Chapter 5 #2
But one look at him told me he wouldn’t welcome any of that.
Beneath his hoodie, his whole body was taut as a bowstring, like he was holding himself together by willpower alone, and the slightest touch might send him rocketing to the stratosphere.
So I channeled my own frustrated helplessness into kicking a rock off a nearby drop-off—possibly imagining Simon’s face on it, who’s to say? —before opening my mouth.
“I hate that you’re dealing with this,” I said quietly. “But I’m glad you told me. I don’t want you to hold back with me. Okay?”
“Yeah.” He huffed out a laugh and pushed his hair up off his forehead, but he wouldn’t meet my eyes. “Sure.”
“I know some of the things you’re angry about, like your dad, are things you can’t fix or change. But some of the others maybe you just need time to figure out. In the meantime, maybe you need an outlet. When I was younger, I had a lot of pent-up aggression—”
Hawk’s eyes met mine. “Yeah? You never told me that.”
I nodded. “I, uh… Grief is weird, you know? Comes up when you least expect it and sometimes in ways you don’t expect.
My mom hadn’t finished her accounting degree yet, so she was working crazy hours, and things were kinda shitty, and I…
” I shrugged. I didn’t like talking about this stuff because I didn’t like remembering it.
“Anyway. Hitting a punching bag really helped. Have you thought about checking out that new kickboxing studio in Two Rivers?”
He huffed out a laugh, and his posture eased a bit. “Yeah, Crys had some ideas about that, too. First, she suggested jiujitsu since she’s studied it herself—”
I was hesitant to agree with Crys’s suggestions just on principle, but in this case, she might have a point. “Jiujitsu would be good for self-defense. In fact, you should probably get a belt or two before you pursue the hookup app idea, if that was something you were still, ah… thinking about.”
It occurred to me the instant the words were out of my mouth that I probably shouldn’t have brought that up again, especially now.
Hawk’s glare confirmed this. “Did you get a belt in jiujitsu before you swiped right on Smug Peter or Handsy Donny?”
“Well…” I cleared my throat and lifted my chin. “In retrospect, maybe I should have.”
“Uh-huh. Since I wasn’t planning to post a profile on OKSerialKillers, I think I’ll be okay.”
“I just think you could forget the apps and find a nice guy in town. Someone you know. Someone who would—”
“Bup bup bup! You know what? I’m instituting a new friendship rule, Jack: you and I don’t talk about this anymore. I tried finding a nice guy in town, but he turned me down.” He gave me a significant look. “Twice. And now he doesn’t get to have an opinion about my dating life.”
“But that’s not—”
“—up for discussion,” Hawk finished. “River of salt, remember? Change the subject.”
His voice held a warning I’d be a fool to ignore, but I was still tempted. I didn’t want there to be a whole area of his life he wouldn’t share with me, and the idea of Hawk on a date with a stranger made my palms sweat.
But now was not the time to push that issue either. The whole point of this hike had been to get things on track, and I was driving Hawk further away.
“Fine,” I agreed, mentally adding a for now.
He nodded once. “Thank you.”
I gave him a sidelong glance, gauging his mood, searching my brain for a distraction. “Would now be a bad time to tell you there was a Jane Austen trivia question at Singles’ Trivia last night?”
He whipped his head in my direction. “You were at Singles’ Trivia Night?”
“What? Dude. You know I wasn’t. Katey messaged to say she’d be coming in late tomorrow because she has a date tonight, and she mentioned one of the questions was about the early reference to baseball in Northanger Abbey.
You know Katey’s a pitcher for the Hollow Swingers, right?
So she asked if I knew how Jane Austen would have known about baseball in the 1600s when she wrote her books—”
“1600s?” he moaned. “Please tell me you—?”
“Set her right?” I nodded. “Pfft. Obviously. Loyalty to you compelled me to. I told her that was hundreds of years before Jane’s time. But I told her she had to ask you if she wanted to know the answer to her question.”
“In Northanger Abbey, it’s spelled as two words, and it refers to the game of rounders, which is a cousin of what we now know as baseball. Some people have tried to credit her with the name of the game, but that’s been debunked. But the really salient point here…”
Hawk fell into a monologue about popular misconceptions of the Regency era, just as I’d hoped he would, and I could practically see the tension bleed out of him as we climbed to the peak.
