Chapter 3
Andrew
“Looks like my brother is going to be a while. Want to take a walk while we wait for them? Afternoon sunshine might be my favorite part of the day.”
With his mirrored glasses and tight polo, Henry was dressed for the occasion.
How was it that Henry looked so put together after our trip through the wind tunnel and I probably looked like a squirrel who’d survived a tornado?
It felt supremely unfair. And awkward. It was so obvious that Henry loved driving with the top down, but I wasn’t a fan of the bugs and the sun glaring down on me.
I’d call it a mistake, but I liked how excited Henry had gotten when he’d been talking about it.
All he needed me to do was smile and nod.
“Sure,” I answered and swallowed my groan. It was so hot and humid and sticky. As much as I loved California—the breeze off the coast won hands down over dust from a soybean field for me—afternoons in the blazing sun were a little much. Scratch that, they were a lot much. “Who doesn’t love it?”
Henry shot me a wide smile, and we set off down the gravel path. At the last moment, he veered right onto the path that led to a wooded area. For someone who loved sunshine, Henry kept choosing options without much of it.
At best, the canopy of trees dappled the ground with sunlight, but even that was a stretch.
Under their leafy covering, it was much cooler, which I was forever grateful for.
We were supposed to be walking, but every few steps, something caught my eye and forced me to stop and investigate: a snail, a pretty rock, an unidentified flower, possibly a weed, which I snapped a picture of so I could figure it out later.
“You never told me what you do for a living.”
“Didn’t I?”
Shit, what was I supposed to say? I was a professional boyfriend who currently wasn’t a boyfriend, and I hadn’t done anything but that for years. And honestly, I’d just been kinda dumb. That one needed to stay in the vault.
“This and that,” I answered.
I tried to keep my tone dismissive because, holy God, I didn’t want to go into a detailed explanation of how dumb I’d been for twenty years.
“So was this and that like brain surgery?”
“Not quite.” I laughed.
“Was it dog walking?”
“That would have made me useful,” I muttered.
I regretted my accidentally truthful answer as soon as the words passed my lips.
Henry drew up short and stopped walking immediately.
I stood there, wishing I could find a cliff to fall off of, when he grabbed my hand and led me to a park bench just off the path.
It was surrounded by branches from a shrub that I remembered my mom had in our yard when I was a kid.
Hydrangea, maybe? Anyway, I took a picture to look it up later.
“I’d very much like to hear about it.” Henry made his request with such certainty that I forgot to give him the curated version of the story that I’d been practicing since I’d decided I’d been lying to myself for about twenty years, give or take.
“I was a companion,” I answered grudgingly.
“Like a caretaker? That’s pretty cool. I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t… Actually, no, I know I wouldn’t have the patience to handle that.”
Oh great, now he thought I was noble instead of the leech I apparently was.
“Not exactly, it was slightly less altruistic than…” Suddenly the pebbling in the pathway required deep and thorough examination. “More like a professional boyfriend.”
“Like a sex worker?”
The lack of judgment floored me. It was like Henry asked if I wanted mustard on my hot dog.
“Umm, not quite.”
“I’m afraid I need some clarification because me taking guesses in the dark isn’t working.” His tone turned from pragmatic to kind.
What the hell was I supposed to do with that?
“It’s complicated because I thought I was a boyfriend.” I sighed.
I stood and began pacing as I tried to explain. “We’d stop seeing each other because people break up, right? And then I’d meet someone new, and we’d hit it off, and things would happen…” I trailed off because the stupidity of it hit when I said it aloud. “Oh God.”
“What?”
“I just realized… Oh God… Oh shit…” I gasped for words as I had this life-altering epiphany on a gravel trail with a relative stranger.
Henry led me back to the bench and gently encouraged me to sit. He carefully pushed my head down a little.
I braced myself with my elbows on my knees while Henry rubbed circles on my back. If there’d been a more embarrassing moment in my life, I couldn’t think of it.
“What did you realize?”
“They passed me on. They said it was because they didn’t care who I dated after we broke up, and if it was a friend, it was fine because we’re all adults, but…”
“Whoa, whoa…”
“I’m like a…a…a meat and cheese platter.” The horror of my realization was the worst. I wasn’t a boyfriend. I was a hors d’oeuvre.
“First, I happen to like a good snack tray. Second, people date who they know, so I don’t think dating people you’re friends with is so strange,” Henry said firmly.
