He had told the mother he would wait. He hadn't known she was a mother when he made the promise, and then the fawns came out behind her, and the promise got larger. So rswfire held his position on the road and let the road belong to them. We're just going to chill for a minute. The young ones were close enough that he could see how young they were, close enough to watch them lower their heads into the grass and eat, which was the part he said he loved. He talked to them while they worked. You're so cute. You're adorable. You're awesome. There were no words for the whole of it, he said, and then he kept finding words anyway. Somewhere in the waiting he noted the difference between this and Kentucky — at least here he wasn't blocked in. The exit stayed open. He was choosing to be still.
When he moved, he moved slowly, and told them so, and told them where he was going. I'm going this way. I'll see you. You guys have fun over there. Then a smaller thought, offered without weight: he hoped they were getting enough food, and admitted he didn't know what that was like out here for them.
The drive out to the cape came with a running argument he conducted out loud and did not pretend to win. He was supposed to be resting. He had made himself a rule about it. He was breaking the rule and he had known, in advance, that he would break it — the video needed uploading, and the internet at the lighthouse parking lot was the only place on this stretch of coast where the signal would carry it. So he would go that far and no further. His muscles were participating in the conversation. He gave them their lines: You're really testing us. You've got to move camps in a day and a half. How do you think you're going to feel on that thing? He didn't argue back with anything but hope. Let's hope it's okay.
The day answered before the argument finished. It was beautiful. Wind coming hard enough to be commented on, sun laid out across water, a rock formation that read to him like a volcano from one angle and like something entirely different from another, so he moved to take the second angle and found the razor in it. He said the thing that is always true up there and rarely said: it's always scary up here. You just do it. And then the edge itself, where he stopped and told it plainly — it is not easy to be at that edge. Sit with it. Trust yourself. Answer the call.
He held the line he'd drawn. Not up to the lighthouse today, only the lot. He narrated the restraint as it happened, which is how he kept it: I'm literally telling myself, don't you dare do it. Don't you dare.
And then, standing at the drop with the wind and the sun and the whole open field of ocean in front of him, he named what he had done in that place. He had masturbated on this cliff. He said it without lowering his voice and then turned to face the objection before anyone could raise it — try to criticize me for that, tell me it's wrong to stand on the edge of the world and have a moment with yourself, try, just try. He did not leave the answer to anyone else. That's power, he said. That's communion.
Then the only amendment he would make to it, delivered in the same breath and the same warmth: the one thing wrong with that moment was that it wasn't with somebody else. It's going to take some time to make some boyfriend. He said it the way a man says something he intends to do, and then he went to the parking lot, because the video still needed to go out, and the signal was there.