28. Oliver
TWENTY-EIGHT
Oliver
“You sure you don’t want to come?” I batted my eyelashes.
Frankie let out a loud, exaggerated laugh. “Me? Rock climbing? I can’t think of anything more disastrous sounding.”
“Come on, it’s not that hard. I could show you how it’s done.”
Bev, who was making a whiskey and Coke next to Frankie, looked between the two of us, amused. “I can give you the rest of the night off if you want,” she said. “It’s pretty slow.”
Frankie’s ears perked up at that. “If you’re serious, that would be great. I’m supposed to hear back about that job any minute now and I’m freaking out. It’s all I’m thinking about.”
“She can only have the rest of the day off if she comes climbing with me,” I insisted.
Frankie’s hopeful look fell. “Not happening.”
I grinned. “It was worth a shot.”
Bev chuckled at our exchange. “Why don’t you close out that table over there and call it a day.”
“Thanks, Bev.” Frankie looked at her gratefully .
“And it’s been fun having you around. We’ll miss you when you inevitably land that job,” she added, causing my skin to bristle even though I knew it was true.
“Don’t jinx me,” Frankie demanded before pointing at the bar. “Knock wood right now.”
Bev shook her head but tapped on the bar a few times to appease her.
“You’re going to get it,” I said, hoping I sounded casual and not bitter about the whole situation.
“I know.” She smiled to herself before taking off for the back corner to ask the only remaining table in Marie’s if they needed anything.
The thing about the inevitable was that even though you knew it was coming—could prepare for it even—it didn’t make anything easier.
Frankie had stopped being weird with me since the camping trip. The past week had been fucking perfect. We’d gone hiking, slowly but surely. We’d had a few shifts together at Marie’s full of laughter as we both tried to learn to make new drinks. We’d even tried cooking a meal together again and had managed not to burn down my apartment. I wouldn’t trade those moments for anything, but damn if they didn’t make this countdown as painful as it could possibly be.
My friend Jay had already told me I could head to the rafting base camp whenever I wanted. Tours wouldn’t start for a few more weeks, but he’d said I could help out with training. I was stalling though. I planned to be in Key Ridge precisely one day longer than Frankie would be—whenever that was. I wouldn’t leave her, and I didn’t want to be here for any amount of time that she was gone. It hurt too much to think about.
My phone buzzed in my pocket. I pulled it out to see my mother’s name flashing across the screen. I hit the green button and held it up to my ear.
“I’m busy right now, Mom. Can I call you back?”
“Too busy for your only mother?”
I let out a gruff sigh, and Frankie raised an eyebrow at me as she slipped back behind the bar.
“I’m meeting a friend in a few minutes.”
“Of course.” She couldn’t keep the hurt out of her voice. “I just got off the phone with your brother. Can you believe Charlie’s pregnant? I was trying to do the math from the wedding and it’s a close one. He told me he told you first. I can’t believe you didn’t say anything.”
I pinched the bridge of my nose. “It wasn’t my news to tell,” I said.
“Still, I’m the mother. The grandmother. Someone should have told me.”
“He just told you,” I said slowly, hoping she’d recognize how ridiculous she was being.
“Well, I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t hurt.”
“I hope you didn’t say that to Nathan.”
“Of course not. I’m telling you. We’re different.”
“We’re not though.”
Frankie met my eyes and gave me a sympathetic frown.
“Look, I’ve got to go.”
“Wait!” she cried. “Have you bought tickets to come visit yet?”
“I’m starting a new job, Mom. It’ll have to wait. I’ll call you back.”
I hung up before she could say anything else.
“A bit cold,” Frankie said, and I cringed.
“You should hear the other end of the conversation. She’s impossible.”
“But she loves you,” Frankie pointed out .
“She drives me insane.”
“I still think you should talk to her. Maybe you can work through your childhood and get to a better place?—”
I interrupted her by reaching over the bar and grabbing her neck, pulling her to me for a quick kiss. “Got to run. I’ll talk to you later, okay?”
