Free A Boat Made of Bone (The Chthonic Saga) by Nicole Grotepas

what his game is, shy at first and then full throttle, Kate thought.
    “Cool, uh, that’d be great,” she heard herself answer.
    Malcolm was shaking his head, his mouth gaping open. “You’re unbelievable,” he said to Ty.
    “What?” Ty asked, holding his chalk-covered hands out innocently. A network of bulging veins spidered through his forearms like cracks over a parched desert floor. He smiled when Malcolm simply stalked away, shaking his head and muttering about back-stabbing friends.
    “What’s wrong with him?” Kate asked.
    “I never know. He can be real moody,” Ty said.
    Kate found that she couldn’t safely look at Ty without staring at his body. So she turned to the wall and began thinking about another route. She could smell that familiar Old Spice Sport fragrance hovering in a nimbus around him. It was dizzying, so she quickly moved to the wall and began a route without even thinking about it. She followed her gut, which led her from one crimpy hold to another. She heard Ty shuffling below her, following her crooked, vertical line along the wall with his hands outstretched in the typical spotting method.
    “Nice. Come on Kate,” he coached. His urgings were confidence builders, and they fueled Kate on as her muscles began to scream in protest. “You’ve got this! Looking good, looking good.”
    She heard herself grunting at the final moves as she lunged in a dynamic move for a fat hook at the top of the wall. She thought she would miss it, or that her hand wouldn’t be able to hold on if she actually hit it. A triumphant and somewhat embarrassing whoop escaped her when her hand closed around it and didn’t let go. Her legs swung toward the wall, and she placed them on some edges and then began her descent.
    When she jumped down, Ty was right there, patting her on the butt and telling her how awesome she did. “You’re pretty good, Kate. That was a sweet route you just made up. Maybe you should be one of our route-setters.” His eyes studied her admiringly and Kate laughed, feeling her cheeks blaze. 
    Soon he was hammering out the details for a climbing jaunt up the canyon, and Kate found herself going along with it. Why not? she thought to herself. Twenty feet away, Audra caught Kate’s eye though she was surrounded by a group of guys, including Malcolm. Kate could almost hear her friend saying, “I told you so!”
    ***
    “Darryl’s going to close the store,” Ferg told Kate first thing Monday morning without any sort of warning. She gasped and dropped the cappuccino she got at Salt and Sugar on her way in. Only some of it spilled before she grabbed the container and turned it upright.
    “What the hell, Ferg? Couldn’t you say hello first and let me put my drink down before you dropped that bomb?” She slid out of her messenger bag, leaving it on the counter, ran to the back and grabbed a pile of paper towels out of the employee bathroom and began sopping up as much of the caramel colored liquid as possible.
    “Not my style, Kate,” he said, sliding the door shut on the glass case that contained all the used handheld gaming cartridges.
    Kate muttered under her breath about having to clean up the mess Ferg helped her make. “What did you say? I’m not quite sure I’ve absorbed it. Something about the store closing. You’re messing with me, right?” She straightened and dropped the soaked paper towels into the trash can next to the counter.
    “Not exactly,” Ferg answered. She snatched her bag off the counter and walked into the back room and put it on top of the desk. It was covered with cellophane wrapped CDs and vinyl, label-making tape, catalogs, and posters.
    When she came out, Ferg was perched on a stool behind the counter, studying something on a clipboard. They weren’t supposed to have stools, but they did, and Ferg was the only one he let sit on it. He absently adjusted a lock of hair that fell into his eyes. “Why? Why’s he closing us down?”
    “Why else?