Page 35 of Change My Mind
If Addie had slipped up like that a week ago, I would have teased the hell out of her just to watch her get more flustered and annoyed that she had misspoke.
As it was, I pushed off on my right leg and then got my left foot on the wall and tried to assess the best place to put my hands next.
“Go for the red one by your left hand,” Addie said quietly.
I chanced a look at her, but her head was cast downwards as she secured a stray braid back into her bun.
I turned back to the wall and grabbed the red hold with my left hand and wondered about my next move.
“Should I go for the green one next?” I called down.
“That’s probably a good shout. But remember that your legs need to get up the wall as well.”
I turned my head to look at her. “What, you don’t think I could get up this wall on pure upper body strength?”
Her head snapped up, eyes zeroing in on my arms before they dragged themselves to look me in the eye.
She huffed out a laugh as she took her position at the bottom of the wall and grabbed onto a hold. “I think you’d make a good go of it,” she said as she began her ascent.
“I’msorry that we didn’t actually spend that much time together doing this,” Kayla said as we returned our equipment. She had a flush to her skin, and her eyes were brimming with excitement. I think I may have introduced her to a climbing friend for life.
“Don’t worry about it. You looked like you were having fun, and I was just going to slow you down. You would have felt bad about going to do that monster wall.”
Both Kayla and Lucy had tackled the wall with the overhang that made me feel sick just looking at it. Addie and I had watched them, feet firmly on the ground.
“It was so good. I know I can get higher. I think I just need to change my grip on one of the smaller holds.”
I smiled at her joy. “I hope you get to figure that out.”
Kayla rested a hand on my forearm. “Let me take you out to get some food. Make up for the fact that I left you to do an activity you clearly hated.”
I shook my head. “Can’t. Addie and I are going shopping for some home bits so we can look a little less like we live in a show home. Just let me pick the activity next time?”
“I can agree to that,” Kayla said with a smile before she walked away.
I looked around for Addie and found her waiting outside the toilets. Her eyes locked with mine, and she nodded and held up a finger.
I stayed where I was, and a couple of minutes later, Addie walked over to me while Lucy walked out of the building.
“Should we go make our house a home then?”
Twenty-Four
ADDIE
Rock climbing was evil.
I mean, it was fine, and all things considered, I had a nice time.
But also, it was evil.
Because once Eli got over his initial hesitance, he wasn’t half-bad at the climbing thing, and that didnothingto douse the flames that last night had set alight. Black fabric stuck to his back and showcased the muscles that lived there as he climbed. The tense corded muscle of his forearms as he held onto the wall. The frankly oddly arousing discovery that he had a lot of prominent veins in his hands that really made themselves known the more he worked his way up walls.
It was enough for me to declare rock climbing evil.
But I couldn’t think about how evil rock climbing was, and how it made me want to climb something else, because Eli and I were still out in public at a homeware shop that we hoped was going to fix our flat.
“Do you have a favourite Cluedo character?” I askedas we walked down an aisle, silently judging all the cushions that we passed. There wasn’t anything wrong with them, but they didn’t feelright.
