I'm fretting. I know I'm fretting because I keep finding new creases in the leather car seat, but pulling my gaze away feels like a lie. I revisit the crease and the dirt in the crease and I know he won't even notice the scuffed door or the dusty cupholder, but I can't unsee my humanity. I pull down the felt sun visor and flip open the mirror to meet more creases where my mascara has gathered and aged me. I am fretting and use my finger to blend it away. I did myself up pretty, with wet sparkly glossy lips and cheeks. Hair neatly gelled back into a tight low bun. I look wet, really, I think with some self-denigration.

Receiving equal attention are my phone and the right-side mirror. He texted me he'd be here after he dropped Tony and John at the car. Apparently, they're cross with him for not driving them back to the city and he keeps on telling me that he feels bad, really bad. I told him they're adults - they can drive themselves. 

Maybe he ended up driving them anyway. I don't know why it's hard to believe he will follow through on a promise, even ten minutes out from it being fulfilled-

Rap rap rap rap. "Grace!"

My body starts as I catch him in the rear window. When I witness that roguish smile, my traitorous thoughts are wiped like a sleeping agent. His dimples are so deep, to kiss them is like pressing my lips to the groove in a stone. He is pacing to my door. He is wearing sunglasses and whips them off to reveal shining rich brown eyes and full black lashes playing against eyelids so delicately pale as to be almost lilac. Before I can stop myself, I open the car door into him to get out - it's awkward as he grabs my face past the door - neither of us really has it figured out, how to navigate a physical world with feelings this strong. He says he can feel me through the telephone sometimes.

"Woah." Both laughing nervously. 

"You look so nice! You look so nice." I tangle up my fingers and my eyes dart to the earth, suddenly overwhelmed. He is wearing blue climbing shoes, which resemble chunky geometric socks. "You, too." "No way. God, I'm all chalky and beat up." Without responding, I kiss him - although the car door lodges into my hipbone. My stomach hurts from jumping up and down and up again. He smells metallic and there's a ruddy scrape on his delicate pink cheek. I hope he is bleeding on his hands and it stains my cream t-shirt. I hope he bleeds into my mouth and I can taste him for who he is. "Oh my God... I really do smell so bad, Grace... please don't...!"

I kiss him again, this time maneuvering around the car door and pulling us onto it until it slams shut, one fist bunched in his scarlet Patagonia jacket. His giggle is crazed, rising in pitch when I thumb away the hair from his neck, caress the sheen of perspiration with my fingers. Specks of dirt suspend within it. And - God, he smells just awful.

In early April, New Paltz changes its skin again. Minnewaska Preserve has parking lots that bleed into the dormant grass and hiking trails, the wooded basin dappled in unfurling yellow buds before the mountains. I adore him for letting me see him in this state. His flyaway chest length hair, his fine lines filled with mountain dust, the flat scent of sunscreen, and his freckles darkened by ozonic sunlight. He'd been nervous for the elements to affect him, for me to see his affectation. Feels like another way he gives himself to me.

I want him to know what I need never say. I wrap my hand under his skull, where he is godawful oily. He makes a face like I'm just throwing him off-keel... yet when my ministrations don't abate, his eyes flutter shut. "Oh my God." He says that a lot. "Well, you look so nice." He finds my neck with his sweaty dirty nose. "And you smell so good." I want him so much when he is careful with me... my arms sling around his neck to pull him closer, so close that my cheek becomes damp and my eye becomes blurry from his salt. 

His chest rumbles. "Hi."

"Hi, pretty."

Just like the first time, the seconds turn into minutes - I forget the car, the sun, the gravel, the bluff, my body and my head, also him, because he becomes the car the sun the gravel the bluff. Spring embraces me in cool heat. His curls kiss me like cloud cover and his breath's a rainmaker. Suddenly his sweat smells of the earth, and his teeth are as animal as white-tails. "Thank you for coming," he murmurs inside the wind. "You went so far out of your way."

Dryly: "Yeah, it was a real hardship." 

A loaded pause - and then he is tickling under my arms. I wriggle and squeal and laugh. "You're welcome!" I cry, undone, "You're welcome!"

*

Even though the sun is making its descent, I've rolled the windows down. The wind moves against me with even, prolonged pressure. My right hand falls into his lap when I'm not making a turn into traffic. "I felt so nervous today. And" - I snort at what I'm about to tell him - "I did frantic Google searches, like, 'How many people died climbing the Gunks last year? How likely is it for someone to fall while climbing?' And then I'm scrolling through page after page after page of horrific freak accidents."

