The Blind Dare

Pam had counted the petals of a white rose a hundred and twelve times in her life, and she could not tell you why, only that her fingers did it on their own whenever the shop went quiet, whenever Mrs. Holt left for lunch and the cooler hummed and there was nothing left to wrap or trim or water. She was forty-two years old and she had never gotten a parking ticket, never bounced a check, never once called in sick when she wasn't, and some nights she stood in the shower and thought, is this it, is this the whole shape of me, a woman who does the right thing so reliably that even her own husband probably knows what she'll say before she says it.

It was a Tuesday in early June when Dave came home from work early, which he never did, and stood in the kitchen doorway with his jacket still on, watching her deadhead the geraniums on the windowsill.

"What," she said, not turning around.

"You've been doing that same plant for twenty minutes."

"I have not."

"Pam." He said her name the way he did when he was about to win an argument, patiently, like laying down cards one at a time. "We've been married fourteen years. I know your tells. You're bored out of your skull and you won't admit it."

She put down the scissors and turned, and there it was, that look on his face, the one that made her feel like glass he could see straight through, and she hated it and wanted it at the same time. "I'm not bored. I'm busy. I have three weddings this month."

"You love the weddings. You hate everything else. You come home and you sit in the chair and you don't even turn the TV on, you just sit there counting something in your head, I can see your lips move sometimes."

She laughed, because it was true and it was awful. "Petals," she admitted. "Or floor tiles. Whatever's in front of me."

"So come camping with me. Three days. Trailhead Canyon, that spot off in the Desolation Wilderness, the one with the granite ridge. No phones. No shop. No counting."

"Dave, I have deliveries on Friday."

"You have Katelyn, who has run the shop without you for a week before and done fine. Come on. Say yes before you talk yourself out of it. That's what you do, you know. You talk yourself out of things." He crossed the kitchen and put his hands on her shoulders, and he looked at her the way he had at twenty-six, back when they were both harnessed to the same climbing wall and he'd asked her to dinner halfway up a rock face, and she felt something in her chest unlock like a window pushed open. "I want to see you do something you didn't plan."

She should have said no, or next month, or let me think about it, all the things the reasonable Pam would say. Instead she heard herself say, "Fine. Yes. Okay," so fast that Dave grinned like a boy and she thought, oh no, what did I just agree to.

* * *

The drive up was two hours of pine and switchbacks, Dave singing badly to the radio and Pam laughing in spite of herself, and by the time they pulled into the dusty little lot at the trailhead her shoulders had dropped an inch she hadn't known they were carrying. The trail wound up through manzanita and Jeffrey pine, the air smelling like vanilla and warm dust, and they didn't see another person the whole way to the clearing, which had the fire ring and the view of the ridge going gold in the late light, exactly as promised.

They got the tent up while there was still sun, and Dave built a small fire, and they ate beans and sausages off sticks like they were twenty-two, and it was nice, it was all very nice, and Pam sat on the log feeling the old counting feeling creep back into her fingers and thought, well, at least it's pretty.

Then Dave stood up, brushed off his jeans, and pointed his chin at the creek that ran cold and fast along the edge of the trees.

"Dare," he said.

Pam looked at the creek. She could see the white of the water where it went over the rocks, and she knew mountain water in June, knew it was snowmelt, knew it would hurt. "You want me to do what."

"Wade in. Up to your thighs. That's it, that's the dare. You can get right back out."

"Dave, that water is forty degrees if it's thirty."

"That's the dare." He had that dark little edge in his voice now, the one she'd heard on the climbing wall years ago when he'd coaxed her up a route she swore she couldn't do, and she remembered, suddenly and with a jolt, that this was the man she'd married, the one who had always known there was something wilder under the careful surface of her and had waited fourteen years for her to let it out. "No pressure. You can say no. But you won't, will you."

"I might."

"You won't."

She stood up, and her heart was doing something quick and unfamiliar, and she pulled her boots off and her socks and rolled her hiking pants up past her knees, and Dave sat back down on the log and just watched, saying nothing, letting it be hers.

The first step was so cold it burned. She gasped and stood there on one leg like an idiot, and Dave laughed low in his chest.

"Both feet, Pam."

"Shut up, I'm going."

The second step was worse, and the third, and by the time the water hit her thighs she was gasping and laughing and swearing all at once, some sound coming out of her that she hadn't made in years, high and wild, and the cold seized her calves and her knees and she stood there in the rushing water with her arms out like she was balancing on a wire, alive, completely and shockingly alive, every nerve in her legs ringing like struck bells.

"Oh my god," she yelled at him. "Oh my god, Dave, it's freezing, this is insane."

