Page 19 of Hooked
“Shit.” He felt himself slip. He fell backward, bracing himself as he landed on the thick mats at the base of the bouldering wall.
Cary was already climbing down. “You okay?”
Jeremy shook his hands. “I’ll be fine. I shouldn’t have tried a V3 before I started conditioning more.”
“Legs?”
“Yeah.” His legs were weak from the winter. He hadn’t been biking or lifting as much because he hated working out at the gym. It left him unbalanced on the wall. “I should have stuck with the twos this early in the year.”
Cary hopped off the wall and dusted his hands off. “I wondered where your head was when you hopped on that three.” He grabbed a bandana from his pocket, wiped his forehead, and shook his silver hair out before he tied it back to keep it out of his eyes. “Hell, that route I took was a hard V1. We just got here, man. Still warming up. What’s bugging you?”
Leave it to Mr. Nakamura to know something was bothering him.
Cary Nakamura was older than Jeremy by at least fifteen years, and he’d been Jeremy’s shop teacher for a couple of years in high school. Jeremy had reconnected with him on a mountain bike trail after Jeremy had moved back to Metlin. Cary had been the one to suggest Jeremy try rock climbing, and they’d been climbing together ever since.
They were still beginning climbers, but they pushed themselves every summer. Rock climbing had become Jeremy’s driving passion when he wasn’t at work.
“Tayla’s interviewing for a job up in the Bay Area,” he said. “I just found out last night.”
Cary’s eyebrows went up. “Just interviewing?”
“Yeah.” He walked to the bench on the far wall to grab his water bottle.
Cary shrugged. “So she’s interviewing. She might not get it.”
He took a long drink. “Whether she gets this job or not, it’s a problem.”
“Because that means she’s looking to leave.”
“Yeah.” He sat on the bench and watched a group of college-aged girls approach the wall on the right side. They were smarter than him and started up a V2 route. “I thought she liked Metlin. I thought she wanted to stay. She’s been picking up work, building a business, living with Emmie. Why would she move back to San Francisco?”
Cary sat next to him and opened his water. “I think she likes it here, but she’s notfromhere. She doesn’t have any roots, you know. No family. She might have just wanted a new scene for a couple years. Now she’s ready to go back.”
Jeremy turned to him. “That leaves me shit out of luck, man.”
“Yeah, it does.” Cary took a long drink. “Should have asked her out a year ago.”
“I’m not twenty-two. I’m not interested in just hooking up anymore. And Tayla was pretty vocal about not wanting a boyfriend.”
The corner of Cary’s mouth turned up. “And you thought you’d be the one man who could change her mind?”
“Don’t make me sound like an asshole. It wasn’t like that.” It was kinda like that.
“That girl…” Cary grinned. “She’s a riot. Cracks me up every time I see her. But she’s like the walking definition of a free spirit, man. If you had wedding bells in your head, I don’t know if you ever stood a chance there.”
“You know what? People are full of shit. They say they don’t want a commitment or to be tied down, and then they fall in love and get married. So call me a hopeless romantic—”
“You’re a hopeless romantic.”
“I’m not the one hung up on the same woman for five years when she won’t even give me the time of day, so shut the hell up.”
Cary grimaced. “Fair.”
Jeremy stared at the bouldering wall, watching the group of girls shouting encouragement as each one carefully chose holds and followed their route.
When he’d first started climbing, he’d been so enthusiastic he fell constantly. He wanted to try everything and do everything at once. Bruises and a fractured tibia had forced him to take a step back and reevaluate his strategy.
Jeremy decided to tackle rock climbing the same way he had school or getting his degree or building a business. Make a plan. Stick to the plan. Don’t rush. Don’t get overenthusiastic.