I wanted to believe that he’d purged all of his anger and frustration, that we could go back to being Jack and Hawk in perfect harmony, that the hard part of the hike was over.
But as we sat at the top of the trail, admiring the 360-degree views of Little Pippin Hollow and the surrounding countryside while eating the cherry oatmeal cookies I’d brought, I realized I was wrong.
“We can’t lose this, Jack,” Hawk murmured as he chewed. “I can’t lose it. All of my most special moments have been on this mountain. This place… it’s part of who I am. We need to protect it by stopping the development. I wish you believed that—”
“If anyone can make it happen, you can,” I agreed carefully. “That I believe.”
“But you don’t want me to try, do you?” he said flatly. “When all is said and done, despite everything I’ve said to you on the subject, despite everything at stake, you want the Aerie Resort to go forward as planned.”
I opened my mouth to brush him off with my usual disclaimers, but this time, I stopped myself. Hawk felt like I was listening to him but not really listening to him? Well, maybe part of that was because I’d been holding back so I wouldn’t upset him.
My feelings about the development were as complex as my feelings for Hawk himself.
I loved this mountain. There were a million hidden worlds in every shady glen, under every fallen log, around every bend in the trail, and Hawk had pointed most of them out to me over the years.
I never felt more free than when I visited here.
And I wanted the place to remain untouched forever, for Hawk’s sake.
But it wasn’t just about what I wanted or what Hawk wanted either.
When I weighed that against the responsibility I owed to my employees who needed regular paychecks, or to my mom, who deserved to enjoy her semi-retirement in the Hollow after decades of debt and struggle back in Portland, or to the rest of the town, which badly needed new infrastructure…
“I don’t want to fight with you about it, that’s for sure,” I hedged.
Hawk shot me a look, and I sighed. Hawk had given me honesty; the least I could do was return it.
“Yeah. I think it would be a mistake not to let the development move forward. With proper oversight, obviously.”
“Because money is more important than this?” He swept a hand out over the vista.
“Because money is important,” I said, my own patience fraying a bit. “As anyone who’s ever done without could tell you.”
“But you’re not doing without! Panini Jack’s is doing great,” Hawk insisted, “just like Sunday Orchard has done fine for centuries, so why—”
“The orchard does just fine because Webb—and now Knox—work their asses off to make sure it does, just like I do with the diner. But it’d be nice not to worry, come November, if I have enough to make it through until the tourists come back.
” I exhaled sharply and went on in a more measured tone, “And it’s not just about me, Bird.
There are a lot of Hollowans who’ve had to turn to online sales to make money through winter.
Nan and Len at the yarn shop. Mrs. Cleeward with her candy.
We’re doing as much as we can, supporting each other and creating our own local network.
You know I’m committed to making the diner as farm-to-table as possible.
But how much business do you think Scoops does on a given day in January?
Barely enough to keep Frank Bediako’s lights on. ”
I bit my tongue against the other truths I could tell him—about nights I’d gone to bed hungry after my dad died because there simply wasn’t money to pay for his medical bills and our rent and enough food for a growing teenager; about how I’d woken up in a cold sweat at least twice a week after buying the diner, worried I’d made a mistake and my mom and I would end up back in a tiny apartment again—but I’d never wanted to burden Hawk with those stories, especially now when he was dealing with his own shit.
“There are other ways,” he insisted. “If folks are that worried, let’s think up another business concept…”
“Sure. But I don’t have any great ideas, do you?
If there were another easy solution just sitting there, don’t you think someone would have figured it out already?
Evola is the business that’s here with their wallet out, and they’re saying all the right things.
Hollowans don’t need nebulous future ideas; they need money now so they can pay their rent and fund their kids’ schools and keep their roads plowed in the winter.
It’s easy to say, ‘Let’s stick to our ideals,’ when you’re not the one paying the price for them. ”
He scowled. “You make it sound like I don’t care about the people of this town. No one cares more about —”
“Of course you care about the Hollow,” I agreed.
“Just like I care about preserving this mountain as much as possible. That’s what I mean when I say it’s a complex issue.
It’s not black or white. We all need to be willing to compromise.
But when it comes down to it… I believe the development needs to move forward.
It’s really the only way to achieve both objectives. ”