6. Kendall
KENDALL
My hands are shaking by the time I reach the tailgate.
I pull my keys out of my pack and stand there with one hand on the latch and my eyes on the trees across the road. My jaw is tight, and my chest is full of something I can’t describe, and the man standing ten feet behind me is waiting with the kind of patience I didn’t earn and didn’t ask for.
So I jumped. And I haven’t landed yet. But the jump was right.
I can’t stop hearing it. His voice, steady and honest, saying the thing I’ve been circling for two years.
“Kendall.”
I look at him. He’s standing by his truck with his hands at his sides. Open. Patient. Certain the way he’s been certain since the day he walked into my store.
“You don’t have to tell me anything,” he says. “But I’m here if you want to.”
I open my mouth. Close it. Open it again.
“I’m not ready,” I say. “Not yet.”
“Okay.”
He means it. I can see it in his face. He’s not faking patience. He’s not waiting me out. He’s just giving me the space to get where I’m going on my own time.
“I’ll see you soon,” I say.
I make it sound easy, like I’m not falling apart behind it.
He nods. Gets in his truck. Waits.
He’s waiting for me to leave first. I know that without looking. I get in the pickup and pull out of the turnout and drive down the forest service road with my hands at ten and two and my eyes straight ahead.
I make it halfway home before I pull over.
The turnout is just a wide spot in the road where the guardrail gaps and the shoulder opens up to a view of the valley. I put the pickup in park and leave the engine running and sit there with my hands on the steering wheel and my heart pounding.
He didn’t say it to teach me a lesson. He didn’t even say it about me. He was answering a question about himself, and the truth of it hit me so hard I couldn’t speak for the last mile of the descent.
He jumped.
He left a station where he didn’t belong.
A sure thing. A paycheck, a title, a crew.
He walked away because staying was worse than the uncertainty of starting over.
And he doesn’t even know yet if it’s going to work.
He told me that. He stood there on the trail and admitted he hasn’t landed, and he wasn’t ashamed of it.
I’ve been managing someone else’s store for two years.
Running it like it’s mine while every decision I want to make gets filtered through a regional office that has never set foot on this mountain.
I’ve pitched local partnerships, custom gear curation, terrain consulting programs. Every single one gets the same response.
A polite email from someone named Todd or Karen explaining that the initiative doesn’t align with the current brand strategy.
I know what staying feels like. I’ve known for a long time.
I let go of the steering wheel and press my palms against my thighs.
The thing is, it’s not about Drew. He didn’t tell me to leave.
He didn’t look at me on the ridge and say “you could do more” to push me toward something.
He said it because he saw it, the same way he sees everything, clearly and without agenda.
And today he told me his own story and let me hear whatever I was going to hear.
What I heard is that I’m afraid.
Two years of “I’m building my case” and “the timing isn’t right” and “I need more savings” and “corporate might come around.” Two years of rearranging the excuses like I rearrange the display wall, making them look intentional when they’re just fear in a presentable layout.
I know this mountain better than anyone. Drew knows it after one morning with me. Holt knows it. Customers know it. Everyone sees it except the person who needs to act on it.
I pull out my phone and open my contacts.
Corporate’s regional number is right there.
I’ve called it dozens of times. Inventory issues, staffing requests, the partnership pitches that went nowhere.
I know the extension for my regional manager and I know the hold music and I know the careful, grateful tone I use when I’m asking for permission to do something I shouldn’t need permission for.
My thumb hovers over the number.
I could call right now. Tell them I’m done. Two weeks’ notice, starting today, thank you for the opportunity.
My thumb doesn’t move.
Because the fear isn’t about corporate. The fear is about what happens after.
What if I go out on my own and it doesn’t work?
What if the terrain consulting isn’t enough to build a business on?
What if I pour everything into something with my name on it and it fails, and everyone who ever looked at me like a kid playing store gets to say they were right?
Drew’s voice again. I knew what staying felt like, and I couldn’t do another year of it.
I close my eyes.
The cabin on the mountain comes first. His flannel on the stone floor and his hands in my hair and the way he looked at me after, like I was the most certain thing in his uncertain world.
Then the ridge—the wind pulling strands from my braid, the whole valley spread below me like something I’d earned.
And underneath all of it, quieter but just as clear, the trail maps I designed that are better than anything corporate has ever sent me.
The hazard profiles I built from years on this mountain, season after season, mile after mile.
And then something that hasn’t happened yet. My hand on a key. My name on a door. A shop that’s mine.
I can see it so clearly it scares me.
I open my eyes. The valley is spread out below the turnout, gold and green in the afternoon light. Copper Peak is down there. My mountain. My life that’s been waiting for me to stop being afraid of it.
I put the phone away. I’m not calling corporate today.
I’m calling a commercial real estate agent on Monday.
I pull back onto the road and drive home. My hands have stopped shaking.
When I get home, I text Drew.
Monday. I’m calling about a lease.
Three dots. Then, I’ll be at your door at seven with coffee.
I set the phone down and stand in my kitchen and breathe. The fear is still there. I don’t think it’s going anywhere. But underneath it, for the first time in two years, something else is louder.
I’m jumping.