe and understood, but also ashamed.
“I think it might be too late for that.”
* * *
When my bag finally tumbled out of the luggage carousel in Tanzania, I exhaled.
Relief followed by a little dread. Losing my luggage had been my very last exit ramp.
As I stood there waiting, I had decided that I wouldn’t be able to climb this mountain if I didn’t have my sleeping bag, or hiking shoes, or Gore-Tex this or poly-insulate that.
A not-so-tiny part of me was looking for a way out.
This wasn’t unusual. It was the same right before I embarked on another marathon.
I loved the sign-up and the training and I loved the being done.
But right before, I panicked a little. And while I grew up hiking the mountains of Colorado, the highest altitude I’d ever been was just shy of eleven thousand feet and that had been skiing in Vail with a rich friend’s parents.
Summiting a nineteen-thousand-foot peak was another story entirely.
But here I was, about to do exactly that.
And the timing did feel perfect. After so many years of working my ass off, I was succeeding, at least in terms of my reputation.
Last year I’d won an award from the Pollock-Krasner Foundation that guaranteed my first major solo show—my paintings would be going up soon at the Pearson Gallery.
If it went well, I’d finally make some real money.
Enough to put me in an entirely new echelon.
That was the thing about being a visual artist—you could be a “hot up-and-comer” for a very long time, long enough to fizzle out before you ever arrived.
And so, even though there were no guarantees about what would happen with the show, I’d decided to bet on myself and blow the last of my savings account to pay for the trip to Africa.
It was time to clip that ill-gotten safety net.
And what better way to do it than by climbing a mountain, this mountain?
Everyone hiked in Leadville, Colorado, where I grew up.
And my dad had been an excellent climber once upon a time—rock, ice, mountains.
He’d always dreamed of tackling the seven summits before he traded in his adventure cape for life as an accountant with a new family in Denver.
And so I’d quietly decided long ago to steal his dream of the seven summits and make it my own someday.
I’d even gotten a small, poorly done tattoo of the number seven below my clavicle that had never really looked like a seven.
Of course, climbing the seven summits was easier said than done as a struggling painter in mountainless New York City, even one with a secret savings account.
But then along came the show. And this suddenly felt like the moment. Spend the last of the blood money, climb one of the seven summits—killing so many angry birds all with a single stone.
All my friends—also devout nontraditionalists—applauded the idea of me making a fresh start, especially if it meant I’d stop dating so many young, aimless men.
As for the huge mountain–climbing part? They thought that was crazy.
My friends were not exactly athletes. I, on the other hand, on top of my early hiking, had been running ever since—well, ever since that night.
It started as a coping strategy, but these days it was just a great way to clear my head.
Thalia had been the most vocal about her concerns, which extended beyond the physical.
What if I was stuck with people I couldn’t stand?
I reached forward to grab my bright-orange duffel bag, forgetting how heavy it was with all my gear, much of which I had no idea how to use.
Luckily a VIP porter took pity on me, helped haul it off the belt, and gestured toward the carts.
It took a couple more minutes to make my way through customs, and then the automatic doors snapped open, depositing me out into the humid Tanzanian night.
I rolled my cart toward a circle of guides holding signs, searching for my name or True Altitude on one of them.
“Ms. Callahan!” a friendly voice, slightly accented, called out just then.
When I turned, a short, sturdy Black man dressed head to toe in khaki was already reaching for my backpack.
“You made it. We were beginning to worry.” He took the handle of the luggage cart and started to roll it away, cutting through the crowd as I hustled to follow.
“I’m Bakari. The others are right over here. ”
As we passed through a narrow break in the bodies, I saw a group of four men, and only men, up ahead. Mid-fifties, at least. The tallest one had his back to me.
“Here is the rest of the group,” Bakari said, indisputably motioning toward them. “Right up ahead. They’ve been waiting for you.”
“This is…everyone?” I chirped, aiming for cheerful but leapfrogging directly to shrill.
“Yes, you are just five,” Bakari continued. “A smaller group is better.”
But they’re all men! I wanted to yell, because clearly he’d overlooked this detail.
It wasn’t that I was intimidated. If nothing else, the art world taught you how to deal with being the only woman in any room.
But that didn’t mean I enjoyed it. Besides, I’d been prepared for all couples.
Now I wasn’t just the weird single lady—I was the only lady.
“Okay, great!” I managed, forcing a smile.
The man with his back to me turned. In his leather hat, perfectly tailored khakis, and a loose-fitting white linen shirt, he had an aging Indiana Jones aura. But it was his blue eyes that were transfixing. All I could do was stare back at him.
This was a possibility I had definitely not accounted for.
“I’m Richard,” he said.
Somehow he was already right next to me, shaking my hand. I pulled away as quickly as I could, but it was too late. I’d felt it. Deep in my bones. Like a ghost moving through me.
* * *
I lie in bed staring at the ceiling after I get home, unable to sleep.
Noah was right. I could have said no, could have told Richard I couldn’t meet.
Because what I know is this: No matter how many times I tell myself that I’m just trying to be a good, supportive friend, it’s not true.
Richard has a million friends and, oh, yes, a wife. He does not need me.
And I do not need him. I don’t.
As soon as I close my eyes, my phone vibrates on my nightstand.
It’s late. When I lift the phone, it’s an unfamiliar number, 508 area code.
Massachusetts, I think. A wrong number, probably, or spam.
But my brain catches on something as I watch the call ring.
Because I do know one person in Massachusetts, don’t I? Maybe. That was a long time ago.
Finally, the call registers as missed. I wait a few more moments. No voicemail. I put my phone back down and try again to sleep, but it’s nagging at me, even though I know I’m overreacting. It’s an area code, a state, that’s all.
Then a ding. A text notification. Shit. I peer at the screen.
How are you?
Richard—relief, joy, guilt. One after another, then all together, in a demented chorus.
I shouldn’t be that happy to hear from him.
But I am. If I learned anything climbing that mountain on the other side of the world, it’s that you can’t pretend away your feelings, no matter how inconvenient.
You can’t erase them, or outsmart them, or rationalize them away.
Not the real ones. Those you can’t outrun, no matter how high you climb.
I stare at Richard’s text as if there is a chance I will leave it unanswered.
Things are…okay. What about you?
Okay, I guess. Actually…not great. We still on for coffee?
My hands are damp around my phone in the silence and the dark.
Yes. When do you want to meet?