He was grinning at her with that dark edge still on his mouth, and there was something else there too, something warmer, and he said, "Come back out whenever you want. Or don't."

She stayed in longer than she needed to, just to prove she could, until her legs went from burning to numb and she waded out dripping and shivering and absolutely glowing, and Dave wrapped her in the fleece from his pack and rubbed her arms and looked at her like she'd just handed him something.

"There she is," he said quietly.

Pam shivered and laughed and pretended it was only the cold. But she knew what he meant, and so did he, and the fire was bright and the ridge was going dark and she caught herself, for the first time all day, not counting anything at all.

The next morning came in cold and bright, and Pam woke up in the tent with her nose freezing and Dave already gone, and she crawled out to find him crouched at the fire ring kicking the coals back to life with a stick. He had coffee going in the little aluminum pot, and the ridge across the valley was lit up pink and orange, and for a second she just stood there in the tent doorway with her arms crossed against the chill and let herself look at it.

"Morning, wild woman," he said without turning around.

"You're enjoying this way too much."

"Absolutely I am. Coffee?" He poured her a cup and handed it over, steam curling off it, and she sat down on the log beside him and drank it too fast and burned her tongue and laughed at herself, and Dave laughed too, and it felt easy, the way it used to feel when they were dating and everything was still a little bit a dare.

They broke camp slow and hiked on, and the trail climbed through the manzanita until the trees opened up and the sun came down hard on the bare granite, and by noon it was hot, actually hot, the kind of dry mountain heat that made her shirt stick to her back. Dave stopped at a flat slab of rock where the view fell away for miles, the whole blue fold of the mountains, and he took off his pack and sat down and pulled off his boots like a man settling in for a sermon.

"Okay," he said. "Dare."

"Oh no."

"Take off your shirt. Right here."

Pam looked around. Nothing but granite and pine and the sky, no sound at all except some bird working somewhere far off. "There's no bra under this shirt, Dave."

"I know."

"There's a whole mountain range and no walls."

"I know." He was smiling, patient, hands folded over his knee like he had all day. "You can say no. You always can. But nobody's up here, the sun's warm, and you've been telling yourself you're somebody else for about twenty years and I'd like to meet the real one."

"That's a terrible line."

"I know that too."

She stood there with her hand at the hem of her shirt, and her heart was going quick and stupid, and she thought about Mrs. Holt and the count of white rose petals and the geraniums on the windowsill, all the careful little rooms she'd built, and then she pulled the shirt up over her head in one fast motion before she could talk herself out of it, and the sun hit her bare skin all at once and it was like the creek all over again, burning and bright and hers.

Dave made a low sound in his chest and just looked.

"What," she said, one arm drifting up like she was going to cover herself, and then she made herself drop it back down.

"Nothing. You're just... hi." And then he was up off the rock, and he stepped in close, and his mouth found hers, another kiss, and his lips tasted like coffee and his face was warm and damp from the climb, and she could feel the sweat on his brown skin under her palms when her hands came up to his chest, slick at his temples, slick along the back of his neck, and it did something to her that she hadn't let happen in a long, long time. He kissed her slow at first and then not slow at all, and her bare back was against the warm granite and his hand was at her jaw, and when they finally broke apart she was breathing like she'd run a mile.

"Well," she said.

"Yeah."

"Was that part of the dare?"

"No," he said, and kissed her once more, soft, like a period at the end of a sentence. "That was just me."

* * *

After lunch, back on the trail, he pulled a bandana out of his pack.

"Okay, so this is the next one," he said, working the cloth between his fingers. "And you can say no, and if you say no we move on and I never bring it up again, I mean that."

"What is it, Dave."

"I want to blindfold you and take you off-trail. My hand on yours, your hand on my shoulder. There's a place up there I found on a work trip two years ago and I've been wanting to show you, but I want you to see it the way I found it. Without knowing where it's coming."

"Off-trail." She looked up the ridge, where the pines thickened and the ground went steep and brushy. "Dave, I trip on carpet."

"I'll be right there. Every step. You hold on to me the whole time, and the second you want to stop, we stop. Say stop and we're done, no questions." He held out the bandana, just held it out, and let it sit there in the air between them.

And Pam, who had never gotten a parking ticket in her life, who had counted something in every room she'd ever sat in, took the bandana out of his hand.

The knot went snug behind her head and the world went black, and for a moment it was too much, just black and birdsong and the smell of warm pine, and she said, "Okay, okay," mostly to herself, and Dave's hand closed around hers, big and sure, and he said, "I've got you. Step."

The first ten minutes were the worst. Every root was a cliff, every slope felt like a drop, and her heart was hammering so hard she could hear it in her ears, and her other hand gripped his