Page 31 of Hogging the Hunk
“How’s your knee?” Ellie asked.
I secretly released a relieved sigh. Good. Yes. Let’s talk about me, not Milo.
“It’s about healed up. I’m taking it easy, trying not to rush recovery so I don’t re-injure myself.”
“What did you have to do for it?”
“Prop it up on the couch with a couple pillows under it, while eating a bowl of ice cream and binging my favorite shows.”
My honesty made Ellie snicker again. “That doesn’t sound so bad. I wish I’d sprain my knee so my dad would stop taking me on hikes. We go at least two Saturdays every month.”
“You’re lucky you get to go at your age. We were always too busy on the farm to do much of that kind of stuff when I was growing up. It wasn’t until college that I discovered how much I enjoyed hiking.”
Ellie’s disgust was written all over her face. “You’re like my dad.”
“It’s important to find what fulfills us. Brings us contentment and escape from the drudgery of everyday monotony. I couldn’t put my finger on what I was missing until I realized I was spending way too much time crammed in stuffy lecture halls and windowless chemistry labs. There’s something very special about being outside with the quiet of nature blanketing a person.”
I braced myself, ready for Ellie’s derisive eye roll at my poetic ode to hiking. Talk about being heavy-handed on the self-righteous assertion that what I loved, she should love too. Ellie spared me any scornful twitches of her eyes, instead staring at her feet as she slowed the pace at which she swung them.
“You didn’t look very happy while you were hiking.” Her voice was nearly a whisper, like it was something she wanted me to know, yet wasn’t brave enough to assert it with confidence.
“Well, yeah.” I faked a curt, snorting laugh. “I nearly broke my leg because I wasn’t watching where I was stepping.”
I secured a broad, tenacious bandage over the clean, pink slice on Ellie’s hand, confident it wouldn’t come off so long as she was careful. Handing three more to Ellie, I included several packets of ointment. That ought to last her until the skin healed back together.
“No. Before that.” Ellie found her confidence and looked me square in the face. “With that man you were with.”
“Greg?”
“Yeah. Is he your boyfriend?”
Ellie was throwing all the heavy-hitting punches, oblivious to how they wounded me when they landed. This was normal. Children learned social nuances in their own time. Her boldness in asking wasn’t necessarily because she was aiming to hurt me. I forced out a breath and a smile. I would not be fazed.
“Greg is…” My answer was still not entirely clear because even I wasn’t sure how to classify Greg. Or how he would label me. “We were very close prior to me moving back to Button Blossom.”
“That doesn’t answer my question.”
She didn’t miss a thing. Meeting her penetrating eyes, I tried to be assertive without being overbearing. “It’s complicated.”
For a brief moment, we stared at each other. Where could the conversation possibly go from the impasse where we were halted? Ellie’s visit had gone from cordial to uncomfortably awkward in the blink of an eye.
Crumpling the trash used to clean up Ellie’s hand, I tossed it into the wastebasket under the sink. Sensing my discomfort, even though I’d been making it with a tight-lipped grin, Ellie stood and wrapped her sweater tighter around herself, warding off a chill that wasn’t there. “So that means you’re not dating?”
“Not currently. No.”
There. I said it. What my heart hadn’t been able to acknowledge in the weeks since Greg and I went our separate ways.
Or maybe it was my ego that had been keeping me tongue-tied and under duress whenever I pondered my future with Greg. He was supposed to be my match made in heaven, from his classic good looks to his professional ambition, Greg and I went together like butter chicken and garlic naan.
“It’s just, my dad?”
“What does Greg have to do with your dad?”
Ellie blurted, “He likes you.”
If a volcano could erupt in the middle of a glacier, that’s what was happening on a microscopic layer in my blood. My fingers turned to ice while my face scorched with the fury of a hundred suns.
Apparently, this situation could deteriorate further.