Climbing Coach

I turned 28 on a Monday, and I spent most of that morning telling teenagers where to put their feet. That's the job. I'm a climbing coach at The Vertical Reach, which sounds impressive until you learn the pay and that half my students are fourteen-year-olds who climb better than me out of pure spite.

Heidi, who owns the place, sang happy birthday at me over the counter of the little cafe area while I was wrapping a wrist with tape. She's 52 and has owned the gym for eleven years, and she thinks she's funny.

"Twenty-eight," she said, sliding me a free coffee. "Almost thirty. You know what that makes you?"

"A person who gets free coffee?"

"Over the hill for a woman climber, according to the internet." She grinned at me. "Happy birthday, kid."

The thing is, the joke landed somewhere it wasn't supposed to. I'd been feeling it for weeks anyway, this low hum of dread I couldn't name. Every birthday since 25 has felt less like a celebration and more like a countdown. Like the wall is getting taller and my reach is getting shorter and at some point the numbers stop working in my favor. You see it in this sport. Women who were monsters on the wall at 22 who can't flash a V5 at 32. I know 28 is not old. I know that in my head. But knowing a thing in your head and feeling it in your chest are two different animals, and the animal in my chest had been chewing on that wall all month.

You ever feel like your best years are behind you at an age when you should be laughing at the idea? It's stupid. I know it's stupid. But there it is.

Anyway. Tuesdays are adult recreational league nights, which is my favorite block of the week because the participants are grown-ups who pay to be there, want to be there, and don't bite the crash pads. League runs six to nine, and by nine the gym empties out except for whoever's closing. Usually me.

That Tuesday, most everyone had filtered out by nine-fifteen. Jimmy, the new instructor, 23 and eager as a golden retriever, was stacking mats. He'd been with us two months and still asked permission to move things, which I kept telling him was unnecessary, but he's the type. The lights over the bouldering wall were on a dimmer and somebody had knocked it down to half, so the whole place had this soft amber look, holds in shadow, the 40-foot lead wall going dark toward the top.

Ezra was still there.

Ezra joined the league six weeks ago. He's 48, works something in insurance that I've never bothered to learn the details of, and climbs as a man who's been doing it since before I was born, because he has. He's got gray coming in at his temples and forearms like cable, and he's the kind of confident that doesn't need to announce itself. Most of the league guys our age, well, my age, try too hard. Ezra never did. Six weeks of Tuesday nights and he'd never said more to me than good evening and thanks, coach.

He was sitting on a bench pulling his shoes off when I walked past with the tally clipboard.

"Clarisse." He looked up. "Got a minute?"

"Sure. Everything okay with the invoice?"

"No, nothing like that." He laced his fingers together and stretched his arms out, the way climbers do. "I wanted to ask you something, and I've been sitting here working up to it for twenty minutes, which is embarrassing at my age."

"What's that?"

"A private coaching session." He smiled. There was something in it I couldn't quite name at the time. Knowing, maybe. "Off the clock. Just you and me. There's a route on the lead wall I've been fighting for three weeks and I think it's a technique problem, not a strength problem, and you're the best coach I've ever watched."

"Heidi closes at nine on Tuesdays. It's nine-twenty."

"I noticed. She's gone. Jimmy's stacking mats like they're going somewhere." He shrugged. "If it's a no, it's a no, and I'll see you next Tuesday like always. But I figured the worst you could say is ask Jimmy instead."

I laughed at that. And then I heard myself say, "Give me ten minutes and keep your shoes on."

So that's how it started. Jimmy finished his stacking, I told him to lock the front behind him, and then it was just the two of us in a dim gym with the hum of the heater and that particular quiet a big space gets when it's empty.

I had him warm up on the auto-belay while I stretched, and then I put him on the route. It's a steep section, overhanging, pumpy, with a crux move around the third bolt that spits most people off. He got through it cleaner than I expected and fell at the fifth clip, and I watched his hips the whole way up.

"Okay," I said when he came down. "Your problem isn't strength. You're climbing with your hips square to the wall on the steep stuff. Drop one side in. Turn your left hip into the wall on that sequence after the crux and you'll save your shoulders."

