Chapter 19 #2
“Sure, darling,” Val says. “You want the sour, the ale, the one Dottie makes in her garage? It’s a little soapy, but it supports the locals.”
“Don’t you just have a Modelo or something?”
“He’ll have Dottie’s,” Clem says, “and I’ll have a—”
“Diet Coke, honey.” Val laughs and walks away.
Clem glares at me. “I’m rating your people skills a two out of ten tonight.”
I can feel it already. This town, its quirks, its endless friendly chatter…it’s going to wear me down before my time here is over.
“I was thirsty.” I shrug, fingers clipping against the menu.
“Was an allotment of one beer allowed on your schedule today, Hastings?”
“I can be spontaneous too. I’m out to dinner with you, aren’t I?”
“Having a watch vibrate every hour gives people the impression that you’re always waiting for the next thing.”
In one clean motion, I strip off my watch and place it in my pocket. My wrist feels naked, but I swallow away the discomfort. “There.”
The waitress slides our drinks in front of us, then waits with her pen poised. I rattle off my order without looking away from Clem. She gets the salmon with a side salad. I get the steak, medium rare, with potatoes.
When the waitress leaves, Clem lifts her Diet Coke, the straw bobbing against the ice. “We need a toast.”
“To what?”
“To two whole weeks of training.” Her grin sparks like a match. “To not murdering each other. And to the lodge actually looking pretty damn good.”
I clink her glass. Let her have the optimism.
She tilts her head. “So, how’s Finn’s bed?”
With Clem painting the main room, I couldn’t sleep in the spot I’ve occupied for the past eighteen days.
“Good,” I say, too quickly.
“Better than the ground?” she presses, her grin tucked into the rim of her glass.
“I’m only making sure it’s good enough for him.” My tone frays, thin and brittle.
“You sleeping better?”
“Are you?” I taunt.
“Maybe once you finish tiling the showers, you can build yourself a bedroom.”
Unease creeps beneath my skin. “Maybe.” The beer is too bitter, all soap and hops. Nothing like the pitchers Finn and I used to drain until the world went quiet. Nothing like the weight of him across a table, filling the silence with easy noise.
Two more weeks, and he’ll be here. Whether I’m ready or not.
When I glance up, Clementine is leaning in, chin propped in her palm, watching me with that look that doesn’t let me hide.
“What?”
“You’re doing it again,” she says.
“Doing what?”
“Disappearing behind your eyes. I swear, you vanish mid-sentence sometimes. So, I’m just waiting to see when you’ll come back.”
“I do not.”
“You do.” She points at me with her straw. “All the time. You know you do.”
I shake my head. “I’m just—” I exhale. “I have a lot on my mind.”
She looks around the diner like she’s hunting for someone else, then back at me, mock-serious. “If only there were a willing ear here. Hmm. Wonder who might want to listen to you talk about your thoughts…”
“No one.”
“You’re so annoying!” She kicks me under the table, not hard. My laugh slips out before I can stop it. Strange, laughing in public. Stranger still when I realize I don’t hate it.
“Finn and I used to hit a diner after every climb,” I say. “Pitcher of beer, burger, fries. We’d stay until we could barely keep our eyes open.” My hand curls around the sweating glass, grounding myself in the cold. “So being here…it reminds me of that.”
“It’s good to remember the good stuff.”
“Feels easier to remember the bad now.”
Her expression softens. “I get that. I mean, I can’t even begin to imagine the bond you guys have or how hard it is being without him. But you’ve got so many memories, Alec. Good and bad. Don’t bury them away just because things changed.”
“Did you read that off a pamphlet?”
She smirks. “No. I’m wise beyond my years.”
“Sure you are.”
“So, tell me the real stuff,” she says. “The things your fangirls wouldn’t know. What was your first mountain? The one where you knew, Yep, this is it. This is my life.”
“Shasta.”
“Tell me about it.”
I lean back and take a long exhale. “Finn and I had a long weekend off school, so we drove up. Near the summit, there’s a lake—Helen.”
“I’ve heard of it.”
“Well, we camped there. Snuck beers into our packs. Three days without service, without noise. Just us and the cold. We left saying, why would we ever do anything else?”
“And then?” she prompts.
“Then we went back to the Bay. Finn was in Oakland, me north of the bridge. We’d IM trails to each other all week, then disappear every Friday.”
She laughs under her breath. “IM? You mean DM.”
I roll my eyes. “They were simpler times.”
“And that’s why you climb?”
I’ve heard the question a hundred times, from reporters, sponsors, and people who think what I do is something you can dissect cleanly. They want the neat answer: because it’s there, because it’s conquest, because the mountain doesn’t lie.
But Clementine isn’t them.
“Nope. I climb ’cause I’ve always had too much noise in my head,” I say. The words grind out, but they’re mine. “Couldn’t sit still. My parents used to drag us all out on trails—strollers, snacks, the whole crew—and I’d always run ahead, alone. Don’t remember the path. Just remember afterward.”
“What did it feel like?”
“Like I could finally sit in my own skin.” I rub my thumb along the side of the glass.
“In school, all I thought about was climbing trees and rooftops. Scaring my mom half to death. Eventually she gave up and dropped me off at a climbing gym. And that—” My throat tightens, but I let the words out.
“That was the first time nothing else mattered.”
Her lips part. “That’s funny because what you’re describing, that being-present feeling, that’s what ballet was for me. Until it made me want to crawl out of my skin.”
She doesn’t say more. She doesn’t have to. I get it.
