I hooked my foot around a gnarled knot in the trunk and hoisted myself up. I looked down. I was a whole foot off the ground. I looked up. Only seven more to go. I quickly realized, thankfully, how a totally stocious girl with no athletic ability like Loren, had managed it. There were knobbly bits and ridges in all the right places. That didn’t mean it was easy, mind you. My thighs burned and my hands stung from clinging so tight to branches. At one point I slipped and grazed my knee, letting out a string of expletives that impressed even me.

“You can do it!” the girl shouted out.

“Are you looking?” I shouted back.

“No, I promise.” A pause. “But also we should probably clean that cut when you get down.”

Great.

With one final push I didn’t know I had in me, I reached level with the top of the wall and stepped gingerly from the base of the branch onto the relative safety of solid stone.

“I made it,” I called out. I looked down at my leg. My jeans were ripped and there was a trickling sensation trailing from my knee into my sock.

Then I realized the real problem was still before me. I had scaled a tree, risked life and limb, and there was nothing on the other side but an eight-foot drop.

“Shit.”

She was cute. But she wasn’t break-your-leg cute.

“What’s wrong?”

I jumped slightly. The girl was right below me. She looked worried and ran her fingers through her hair, flipping it from one side to the other.

Was she?

“Don’t scare me when I’m on a bloody tightrope,” I grumbled. The world seemed to sway when I looked down. Or was that me swaying?

“Exaggerate much? The wall is two feet thick.”

“Uh-huh, well, it’s eight feet high and there’s nothing on the other side except a pretty poky-looking rosebush, my friend, so I think your cat is going to have to chill over there for tonight.”

Believe me when I say I wanted to play kitten hero for her and have her wrap her arms around me in gratitude, but a woozy feeling in my stomach said it was a terrible idea. The vodka hubris was wearing off in the fresh air. I couldn’t do it.

“You can’t leave her!”

“I really can.”

Within a few seconds, the girl had scooted up the tree trunk like a monkey and was standing beside me.

“How did you do that?”

She grinned and shrugged.

“Why am I even up here?” I said indignantly. “Why didn’t you do it yourself?”

“I don’t know. I mean, you offered. I didn’t think it would be that difficult and then when you were trying so hard I felt too bad to say anything.”

I pressed my lips together and prayed for patience.