Chapter 12
The next morning Rowan sat up from the spot she had carved out for herself on her dad’s couch over the last few hours.
While waiting for him to finish up at the fish market so he could help haul her stuff to her new place, she had intended to get some reading done.
She had a stack of books on a variety of subjects that would have interested her on a normal day, from a book on the salt marshes of the southeastern Atlantic coast to a new queer romance novel she had pre-ordered months ago.
All she could think about was Juniper.
She needed to get up and move, expend some energy to be able to think more clearly. She laced up an old pair of beaten-in high tops and opened up the back screen door. She inhaled a deep breath of the thick, salty wet air drifting in from the bay. She would never get over the smell of being home.
Home.
She jogged across the small carport and swung open the splintered double doors of her dad’s old whitewashed shed.
Most of the shed was taken up by her small two-person jon boat.
Stepping carefully around the side of the boat, she searched over the shelves that lined the interior of the shed, scanning half-used paint cans and various tools and equipment, until her eyes stopped on an old suitcase strapped together by bungee cords.
Rowan Birdsong was scrawled across the front in thick, over-outlined black permanent marker.
Even though she and Juniper had thought about what it might be like to take a plane to go see each other, her reality had been much different than that.
Instead of taking a plane back and forth, she boarded a Greyhound bus for an 800 mile journey each way.
Twenty hours and three station transfers later, it only really made sense to come home for winter and part of summer break anyway.
She grabbed what she was looking for, her old basketball, and bounced it twice on the concrete floor to check if it was still inflated. It was. She let out a laugh at the recognition that even her old man still came out here to shoot hoops from time to time.
Back out on the carport, she stepped fifteen paces back from the hoop nailed to the shed over top of the doors. She set up, bounced once, and easily sunk the basketball, swooshing through the tattered net as it made its way through.
Fuck, I still got it. She laughed again.
She jogged over to retrieve the ball and shot again, this time from the right. Repeated the process again from the left. Swoosh. Swoosh.
Part of why she had gotten so good at basketball was out of fear of her dad’s teasing threats that she wasn’t going to be out there all afternoon every day busting up the side of his shed.
More laughs escaped from the childhood memories of every cringe, every tuck of the head into her neck after the ball slammed against the wood to the side of the hoop or bounced off the roof.
Every side eye she gave the back door waiting to see if it were going to creak open.
It was more funny than anything, and oftentimes it resulted in him joining her.
And then as she got older, it resulted in him challenging her to games of one-on-one.
That was the other part of why she had gotten so good.
All the time Victor could manage to spend with her, he had done so with intention.
Right on cue, the back door swung open, and her dad popped his head out.
“You’re lucky I heard three swooshes, kid,” he jeered with a smile on his face.
“Nothing but net,” she laughed back as she reached up to touch the torn net lace. “Or, whatever the hell is left of this.” She backed up further, took one more shot, and noticed he was still standing there watching. “You wanna play?”
“Nah, I can’t get these old bones to move fast enough to take you on anymore.”
“Ah, I see. You don’t want to play unless you know you can win. You can shoot though, or is your old model too vintage for that now?”
“Give me that damn thing,” he protested as he jogged toward her.
Rowan passed the ball to him, he set up, shot, and sunk it.
“Little shit,” he teased, clapping his hands on her shoulders and shifting right away into a bear hug.
“Just trying to keep you motivated. I didn’t hear you pull up. Where’s your truck?”
“Parked out front. Didn’t wanna interrupt your flow.”
They took turns shooting for a few more minutes before Victor threw up the white flag in surrender, and they made their way to sit on the back porch steps. His bones creaked as they settled in next to each other.
Without words, together, they watched pink and lavender stripes float across the late morning horizon.
“What a pretty morning,” he remarked.
“Indeed.”
“How’s Claire?”
Rowan shifted to cross her arms over her knees and balanced her forehead against them. The outward display felt a little moody, brooding even. But she was feeling moody, brooding.
“She’s fine, I guess.”
“You guess?” He chuckled. “That’s it?”
“Yeah.” She didn’t really want to add anything else.
“I guess I never thought I’d see you bring someone home, here. That was new for me.”