"Show me."

"It's a 12b, Ezra. I'm not going to flash your project in front of you, that's rude."

"It's not rude, it's motivating." He was grinning again. "Come on, coach. Show me how it's done."

So I tied in. I know. But it had been my birthday yesterday, and I wanted to feel good at something, and climbing is the thing I've always felt good at. The wall doesn't care how old you are.

I climbed better than I had in weeks. Adrenaline does that. I got through the crux clean, made the move after it with my left hip dropped the way I'd told him, and I was reaching for the fifth clip when my foot skated off a sloper and I peeled.

He caught me. Of course he caught me, the whole point of a belay is the catch, but the catch is a real thing, a hard sit in the rope, and when I came down and he lowered me to the pads, he kept one hand on my harness and put the other at my waist to steady me as I unweighted.

"Nice fall," he said.

"Very photogenic."

"Shut up." I was laughing, breathing hard. "Your turn to take the beta."

He didn't climb. He stayed close, his hand still at my waist over my shirt, and I could feel the heat of it through the fabric. Neither of us stepped back.

"You know," he said, quiet, "I didn't actually need a coaching session."

"Yeah," I said. "I figured that out about four minutes ago."

"Twenty minutes, actually. Since you walked past with the clipboard."

His thumb moved, just a little, against my side. And I want to tell you I thought it over, weighed it, considered the wisdom of getting involved with a league member. I did not do any of that. I turned to face him and his other hand came up to my jaw and he kissed me, and it was a good kiss, unhurried, as a man who'd been thinking about it for six Tuesdays and had a plan.

When we came up for air I said, "This is probably against some policy."

"Almost certainly."

"Heidi's going to be insufferable about it."

"She'll live." He pulled his shoes back on without letting go of my hand. "Mattress room's got crash pads and a locked door. Or my truck. Your call."

"Mattress room," I said, and he laughed, and we went.

(For those who haven't been to our gym, the mattress room is where we store spare pads. It is not actually a mattress room. It became one that night, in spirit.)

He spread two pads and pushed me down onto them gently, and then he took his time, which surprised me and didn't. He peeled my shirt up over my head and looked at me in the dim light coming under the door, and he said, "Twenty-eight looks good on you, Clarisse," and I swear I forgot every anxious thought I'd had all month. His mouth found my nipples and I arched into him, and he worked one with his tongue while his fingers found the waistband of my leggings and pulled them down over my hips.

"You're sure?" he asked, looking up at me.

"I've been sure since you asked for the lesson," I said, and he grinned against my skin.

He got my leggings the rest of the way off and ran a hand up my thigh, slow, and then his fingers found my clit and I made a noise I was glad the gym was empty for. He knew what he was doing, no fumbling, just steady circles until my hips were lifting off the pad, and then he slid two fingers into my pussy and curled them and I grabbed the edge of the mat and said something that was not words.

"Ezra," I managed. "Get your clothes off."

"Bossy coach."

"Always."

He stood and stripped fast, and I got a good look at him in the shadow light, broad and solid and hard, cock standing up against his stomach, and I reached for him. He came down over me and I guided him in, slow, both of us watching it happen, and the stretch of him filled me up in that way that makes everything else go quiet. He moved like he climbed, patient, reading me, adjusting. I wrapped a leg around him and pulled him deeper and he groaned into my neck.

"Happy birthday," he said, and I laughed and then couldn't laugh anymore because he hit the spot that turned words off.

He kept going, slow and steady, and I stopped keeping track of anything. Not the wall, not the clipboard, not the number on my birthday cake. His cock moved in me with this rhythm he'd clearly settled on, deep and then a little roll at the end, and every roll pressed right where I needed it. My clit ground against him on every stroke. I wasn't going to last and I didn't try to.

"Don't hold back," he said against my ear. "I want to feel it."

"Then keep doing that. Exactly that."

He did. That's the thing about a 48-year-old man, he doesn't panic when you give him instructions. He takes them and climbs with them. My hips came up off the pad and I clenched around him and I came hard, no build-up warning, just went, my hand slapping flat against the crash pad because there was nothing to grab.

He stayed with me through it, kept moving slow