14. Liam

14

LIAM

“ W hoa,” Elliot comments from behind me as we scale a new route up our favorite cliff face Saturday morning. “Slow down, Usain, we’re not racing. This is a new route.”

I grit my teeth together. He’s right, even if I don’t want to admit it. I’m not being safe. I’m being stupid, reaching for sidepulls that are too far away just to make progress and that’s how people die rock climbing.

Taking a deep breath, I reach for a safer pocket and try to shake away the nervous energy that has had me moving through everything like a sugared-up toddler with a football helmet on. I’ve been vibrating with it since Marley mentioned kissing her and I don’t know how to put a stop to it. Even worse, it seems to multiply by the day and seeing her in that Goddam tank top the next morning did nothing to help.

All I can think about is sliding my hand across her smooth curves, lifting her chin, tasting her sweet mouth, burying my cock so deep inside her we both forget about our rules.

“Focus,” Elliot reminds me with a sharp tone, now level with me on the cliff face and I feel myself finally zero in on the task at hand.

I nod and we finish the climb in silence, doing the only thing we’ve been able to do together our whole lives without fighting. I get to the summit just before him—a fact I know eats at his ego, but I don’t care. The way my brain is malfunctioning at the moment, it’s safer for me to be on solid ground.

Climbing usually clears my head and makes me forget everything that clutters it. All the bad peels away—losing our parents, the brewery, my inability to function as an average adult—and it’s just me and my brothers and the sheer adrenaline of scaling a massive piece of earth.

But not today. Not Marley. And I don’t understand it.

“Let’s sit for a bit,” Elliot suggests, pulling water and a trail bar from his pack. He settles onto a large boulder safely set back from the sheer cliff edge and pats the space beside him.

Knowing he’s right, that our descent will be safer if I’m in a better headspace, I pull my water and trail bar from my pack and sit next to him.

We eat in silence for a few moments, enjoying the fall colors that spread below our feet in the valley below us. Paintbrush Peak towers across from us over the valley and the town itself, the summit peeking through white fluffy clouds far higher than our current elevation.

The crisp fall breeze whips around us and I take my first full breath in several days.

“Want to talk about it?” Elliot asks, not looking at me but at the glorious view below us.

“No,” I answer honestly. “But you’re going to make me, aren’t you?”

“Thinking about it.” He takes a swig of water. “I mean, you’ve always been a little on edge, but since the move you’ve been— off.” He turns his water bottle around in his hands and looks at me. “Is it the Marley situation?”

Just hearing her name gives my stomach a kick and I know the grimace that involuntarily mars my face gives me away. All I can do is nod.

“What’s the problem? Is she an awful roommate? Is she as messy as I am?”

I chuckle because no one on earth can create chaos out of nothing like Elliot. “No, it’s not that. I just…”

After waiting for me to finish my sentence for a few beats, he fills in the silence. “You like her.”

I cringe at how childish it sounds. Like I have a crush, like I want to ask her to the winter formal. “I mean, I’m attracted to her, yes, but…”

“That makes sense, she’s cute, you live together, what’s the big deal?”

And here is where the problem is. I can’t answer that question. I want Marley, want her want her. To the point that I’m taking matters into my own hands in the shower every morning with the thought of her lips on my cock. But I know what happens when I’m in a relationship. I ruin them. With my obsessive-compulsive cleaning, with my inability to unwind, with my absolute certainty that everything is going to end badly.

“I don’t want to start something and ruin it,” I finally say.

Elliot sets his bottle down and turns toward me. “What do you mean? Why would you ruin it?”

I shrug and look off into the distance without really seeing. “Because I always do.”

“When?” His tone is a little skeptical. “Man, you haven’t had a girlfriend in like five years.”

“Because I ruin them,” I spell out as if that will answer his question. “It always starts out great and then they get to know me, the real me…” I take a heavy breath. “I don’t want Marley to look at me like that.”

“Like what?”

“Like I’m broken beyond repair.”

“Well, I mean, we’re all broken man,” he says softly, drawing my eyes to him. His jaw is tight as he looks out over the valley, and I see maturity there I’ve never seen before. It dawns on me that maybe he isn’t the happy-go-lucky rubber ball that always bounces back with a grin and smooth one-liner. “Losing mom to cancer was enough to break anyone, but then losing dad and Sutton Brewing…”

I nod and we sit in silence for a moment before he goes on.

“But that doesn’t mean you can’t overcome it or that we can’t overcome it. Hell, Max used to be the literal Hulk twenty-four-seven and now he’s a domesticated teddy bear.”

I chuckle.

“And now we have Redpoint, which is a thousand times cooler than what Sutton has become. You know?”

I nod. “I know.” Sometimes, I get so caught up in everything that was lost that I forget what we’ve gained in the process.

Elliot lets out a heavy breath. “I guess all I’m trying to say is that things can get better, that maybe Marley looks at you and sees something different than the others.” He spears a hand through his hair, grinning, his normal devil-may-care personality returning as quickly as it left. “And think about all the fun you’ll have in the process.”

Rolling my eyes, I shake my head, feeling somehow a little better. I’ll have to marvel over Elliot’s surprising maturity later. “Ready to head back?”

Elliot packs his trash back into his pack and adjusts his harness. “Let’s do it.”