She turned her face toward him, still resting her forehead on her arms, to look at his face.
“I didn’t mean for that to happen… like that.”
“I thought it was, well, I don’t know, chivalrous of you to sleep on the couch. Is chivalrous the right way to describe it?”
“That’s right, Dad,” she added, smiling softly at his subtle way of trying to understand who she was and letting her know it was okay. She was met by sincere and intense conviction in his eyes.
“I want to get it right.”
She leaned into his side and laid her head against his shoulder. She blinked hard to remove the sting from her eyes. “I know.”
She felt an arm wrap around her shoulders and had to blink again.
“You know, I am so proud of you, and the person you’ve become. I don’t know if I tell you that enough.”
“I don’t think I’ve given you enough of a chance. But I know you are. I love you, Dad.”
“Love you too, kiddo.”
He squeezed her shoulder. When she was sure she had fully blinked the sting from her eyes, she leaned back up and noticed a cluster of wildflowers sprouting up around the steps. Each flower had tufts of white petals sticking out from around a lemon gold center.
White aster.
Her mind shifted back to Juniper. She picked one and mindlessly twiddled it between her fingers.
“You have a lot on your mind?” He asked, interrupting her tunnel vision on the flower, and by extension, Juniper.
She sighed out a slight laugh. “It’s that easy to tell?”
“Well, I have known you for a long, long time.”
Sharing their emotions like this wasn’t typically their style.
She wondered if it could be now. Occasionally she thought about what it would have been like to have a mom growing up, if she would have felt any differently about her identity or sought out a different kind of guidance.
But she had only ever known life with her dad, and for the most part, that was all she had needed.
He made sure of that. And Juniper’s mom had stepped up.
That was a little complicated in her younger years when Juniper’s father was still around.
In her teenage years though, she may have called her Auntie, but Anita was her mom too.
She turned back to look at him. “I actually think I have feelings for someone else.”
“For someone else?”
“Yeah. Juniper.”
“Juniper Banks?” He asked with a hint of surprise.
She stilled the twirling of the flower in her fingers. “Yep.”
“Wow. Junie, huh? You two were always thick as thieves growing up. I can see how that could happen.”
He didn’t know it had technically already happened once before. She hadn’t told anyone about that. Except Manny, when she sought his advice over whether it was the right move to come home.
“I tried really hard for it not to happen, but here we are.”
“Does she like you too?”
“I think so.” She looked up at him to see his response.
“You want me to call her Mama and ask? We are old friends, you know.”
They both laughed.
“Yeah, good looking out, Dad. Thanks.”
She put the wildflower in the chest pocket of her t-shirt and looked back at him. His grin was practically ear to ear.
“What?” She asked through a soft laugh.
“I know you’ll figure out what to do. You always do.”
“She’s coming over to my new place to help me unpack today.”
He patted Rowan squarely on the back. “Oh good, I can ask her myself then,” he joked.
“Great,” she chuckled, then paused. “Are you sure you still want to help? I know you’re tired.”
“Of course I do. Don’t put me in the ground yet, Ro.”
“Nah, I think you still have a few years to putter around.”
He poked her cheek, and she laughed and swatted his hand away.
“Have I called you a little shit yet today?”
“Just once, I think.”
She stood up on the step and stretched her tall frame towards the sky.
“Hey before you go, I been meaning to ask, where do you get your hair cut like that around here? I was thinking about cutting this old braid off and trying something new.” He tugged at the thick, wavy, pitch-black hair he kept in a single long braid down his back.
“I don’t. Last time I drove an hour to the closest city.”
“How many miles are you putting on that truck? It’s older than you!”
“You planning on learning how to cut hair?” She raised an eyebrow at him.
“I bet you could ask Juniper, and she’d figure it out.”
She swatted him again but laughed anyway. “You know she would. For all I know, she might already have a haircutting side hustle. There’s nothing in the world I wouldn’t trust her to handle.” She cleared her throat at how much there was to unpack about that honest admission.
“You think I could pull off something fancy like that though?” He nodded at her hair.
Turning on the steps to head inside, she patted him on the top of his head. “I think you could pull off anything.”