This was where I’d reached in my life. Here I was in the woods with a man I barely knew, waiting for his brother to arrive, and I’d randomly discovered I’d been sex-worker adjacent for the last twenty years. None of this had been on my Bingo card when I woke up this morning.
“This is… Yeah…I don’t even know.”
“If my opinion matters, and it likely shouldn’t, I think you need to be a little easier on yourself.”
“Easy for you to say. You’re not the one who just realized how damn useless you’ve been for half your life,” I spat.
I needed to be nicer to the person who was my ride home. I slapped a hand over my mouth.
Ope. What a mess.
“Look at me.”
Gone was the guy with the easy smile who’d invited me to a park for reasons I still didn’t understand. He was replaced by a stern gentleman who interrupted my spiral.
“Whatever label you settle on, you’re not giving yourself enough grace. Either way, it’s not a definition.”
I wanted to scoff, but first, I would never, and second, there were things way worse than being a sex worker, accidental or otherwise.
At least they helped people. So if I was one, that made me a giver, and that had to count for some kind of karma points.
Altruistic might be a stretch, but maybe there was some level of redemption in my future.
“You think so?”
“Yeah, I very much do.”
Maybe I should have sat up straight so Henry would move his hand away.
Or told him to stop so he’d move on. Or maybe I could have gotten up and started walking again, but I didn’t do any of those things.
Instead, I sat exactly where I was and let Henry rub circles on my back.
The urge to arch into his touch was almost overwhelming, but somehow, I managed to preserve a little dignity and avoid it.
But I really, really wanted to.
“So preschool matters?”
“Oh, you have no idea. It completely sets your child on their path. Miss out on a great preschool, they won’t get into a good elementary school and then forget a halfway decent high school. They’ll be done before they even have a chance to get started.”
“What have you decided for Ben?” I asked Marc with complete sincerity. At his name, we all glanced at the child, and Henry groaned.
Ben, as adorable as he was, had found the only mud puddle in the park. He was covered in it, with only the whites of his eyes and teeth shining bright against the mucky goo.
“What the fuck?” Henry whispered under his breath.
“Goddamn it.” Marc sighed.
Rather than have any awareness of the mess he’d made of himself, and how hard getting him home without destroying the inside of his dad’s car would be, Ben waved happily and returned to making pies in the mud.
“I love him, but he’s my punishment,” Marc said.
“Jesus, Marc, he’s not that bad,” Henry protested. “Sure, I don’t let him over at my house before I put a tarp over everything, but that’s harsh.”
“Ha! Say that after you have one and then tell me,” Marc protested. “Andy, what about you?”
“Kids are all right but a little messy.” Even to my own ears, my tone rang hollow.
The men I’d dated had always been clear they weren’t interested in kids.
If I’d thought maybe at one time I’d like a few of my own, the idea of it had faded.
Somehow, my eyes found their way to Henry again.
Rather than seeming to agree with me, as I’d expected, he appeared to be contemplating my reaction.
It was too intense to keep watching him watch me, so I turned my attention back to the menace bathing in mud.
“Oh no, he’s coming this way,” Henry laughed. Despite the warning, Henry hadn’t moved a muscle to avoid the grinning, messy kid barreling across the grass toward us.
“I love that kid, but, damn, I’m tired,” Marc sighed.
Ben’s sweet smile tugged at something inside me that I didn’t understand or have words for. Before anyone could stop me, I jumped up from the picnic table we were sitting around and intercepted Ben.
“Hey, Ben, can I show you something?”
“Yeah!”
“Cool.” I laughed. Without prompting, Ben slipped his grimy hand into mine and then looked up at me expectantly. “It’s time to hunt for roly-polies.”
“What’s that?” he asked with adorable suspicion.
But he wasn’t concerned enough to take his hand out of mine, and I instinctively squeezed his fingers a little.
“Roly-polies are cool insects that live under rocks and curl into balls.”
“We gonna roll ’em?”
“Oh no, they like to roll themselves. If we’re careful, we can pick them up, okay?”
“Let’s gooooooo,” he shouted but crossed his heart while he did it. Good enough.
I led Ben back toward the creek so we could overturn rocks and see what was there. Ben was careful to make sure the rocks were moved responsibly. Pride filled my chest even though he wasn’t even my kid.