I get my height from him, so when I was a kid, I outgrew my mom carrying me pretty quickly. Since my dad’s limbs are proportional with mine, he could always manage. Whenever I fell asleep downstairs or was sick or twisted an ankle, Dad was charged with hauling me around. We started doing this again last year when my mom bet he couldn’t lift me anymore. Now it’s our thing.
Sometimes, I need to be daddy’s girl. Other times, I think he needs me to be. Friday night, maybe we both needed it a little.
With most of the weekend over, I’ve been able to put what happened with Zack into the appropriate mental box, locking it up and tucking it in that part of my brain I don’t deal with until I want to. Until I have to.
We’re not a very formal family. No big Sunday dinners when we all sit around the table and share. Usually, Dad grabs a pizza and we all take slices as we come and go. Sometimes, there’s a game on in the living room, and we end up piled on the couch.
This is one of those Sundays when my mom is grading and my dad is nodding off on the couch, having drunk one too many beers while tinkering in the garage. My brother still goes to bed early, so I’m on my own. Having bargained that filling a dresser with clothes, one step closer to fully unpacking, was worth another week of van privileges, I have wheels at my disposal. The problem is I have no idea where to go.
After a good fifteen minutes of roaming aimlessly around neighborhoods, looking at leftover Christmas lights that are yet to be taken down, I pop out from a side street, suddenly on the main drag through town. The glowing orange A&P sign flickers in the mist lingering after the long weekend rains. The roads are slick with frozen mud. So far, winter storms here aren’t the picturesque kind. I wait for the few cars to pass before crawling the van out onto the road. I’m used to driving in New York weather, but I’ve been told over and over again by my dad that the roads and weather here mix differently.
I immediately recognize the lone car parked in front of the gym, and despite the uncertainty of which Jennings drove it here, I pull in and park right next to it. I’m not dressed for a workout, my dad’s old college sweatpants rolled up at my waist and my shirt the black Billie Eilish long-sleeved tee I got for my birthday at a concert last year. With one deep breath, I resolve to keep what happened Friday tucked away in my mental box, no matter who is inside, and push open the door, glad I at least have socks on with my bright pink knitted boots.
A bell jingles when I walk in, and the old man I met the first time I came here cranes his neck, peeling his eyes away from the Packers playoff game on the small TV mounted in the corner.
“Aw, hell. You again?” he grumbles. I think he’s teasing.
I nod toward the TV as he pulls himself up from the chair he was planted in and makes his way to the register.
“What’s the score?”
“Packers are up by a touchdown,” he says, his groggy words wrapping around the well-chewed toothpick dangling from his bottom lip. The clank of metal plates knocking together hits the nerve at the back of my neck but I manage the strength not to turn and look in the direction of the noise. I don’t want to know just yet who is to my left.
“Good.” I nod.
He squints in apparent skepticism, a hint of a smile creeping into his dry, cracked lips, evidence from his lunch or dinner caught in his overgrown mustache. A deep cough crackles in his chest twice as he tucks his chin. He coughs with the lungs of a lifelong smoker. I recognize the same distinct sound that came from my grandfather’s chest. Leaning on his elbow, he slouches at the counter and observes me with one eye, the other squinted shut.
“You a Packer fan?”
Oh, the temptation to lie, but I just can’t.
“Oh, no way. Giants all the way! I’d just rather we play you next week than the Seahawks.” I blink at him as he stares at me for a few seconds in dead silence, then huffs out a laugh, standing upright and slapping his palm on the countertop.
“Well, hot damn. I like you, sweetheart. I hate your Giants, but I do believe I like you.” He pops open his register and hands me a five-dollar bill, and I look at it strangely, take it tentatively.
“I’m . . . flattered?” I’m really just confused, and maybe a little offended.
I cock my head, missing the opportunity to correct him on the sweetheart bit because I’m so thrown by what came after. And then I hear the voice of the Jennings I hoped drove that car here tonight.
“He’s giving you a refund because he shouldn’t have charged you in the first place. Aren’t you, Pete?” Cannon is close by. I feel the heat radiating from his body from his workout, and a certain amount of oxygen leaves the space he enters.
I hold the fiver up between Pete and me and glance from Lincoln to the old man. I flatten it on the counter and slide it his way. “Take it off my tab. I’d like to get a monthly membership.”
He gives me a sideways grin and slides the money toward him with a single finger.
“I’ll bring the other forty-five when I come next time,” I say.
He nods, pulling a clipboard up from behind the counter and tossing it down in front of me. A crumpled paper stuck to the top reads: ENROLLMENT FORM. He taps it with his finger, and I note the small tattoo above his knuckle, two small letters—G and