For a moment, it’s just us, carrying the same ache. Different shapes, same weight.
“Of course, half the reason I loved the climbing gym was because it was hard to find quiet in a house with five siblings.”
Her straw pauses mid-sip. “I can’t imagine it.”
“Someone was always crying, someone else yelling, someone else stealing whatever food you were saving. I used to sprint out the door just to get a few minutes of silence.” My mouth quirks. “I love them, but ask any older sibling, they’re annoying as hell sometimes.”
“Kinda like you,” she shoots back.
The last thing I want is her putting me in the sibling category. “Don’t push it.” I try for stern, but she grins when I fail.
She tips her head. “Did you have a favorite? Someone you’re closer to?”
“My sisters, probably. Francesca’s the youngest. Her brain is wired like mine, never stops running toward danger. And Brooklyn basically raised half of us.”
“Eldest daughters always do that,” Clementine says knowingly. “In dance, they were like moms.”
“No one asked her to be. She just…carried it anyway.”
“What about your brothers?”
“Cameron plays in the Premier League over in the UK, where he lives with his girlfriend. Dante fences and is dating his childhood crush. Ezra swims and is engaged to his high school sweetheart. Has been forever.”
“So, you’re the last unattached brother.”
“Guess so.”
“Well…apart from Finn, since he’s like an adopted brother. He practically grew up at my house. But unlike my siblings, Finn and I could sit quietly on a ridge for hours.”
“Like us.”
The words should be nothing, but they hit hard.
“Yeah,” I admit. “Like us.”
Her grin withers. “I’ve never had that. Not with friends, not with anyone. Ballet was all pushing, competing. If you weren’t speaking, you were already behind. Quiet meant losing.”
“For me, quiet meant surviving.” My thumb continues to trace the condensation sliding down my glass. “With Finn, it became more than that.” I pause, throat tight, then let it out anyway. “With you…it feels different again.”
For once, I don’t feel like I’m drowning in loss when I talk about the past. I feel like I’m remembering my life. The ridges, the noise of my siblings, Finn. All the parts that made me.
“How different?”
“Good different,” I say.
I want to reach across the table, cover her hand with mine, but the waitress arrives, dropping plates that steam and bleed between us.
My steak, thick and red at the center, potatoes drowned in gravy, green beans glossy with butter.
Clementine’s plate is a slab of pale pink fish and an undressed salad.
Her eyes linger on my plate. She tries to play it off by spearing a limp leaf of lettuce, but I see it.
“You don’t look too enthused.”
“I’m thrilled,” she says, gaze locked on my steak.
“You’re staring at my meat, Clementine.”
She rolls her lips between her teeth. “It just looks so…sinful.”
“Then eat it.”
Her fork freezes midair. “I don’t want to be like one of your siblings, stealing food off your plate.”
I grunt. “We’re not siblings.”
“Right,” she says, all fake innocence. “Because we’re camp buddies!”
“You’ve got to stop calling us that.”
“Why? Does it make you twitch?” There’s a challenge in her voice. Both of us seeing how far we can walk out on the ledge.
You have no idea. “I’m ordering another steak, and I’ll eat that and your salmon.”
“You don’t have to.”
“I don’t do things I don’t want to do.” My tone lands rough enough that her fork stills. Before she can argue, I flag the waitress. “Another steak, please.” I push mine across the table, the smell of char and salt rushing between us.
Her fingers toy with the edge of the plate. “I haven’t had a real meal like this in…” She shakes her head, a rueful smile tugging at her mouth. “In ballet, you’re always counting. Calories, ounces, bites. I still slip into that. Especially now, with all this training.”
“Fuel’s important.”
“Spoken like a man who’s never been told his worth depends on fitting into a tutu.”
“Spoken like a man who knows that starving doesn’t make you stronger,” I correct.
That gets her to laugh. Full-bodied, head tilting back, the sound cutting through the clatter of the diner. People turn, but I don’t care. I’m too busy watching her slice into my steak, juice spilling across the plate like it was meant to be hers all along.
She lifts the bite slowly, and her gaze flicks to me one more time. “Last chance to change your mind.”
“Eat,” I tell her.
“Bossy.”
“Hungry,” I correct.
“For food?”
The corner of my mouth tilts. “For now.”
Her lips close around the bite, slowly, just to torture me. When her throat works through the swallow, my pulse kicks hard enough that the glass sweats in my grip.
She wipes her mouth with the back of her hand, smirking. “Do you always stare this much at dinner, or am I special?”
“If I say you’re special, will you stop talking and keep eating?”
“Maybe.” She smiles through another eye-rolling bite.
“You’re special, Clementine.”
That knocks her off balance for half a second. “Thank you. For this. For sharing all of it with me. I’m enjoying this, Alec.”
It should gut me. Instead, it splits something open.
Because I see myself in her, the way she punishes herself for wanting, the way she treats joy like it’s a ration, like it’s safer to go hungry than to take too much. I know that logic. I’ve lived by it.
Finn gave me comfort when I needed it most. The kind that made the world less jagged. But Clementine, she gives me hunger again. And the terrifying thing is, it feels like permission.
Maybe this is the point. Maybe living isn’t about climbing higher until your lungs collapse. Maybe it’s about sitting still long enough to taste what’s in front of you.
To admit you want it.
Her hand. Her laugh. My steak.
“Me too,” I say.
And for one absurd, ordinary moment, amid syrup-stained tables, the hiss of a griddle, and a jukebox playing something no one’s listening to, I let myself believe I could get used to this.