Read Fire Down Below for Free Online Page B

but not too enthused in case someone decided to ask me what climbs
I’d done. I had to admit they were a well-traveled bunch, though I wondered how
well-traveled you really were if all you did was go from one big mountain to
the next big mountain.
    “Here you are,” Ben said handing
me a bottle of beer.
    “Thanks.”
    He sat down, and as I watched him
dig into his food, I got a rush looking at him. Those strong cheekbones and
that squared jaw. I must have been an idiot in college not to have noticed him.
It’s a thought that’s occurred to me more and more lately, although I do remember
that he was kind of a dork too.
    I also noticed with some amusement
that Wendy, who had taken a seat in the chair opposite us, was trying hard not
to stare at me. I smiled at her the next time her eyes wandered my way, though
she didn’t smile back. I wondered what things had been like between her and Ben
and why they broke up. She seemed like my complete opposite in every way. I found
it astonishing that Ben found us both attractive, since we not only looked nothing
alike, but we had a completely different sort of energy. Wendy did everything
slowly. There was a languid quality about her that I imagined a lot of guys found
sexy, though to me she seemed sleepy. On the other hand I make espresso all day
and drink way too much of the stuff.  
    Megan came over near us and sat
down in a vacated spot on the couch with a plate of food on her lap. “So, tell
me how you two met again?”
    Ben put down his bottle of root
beer. “We met at the café where Kate works, though we originally met during our
freshmen year of college.”
    “Ah, that’s right.” She nodded. Even
though it was Ben who spoke, for some reason Megan kept staring at me. She had these
relentless blue eyes fringed with dark lashes, and as far as I could tell she
never blinked. “And so you guys hit it off, huh?”
    I noticed the room had grown quiet
around us as everyone followed our conversation.
    “Yeah,” Ben grinned. “We hit it
off.”
    I met his eyes for an instant and
I knew we were thinking the same thing—we really hit it off.
    “And so are you a student Kate, or
do you just work at the coffee shop?” she asked, emphasizing the word “just.”
     “Nope, I’m not a student. I just work at the café.”
    “Hmm.” She frowned.
    “Kate is also a painter,” Ben
said. “She’s incredibly talented.”
    I looked at him in surprise. He’d
never said a word about my paintings. When I showed him my art he nodded, but
didn’t say whether he liked them or not, and I assumed that meant he didn’t.
This was something I had begun to notice about Ben. He tended to be stingy with
compliments.
    “Oh? What do you paint?” Megan
asked me.
    I explained to her that I was into
a style of painting called photorealism where you paint the subject matter in
such realistic detail that it looks like a photograph.
    She looked confused. “Why not just
take a photograph?”
    “Well, I paint portraits. And I
like to think when I paint someone I’m capturing something in their face that
is missed by a camera lens. Often photos of faces seem flat to me. I guess you
could say that what I’m really interested in painting is hyperrealism.”
    She stared at me. I sensed that
she was searching for some derogatory comment to make, but failing that she
turned away. “Is anyone ready for more food?”
    How rude. Clearly, she’d taken a
dislike to me, although I couldn’t imagine why.
    “You should paint Ben!” Bernard
yelled at me.
    I smiled at Ben. “Maybe I will
sometime.” I had considered painting Ben, though in truth his face wasn’t the only
part of his anatomy that I’d considered painting. I figured something that had
given me that much pleasure deserved its own painting.
    The rest of the evening consisted
of Megan and, mostly bombastic Bernard, regaling us with stories of their various
climbing adventures, not that I felt regaled in the least bit, though I did