“Okay.” I could see the disapproval written all over her face. Here I was, yet again, running from a conversation. Frankie didn’t understand how maddening my mother could be. She wouldn’t take any responsibility for driving a wedge between Nathan and me. I would rather not deal with it. Maybe pushing her away wasn’t healthy, but it was easy.
My arm flexed as my fingers held on to the small hole on the side of the rock. I was only about six feet in the air, but it always felt higher without a rope.
“To your right,” Giles called from underneath me.
“Got it,” I said, moving my hand to the hold he was calling out. The weight of my bottom half moved too far away from the rock’s edge, and I felt myself slipping.
“Shit,” I mumbled, two seconds before I let myself drop onto the mat we’d set up below.
“That was a good path,” Giles said, smacking my shoulder. “I think if you had caught your foot at the same time you moved holds, you would have gotten there easily.”
“Next time,” I said, flexing my fingers and pulling off my helmet. “Let me give my hands a break.”
Giles nodded. “Man, it’s good to be out here like this. I don’t have anyone else that likes doing this stuff with me.”
“Let’s get as many sessions in as we can,” I said.
“Can’t believe you’re leaving soon. It’s been great having you. You seriously have to come back at the beginning of next season.”
“I’ll be here if you’ll have me,” I said with a grin. It felt like someone else was making the plans. Mentally, I knew future me would be excited to return to Key Ridge for next winter season, but present me couldn’t look past the immediate future.
Giles seemed to sense my shift in thought because he paused before saying, “Mattie thinks Frankie is making a mistake. Leaving.”
My eyebrows pinched together. “A mistake? It’s her dream job.”
Giles shrugged. “I only know what Mattie tells me. She seems convinced Frankie doesn’t really want this.”
“Well, that’s for Frankie to figure out,” I said, feeling defensive over her. She’d worked her ass off for this.
“That’s what I told her,” Giles insisted. “I don’t have siblings, so I don’t get their dynamic.”
I thought about my own dynamic with Nathan. How we’d never seen eye to eye growing up. And now, even though he was my total opposite, I tried to reserve any judgment for him and chalk it up to our differences. Just because the way he walked through life wasn’t like me, didn’t mean it was any better or worse. That had taken a couple of decades to figure out, but now that we both had come to that understanding, we were better off for it.
I placed my helmet back on my head and pulled the straps of my climbing gloves tighter. I positioned myself to try the climb again, wanting to escape this conversation with Giles.
His motive for telling me Mattie’s thoughts about Frankie probably came from a good place, but the thought was fucking with my head .
I placed one hand into the first crevice and hoisted myself up the rock face.
There was no way Frankie was making a mistake. She was so sure of herself—always. She wasn’t the type to get sucked into the small-town charm and end up staying for good. That wasn’t her. And it wasn’t me either, for that matter.
My body hugged the boulder as I swung my left foot up to propel myself a few feet higher.
If Frankie told me she wanted to stay, would that change things for me?
The thought nagged at me as I navigated a particularly challenging part of the rock face with very small handholds.
“Careful. That’s a hard line,” I heard Giles call from below me.
It wouldn’t change things for me. She was great, but I wasn’t ready to settle down. One girl, one job, one place? That wasn’t for me.
A loud crack sounded above me. I barely heard Giles yell, “Watch out!” before my gaze jerked up and a large rock came hurling at my head. It knocked my helmet clean off.
Shit. Had I not strapped that?
Another rock came barreling at me. I let go of the wall to fall back and try to avoid it but it still cracked me right on the side of the head. I barely had time to register the pain before my back hit the hard ground, only partially covered by the mat since I’d fallen so far backward.
“Shit, Oliver. Are you okay?”
I went to give Giles a thumbs-up, but black dots rimmed my vision and I couldn’t quite get the signal from my brain to my hand.
The last thing I saw was his face hovering over mine before everything went dark.