Read Online Until It Hurts to Stop by Jennifer R. Hubbard - Free Book Online

forgot to take some of my stuff home yesterday,” I say. “I came to pick it up. And I brought your shirt back.” I wave it at him.
“Oh, right.” He bounces the ball once, twice. “You want some iced tea while you’re here?”
“Yeah, okay.”
I follow him inside, where he drops the ball into its usual spot beside the door, on top of a pile of grocery bags, boots, and umbrellas. He opens the refrigerator.
Sitting at the table where I’ve sat so many times makes me think we really will be able to return to the way things were. I know this kitchen as well as I know my own. The clean dishes piled in the drainer; the scarred cutting board where Perry often chops vegetables for stir-fry; the broken blender and the only-used-once bread maker shoved in a corner. The town map on the wall. The burn on the counter where Nick once set down a red-hot pan.
Nick plunks a spoon and a glass in front of me, and sits down with his own glass. Iced tea slops over the brim and puddles on the table.
I search for something to say, while he rubs his glass with his thumb. There’s something comforting about the familiarity of his hands, his ragged nails and the dirt in the creases of his knuckles.
“So when’s our next hike?” I say, scooping sugar into my glass. We might as well get back to the woods as soon as possible. Back to our old snake-fighting, mountain-climbing selves.
“I don’t know.”
Since when has Nick ever hesitated about getting out onto the trail? I sip my tea, bitter and sweet swirling together in my mouth. “If you don’t want to hike with me anymore—” I begin, though it’s like stabbing myself in the throat to say it.
“That’s not it. It’s just—I was thinking about another mountain. A harder one. Is that something you’d want to do?” A glance at me, the slightest flash when our eyes meet.
“Harder than Eagle? That’ll be a long day.” Especially if we’re still off-kilter like this, our gears not quite back in sync.
“Yeah, I know. Mountains take a lot out of you, but that’s kind of the point, right?” He talks to his drink, one hand wrapped around the dripping glass. “You have the summit to work for, and you put everything into the hike. . . .”
I get what he’s saying. A climb will sand off the remaining sharp edges between us, will give us a place to focus all our energy. “Which mountain?” I ask.
“Crystal.”
It’s the one pictured on his bedroom wall, with the summit as cold and sharp as a fang. “That’s in the Cinnamon Range, isn’t it?”
“Yep. What do you say, Maggie?”
“I say okay.”
He clinks his glass against mine, more tea slopping onto the table.
I do want to climb. I feel the same hunger, the same upward momentum, that he does.
But I have another longing to drag around with me, too. Because even though I’m relieved that he’s giving me exactly what I asked for—he’s treating me like a friend again—I still want more.

eleven
     
    When I get home, my mother’s in bed. Her nursing shifts throw off her whole schedule, and she’s often asleep when the rest of us are awake. My father’s heading down into the basement workshop. “Want to join me?” he asks.
“Yes,” I say, and follow him.
    The workshop is mostly my dad’s place (his “happy place,” Mom and I joke); he built my desk and bookcase, as well as our kitchen table. But I love it, too: the clean smell of fresh wood shavings, the silkiness of sanded boards. I’ve built a few things myself, like the wobbly end table in our front hall, where we keep stray batteries and stacks of junk mail. My first project was an oversized “jewelry box” I made for Mom’s Christmas present one year, which I inexplicably painted purple with orange flowers. She uses it to hold gloves, scarves, and umbrellas, since not even a royal family would have enough bling to fill a jewelry box that size. (At twelve, I had an underdeveloped sense of proportion and scale.) (And no eye for color.) I’ve since