Page 104 of The Mating Game
“It’s like a nineties classic,” I exclaim.
“Okay, but I don’t know it.”
“ ‘Hip hop, marmalade, spic and span’?”
Hunter wrinkles his nose. “What?”
“Oh, come on.” I throw up my free hand in disbelief. “ ‘Call me Willie Whistle ’cause I can’t speak, baby’?”
“Okay,” he chuckles. “You’re making this up.”
“It was like the weirdest song to come out of that decade! It’s full of all these ridiculous one-liners that don’t really make sense. That song is like trying to get a straight answer out of a Dr.Seuss character who’s done shrooms. It’s fantastic.”
Hunter is full-on laughing now. “I’ll take your word for it.”
“You’d better be glad the power is out,” I grumble, stomping back up the stairs to continue with my own varnish brushing.
“I honestly never really got away from music from the seventies and eighties,” he admits. “The Bronco still has an eight-track player in it. So that’s kind of what I’m working with.”
“You’re like a lumberjack version of Captain America when he came out of the ice seventy years later.” I snort.
“Captain America? Is that a politician?” I wheel around with an open mouth only to catch his sly grin. “Just kidding.”
“You’re lucky you’re so pretty,” I threaten.
Hunter does his best impression of me batting my eyelashes. “You think I’m pretty?”
I giggle as I shake my head, having no idea where this playful Hunter came from or what he did with the stoic giant I met a few weeks ago, but I’m not hating a single second of it.
“Fine,” I concede. “So you like oldies. That tracks, if I’m being honest.”
“Tracks?”
I often forget I’m dealing with a man who is still using a flip phone in the year of our Lord 2025.I shouldn’t expect him to be up to speed on social media lingo that I started using ironically and now can’t seem to stop. “It basically means it makes sense.”
“Really? Who comes up with this stuff?”
“Must be all the young folk,” I deadpan.
“Are you being smart right now?”
“I would never,” I say seriously. “So, oldies? Is that part of your solitary lumberjack aesthetic?”
“It’s Dad’s fault,” he says with a quieter laugh now, watching his hands wipe on the refinisher with a faraway look as if remembering.“Pretty sure he was blasting Creedence Clearwater Revival to me in the womb.”
“He sounds like a cool guy,” I comment. “So what would baby Hunter be doing in this situation?”
“A snowstorm? As a kid? If the power was on, I was definitely in my room playing a video game or something.” He chuckles softly. “My dad would whip out his famous homemade hot chocolate.”
“What made it famous?”
“That he managed to convince us it wasn’t out of a packet, I’d wager.”
I bark out a laugh. “He sounds like he was a lot of fun.”
“He was.” I notice then that Hunter’s hand has stopped moving, and there’s a wistful sort of smile at his mouth. “They both were, really. It was…hard. Losing them.”
“You were so young,” I offer. “I can’t imagine.”
