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fifteen
By Monday morning, Hobbs was starting to normalize again, shaking off the time on the road and the bad juju he’d collected seeing Pops die in his childhood house of horrors. He’d thought about that moment a lot since it’d happened, but he’d come no closer to deciding if witnessing Pops’s death, and those final words, had been exactly what he wanted or the farthest thing from it.
The morning was quiet. Hobbs peeked into the spare bedroom and found Hannah curled in the fetal position on the twin bed Hobbs had bought at the Swedish do-it-yourself superstore, hands tucked under her pillow. Her lips were slightly parted and her hair messed and hiding most of her face. Her shoulder rose and fell in silent sleep, the curtains drawn and blocking out most of the morning sunlight. If it weren’t for her size, she could be a kid again, sacked out after school. She had such a quiet nature that large, busy places always exhausted her, and school had certainly been no exception. Hobbs, who was often her primary caregiver, remembered spending a lot of time getting her out of her funk and into her homework or to the dinner table or whatever had to be done. Red licorice whips worked, as well as the marshmallows from the cereal boxes. Nothing like a jolt of sugar and red dye number five to get a kid going again.
Hobbs decided not to wake her to see if she wanted to go to the gym. She’d been so worn out and had spent much of the weekend lying on the couch, texting Mom and being generally sad, mopey and lost. Any attempts Hobbs had made to get her to open up had been rebuffed, so he’d given up and they’d just watched television until Hannah had fallen asleep. He’d go coach his ten o’clock class and be back in a couple of hours. By then she’d be awake and hopefully in a better mood.
Hobbs slipped into coach mode easily, and though he was relieved that there was no sign of Clementine—he wasn’t exactly eager to have a wild puppy and her crazy cat bodyguard move into his house—spotting Tabitha lifted his spirits. Her eyes popped with surprise when she saw him and she offered him a welcoming smile. Once class started he forgot all about Hannah, Mom, Pops and Victor, all of whom were taking up way too much space in his head, and just lost himself in his work.
By the time they were done, Tabitha lay on her back on the floor, a sweaty mess, the giant gym ceiling fan going around and around. It had been a typical day at the gym for her, performance-wise. She worked harder than everyone else but still struggled and took longer to finish than most people. Hobbs had watched her time and again, whether it was weight lifting, gymnastics, plyometrics, and despite her effort, nothing came easily to her. Though there was nothing wrong with that type of learning—which often led to more solid results down the line—Hobbs could tell Tabitha got frustrated when people with more natural ability made everything look so easy.
With power cleans on the menu today, Hobbs had visited her multiple times during the workout to suggest the same thing with various cues: more aggression. “You’ve got the strength to lift that weight,” he’d told her. “You’re just not opening the hips and dropping under with enough speed. Get angry, Tabby.”
She looked angry now, lying there in a mess of sweat, gasping for air.
Hobbs stood over her, fists on his hips. “How was your date the other night?”
It took a moment for her eyes to blink open. “Hello to you, too. Haven’t seen you in two weeks and you open with that?” She pushed up onto her elbows. “How did you know I had a date?”
“Omniscience. I’m all-seeing and all-knowing.”
Tabitha regarded his lie with a long stare, like she was trying to figure out how he really knew. She either decided it was Clementine or didn’t care, because she finally just said, “Thaddeus asked me for coffee last Friday. Then he couldn’t make that, so we rescheduled for later in the evening and went for drinks instead. I only had water. I left early. It was a total bomb.”
“Thaddeus?” Hobbs suppressed a grin. “His name is Thaddeus?”
“Yes.”
“Did you have a smashing good time, then, lovey?” Hobbs tried an accent, which failed so miserably it made Tabitha arch an eyebrow.
She stood up and stretched her arms overhead. “I don’t know what you’re going for. I don’t know what this is.” She gestured to Hobbs’s puffed-up chest.
“I’m acting like a snobby rich kid who went to an Ivy League school and became a lawyer.” Hobbs shrugged.
“Well, it’s bad.” Tabitha shook her head. “And how did you know Thaddeus was a lawyer?”
“See?” Hobbs pointed at her. “Notthatbad.”
Tabitha shook her head. “I see you’re back from Omaha finally.”
“That’s what I like about you, Tabby. You’re observant.”
“Did it go okay?” Tabitha started cleaning up her equipment, ripping the collars and plates off the barbell with more force than was necessary.
“It went.” Hobbs had long ago learned what face to wear in the gym. Keep your troubles to yourself, put on a smile, give good feedback and don’t get too personal. Even his flirting and dating were casual, which meant there was never any cause for anyone to have expectations and then get mad when they weren’t met. Which meant nobody ever quit the gym over bad feelings concerning him. But it was harder, for a reason he hadn’t yet put his finger on, to keep behind the gym facade with Tabitha.
“Still being secretive, huh?” She tossed her bumper plates in the pile with a flourish.
“See, now that’s the kind of aggression I needed from you during the workout. Not now, when it’s all over.”
Tabitha finally let a smile play around her lips.
“How’s school?” Hobbs grabbed a lacrosse ball from the box resting in the windowsill and tossed it from palm to palm. Distraction in layers was best. Merely deflecting might not get the job done with Tabitha, but if Hobbs distracted her with a question about herself as well as the tossing of the ball, she might not even notice he was avoiding her questions about Omaha.
“School. Let’s see. Do you want the story about how I missed the woman with hyponatremia at the Dogwood County Marathon or the story about how I failed my bone markings quiz?”
Hobbs stopped tossing the ball. “What? I can’t even be gone a couple weeks without all my hard work going in the crapper? I quizzed you mercilessly for that exam.”
“Oh, I remember.” Tabitha hefted her box with a grunt. Hobbs followed behind her as she carried it over to the stack. “No, apparently you can’t be gone that long. So how was it? Tell me it was worth it, considering you slacked and now my grades are suffering.”