"Aw, why?" He holds my hand between his, reflexively massaging the meat of my thumb. "Today was really good."

I whinge, "You texting me, 'Good morning, this day might be my last' doesn't help!"

"I'm always kidding!"

"I don't know how China deals with you," I tease.

"Oh..." He chuckles, a bit frigidly. "I don't think she worries." His tone catches me off guard and I don't know how to respond - how he wants me to respond. A pause ensues. He clarifies. "She's used to it."

"I'm almost certain she does worry," and although my voice is warm, something green is rolling around in the base of my belly. 

"Maybe if I'm doing something challenging. It rained when we were in Mallorca and the rock got really really slick..." The sun has caught a cloud, dispersing its light over the grassy highlands, the first rosy hints of sunset. "It is dangerous. I don't want you to worry, but it is."

"Okay."

My hand redoubles on the wheel, tone minutely shifting from genial teasing to a brassy acceptance. I'm good at hiding but he's good at finding me. "Aw," he says, "don't worry." He takes my wrist and kisses it where all my nerves and veins and muscles are a-flutter. "I don't want you to worry, Grace."

"Okay."

"Today was really good. Everyone finished ahead of time." He pulls on my thumb gently. "I mean, I..."

"Tell me."

"...felt guilty handing the keys over. But it was fine, they were totally fine with it." He inhales like he's about to continue, but the words die in his throat. As if recalling an oath to secrecy.

I pretend not to key into his hesitation and ask as if he were offering answers freely. "So what were you guilty about?"

"Well... John agreed earlier this week, like I said. But he made a stupid joke about it. But it's fine."

I decide not to ask about the joke at all. "What did Tony say?"

"Uh... Well, we don't need to talk about this."

"You're right." I squeeze his hand tightly, unsure. "We don't need to talk about anything."

The car goes silent for a few moments; I steal a glance in the rearview and he looks like he's iterating through all the ways this conversation can go - life as a perpetual performance piece, he as the jester. The moment stretches out a hair longer than could be considered casual. "It stresses me out."

"Okay."

"It's just not in the dynamic."

I pinch him gently. We are here now, I suppose. "Tell me." Although, I'm not sure if I want to listen or if I just want to finish feeling unsettled by what he's not saying.

"Well, John basically said - he basically insinuated that I was sleeping with you. In front of Tony."

You are sleeping with me. "Like as a joke?"

"I guess, he asked me if I 'left anything out' when I told them about staying with my friend upstate."

You did leave something out. "And then what?"

"I'd rather not get into it with him." He exhales sharply. "I mean, I trust John with my life. We're great climbing buddies. But that's the downside of having a best friend from work - still a little wall."

"Gotta give to him - he's perceptive." I am making a joke but not really, and when he doesn't laugh I'm not sure who the joke is on.

Who is the joke on? I consider this as his face twists into an expressionlessness that must denote some deeper dissatisfaction - if the joke is on John, it means that no matter how many cues he picks up, and despite the presence of intuition, logic and common sense, we are holding all of the cards. His perceptiveness is as useful as shoes on a newborn. 

Yet the joke could be on me. To John, all I am is an insinuation. I'm the arbiter of surreptitious last-minute plans barely explained, I'm a tinted car window only to be rolled down when out of sight, I am the guilty explanation to feel very nervous giving. So when John says "left anything out" - I am anything, nebulous secret, like lingering too long at the desk of your younger coworker. And even though I know his hands better than the sandstone does and though I hear his Virginian childhood in his accent and though it's my number he dials when he feels weak, John is the one who gets the privilege of being able to insinuate at all. 

The scariest thought is that the joke is neither on John or me, but on him. Because when you are the jester, it serves you more to be the butt of a funny yarn than an ugly truth.

So if we're lying, I'll start first. "He's just annoyed he has to drive." He's annoyed he feels he's being lied to.

"Yeah, and it makes me feel like I should have figured something else out for them." His voice tightens as he eyes the dust on his climbing shoes. "...It's fine. It's all good."

"Well, I don't think they're going to hate driving duty so much as to just quit climbing with you." You did leave something out. "Maybe honesty is the best policy here. Just explain, you know..." I trail off as his thigh muscles tense against the back of my hand, "...that you're staying upstate on Sundays, now."

"What do you even say to that...?" but he's not responding to me at all.