Something Wilder(54)

“Cryptobiotic soil. It holds moisture when it rains and helps with erosion, but it can take hundreds of years to grow, and it’s super fragile. You never want to walk on that.”

He was careful to follow her steps as they navigated ground that became more gravel than dirt, then more solid rock than gravel. Gradually, the terrain narrowed into a slot canyon. Sheer faces of rock rose above them, tunneling them in, blocking out the sun. He was reminded of being in the city and stepping into a narrow gap between buildings.

He reached out, letting his fingers trail along the rock wall. Some parts were flat, some curved like waves. The surface was almost striped, with layer after layer of sedimentary rock carved by floodwater over millions of years. It didn’t feel like it should be real.

“Have you ever heard of Manhattanhenge?” he asked her, turning sideways to fit through a particularly narrow section.

“Manhattanhenge?” She laughed. “Sounds made-up.”

“In the city you don’t really see the sun rise or set because the buildings block the horizon. But twice a year the sunset aligns with the east-west streets, and if you stand in just the right spot—I like East Forty-Second and Third—you can see it.”

She stopped and turned with a faraway look in her eye, like she was trying to imagine a day without a sunset. Lily shook her head, clearing it. “I can’t decide if that sounds awful or weirdly magical.”

He looked up at the thin strip of sky overhead, a highway of blue stretched between red rock rooftops. “Probably both. I went to a party with Bradley one night, and just as I was ready to lie about why I needed to head home, he pulled me outside. There was a huge crowd, and it was like the whole city got quiet for a second while we watched the sunset together.”

“Do you miss it?” she asked. “The city?”

Leo hummed, thinking. “Don’t get me wrong, I do love New York. It’s where I grew up, where my mom was, and where Cora is. At least for another month or two. But I am so restless there. I’m up for a big promotion at work, and honestly, if I don’t get it, I don’t know what I’ll do. Maybe switch firms.”

Leo thought of the last Manhattanhenge he’d witnessed. He’d been on a date—he couldn’t even remember her name now. Maggie? Margie? It had been clear from the very first moment that there was no chemistry. And even though the sunset that night had been beautiful, it was nothing like the sunsets here: the sky spilling fire onto the crooked rim, all with space to breathe. It made sense why Lily would never want to leave.

“Do you think you’ll get it?” she asked.

“The promotion? Probably.”

This made her laugh. “You don’t sound particularly excited. Isn’t it a good thing?”

He shrugged, smiling at her. “More money, less fun.”

“Money’s good,” she reasoned.

“I guess.”

He felt Lily watching him and knew how it sounded. But to admit to her that a promotion suddenly felt like a trap, that since he’d come on this trip he almost couldn’t imagine working inside ever again, and that being out here made him see how rote and sterile his life in New York really was, would also be admitting her role in this epiphany. So much of it was about being near her again, and she’d explicitly asked him to keep those things to himself. So he did.

They spent the next hour scrambling over and under chockstones wedged between the vertical walls. He wasn’t claustrophobic, but it was disorienting to not be able to get his bearings with the help of the sun, sky, or mountains. The sharp severity of the rock terrain here made for slow going. Not panic-inducing, exactly, but the unease of having only one way out combined with the physical exertion had started to wear on him by the time the slot opened up again. How did Lily make this look so easy? They were both breathing hard when she stopped to check the map, but she seemed completely calm otherwise. He hadn’t noticed how cool it was in the shade until they were back in the sun, and he reached for his canteen. The air was dry and filled with dust.

She reached up to wipe the back of her hand across her forehead. She was awash in color and light, her skin reflecting the golden cast of the rocks all around her. She was so beautiful, it nearly took his breath away. “Ready?”

Leo nodded, jerking his gaze back before taking a long drink and tucking his canteen into his pack. “Yeah.”

“We’re still going down, but we’ll take the easier way. I think you’re a little too tired to rappel.” She folded up the map.

“I’m not tired,” he lied.

She ignored this. “Step in my steps,” she reminded him. “And don’t stand on the edge of the rocks.”

Unfortunately, Leo didn’t have Lily’s balance, and it took his hands and his feet to navigate part of the descent.

“This is the easy way?” he asked.

“Not if you’re gonna bitch about it the whole way down.”

He opened his mouth to say something sarcastic, but when a lizard darted out across his hand, he jerked back in surprise, his foot slipping. One second he was there, and then he was gone, free-falling, and wondering if this was what Terry felt.

The ground disappeared, gravity sending him down a speckled slide of shale and gravel in under a second, Lily’s scream already seeming impossibly far away. He reached for whatever he could find—plants, branches, rocks—his fingers clawing at the dirt as the world flipped upside down and then right again over and over. His stomach rolled around inside him; his legs felt disconnected from his body. Something cut into his palm, scraped against his face. The wind was knocked from his lungs when he finally landed on his pack at the bottom of… somewhere.