Page 53 of Stay this Christmas
“Sounds good. Should I—I mean, should I look anything up about rock climbing? Watch some videos or something?”
Would not confess the number of beginner videos I’d watched already.
“You’ll be fine, Harps. You’ve got me.”
Maxine walked in for her appointment, catching us grinning at each other like fools. Sam ducked out right after, heading for the exercise room and his class later. I tried to get the goofy expression off my face, but from the way Maxine watched me, I couldn’t be sure I’d succeeded.
I started our session, guiding Maxine through her exercises, Sam’s little comment etched in my brain:You’ve got me.
But how long could I keep him?
SEVENTEEN
sam
Contorted awkwardly in the car,I pushed the shop-vac’s nozzle deeper into the crevice between the driver’s seat and center console. I’d already filled a garbage bag with debris from beneath the seats and the sad no-man’s-land behind them, and now vacuumed up all the little bits I’d missed. This station wagon had held innumerable tiny treasures from my travels: sand from California and North Carolina; obsidian from Oregon; granite from Montana. And now, I was sucking it all up to chuck in the trash.
A sad day for dirtbag climbers everywhere.
I felt a tap on my shoulder and turned to see Georgia staring at me. Flipping off the vac, I eased back out of the car as she leaned past me, craning her neck to examine my progress.
“Are you selling your wagon?” she asked, sarcasm twisting her question.
I knew I should have finished cleaning while she was still at work. “No.”
Her hand flew to my forehead. “Oh my gosh, are you sick? Are you feverish?”
I brushed her hand away. “Ha ha.”
“Seriously, what pushed you over the edge? Was it the smell?”
I frowned down at her. “There was no smell. It was just time.”
“Um,waypast time. When you gave me a ride in this thing last week, I found a receipt from five years ago.”
“And you already gave me crap about it, so we can skip that part.”
She nodded, looking me over. “What are you really doing? Are you interviewing for a place where you need to impress somebody with your clean car?”
I shifted, rubbing my finger over the vac’s on/off switch, debating just how much I wanted to confess to Georgia. Telling her any of this would be about as bad as confessing it to one of the gossips at Fiesta Village. “Not exactly. I’m driving somebody to Austin tonight, and I figured they wouldn’t want to sit in an archeological dig of old receipts and climbing ropes.”
She smiled slowly, her satisfied expression reminiscent of teenage inquisitions where she would grill me mercilessly about my dates with Harper. So. Things were pretty much the same between us after eleven years.
“Who is the somebody?”
I shook my head, my lips pressed together, battling my own smile. “Not sure we should do this.”
She grabbed my shoulder, her short nails digging against my muscles. “Now you have to tell me. Are you seeing someone? When did I miss that?”
“You didn’t miss anything.” I pulled her hand off my shoulder, rubbing at the spots she’d jabbed. “And we’re not seeing each other.”
My brain went straight to the conversation I’d accidentally overheard between Harper and her sister at the Village on Wednesday.
“Being friends is the safest option right now.”
She’d said as much to me in The Broken Hammer, and several times since. Harper had slotted me into the Friend category, and took every opportunity to remind me. The idea of only ever being friends with her felt a little like a slow torture, keeping what I really wanted perpetually out of reach. But if renewing our friendship was the most I could have with her this time around, I would still take it.
I’d take anything she’d give me.
