Why was he so weird about such a simple question?
What did a man like JJ do to stay busy in the wilds of Adventura? Maybe nothing. Maybe he was bored out of his mind. But something in his response told me there was a hidden layer here. This seemed like the perfect world for him. He and Mark fit together like twin puzzle pieces that fed off one another.
JJ took a deep breath. Just as he opened his mouth to say something, Mark breezed back through the room like a hurricane.
“Internet is gone-zo, bro. Hate these storms. Had a text from Justin last night, though. He got snowed in after his date with Meg. Said he’ll be back when the roads open. He took Atticus with him.”
“Glad he’s safe.”
Mark grabbed something from his desk, then returned to the attic.
“Climbing is my world,” JJ said to me then. “But it’s not easy to live off money from climbing.”
“So you and Mark came up with Adventura?”
“Yeah.”
“But in the winter?”
He shrugged. “I have a . . . few things in the works. For the most part, I make a lot of food, do a lot of hiking, and help Justin with maintenance if it’s needed.”
Sounded . . . like not much.
“Oh,” I said, because what else was there to say?
JJ leaned back in his chair. “Mark and I have only ever known life together. Born together. Grew up together. Graduated high school together. Moved to college together. We’ve traveled the world . . . together. Started several other stupid companies that failed. Eventually, we bought Adventura together. We’ve pushed through our parents’ bad marriage and nasty divorce. Ex-girlfriends, broken bones, you name it. We’ve experienced it. Together. We’ve never been apart for more than a few weeks at a time.”
The picture slowly became clearer. “You want a chance to be on your own, don’t you?”
“Maybe.” He hesitated. “But maybe not. I know I want to climb, but that doesn’t pay the bills.”
“Mark seems to have endless ideas.”
He grinned. “Yes, he has that. But I don’t want to keep investing in businesses. That’s his thing, which is why he’s doing this . . . spa . . . without me. He’s a brilliant man. Energetic. Full of ideas. He’s not really afraid of anything. Since our parents’ divorce, he’s sort of been the glue that’s kept me, Megan, and him together. But that’s not who I am or what I want.”
“Then what do you want?”
He hesitated, gaze on me. “Not sure yet. Still working that out.”
I could sense that JJ had opened up as much as he ever would. He yanked his hair out of its bun and ran his hands through it. I jerked my gaze back to the pancakes to avoid an awkward open-mouthed-drooling encounter.
“Anytime you need to talk about it,” I said, “I’m here.”
His mouth cracked a half smile as he grabbed the empty plates from the small table. “You mean you didn’t expect to do therapy while you were here?”
“Naturally, I did. It’s being Mark’s therapist that scares me the most.”
His laugh rang through the snowy cabin, warming me all the way to my bones.
6 JJ
Lizbeth had curled up like a cat on the couch. Unexpectedly, having someone else in this house had been . . . nice. Despite being a contented bachelor who loved the quiet, I didn’t want her to stop talking. I only knew her as the barista at the Frolicking Moose. Mark and I bummed Wi-Fi off there all the time. She had a green tea ready whenever she saw me coming and seemed happy enough, if occasionally quiet. But I’d never really noticed her.
Now I couldn’t stop.
“Liz,” I called, “you up for Scrabble?”
Snow was still collecting rapidly outside, but the wind had calmed. Within the hour, I’d start unburying the truck and shoveling the worst of it away from the door.
Lizbeth set aside Robinson Crusoe with a cheery expression. “Anything but this, please.”
“You don’t like the classics?”
“Not those classics.”
“Ooh, do tell.”
“Truthfully, I mostly read romance, but for every five romance books I read, I venture into a different genre. It’s a rule. It keeps me from getting too jaded.”
“What are your favorites?”
“Right now? The Lais of Marie de France.” She brightened. “They’re poems about love, written in 1170, or something like that. I adore them. They’re all courtly love, illicit affairs, and romantic tragedy.”
“Ah, you love a little drama?”
“I love a little love,” she quipped, then murmured, “I saw this lady; now a dart of agony has struck my heart. It makes my body shake and shiver. I think I really have to love her.”
“One of the poems?”
She smiled and tossed me the bag of tiles, her own already neatly arrayed on her tray. “Since you’re the hero, you go first.”
The fire crackled as I regarded my options. L, P, F, U, H, M, and Q didn’t give me many. I laid out a rather pathetic L-U-M-P.
“You just finished college, and now you’re taking a break for a year, but you have a job application in somewhere, right?” I ventured.
“Mmm-hmm.”
“Where is it?”
“Pinnable.”
“Pinnable? What’s that?”
Her eyes widened. “Don’t tell me you’ve never heard of it.”
“Never.”
“JJ!” Shock threaded her voice. “Are you so removed from the world that you don’t know what Pinnable is? It’s one of the biggest social media platforms ever. You can organize things by corkboards and notes and images and . . .”
I shrugged.
She laughed. “I’m not sure if I’m impressed by the fact that you’ve never heard of it, or frightened by it.”
“You should be impressed.”
Her smile broadened. “Then I am. It’s a social media app that I use all the time, and have for years. Working there would be . . . a dream. At least, I hope it would. I think it would. I could use my expertise in computer programming to help them improve basic layouts, functionality, etc. I’d hopefully work more on the back end. The layers of complexity in that kind of coding have
