Chapter 1 #2
She’s gorgeous. A stunner with long, dark hair, and high cheekbones hidden under an oversized hoodie that nearly swallows her whole.
That’s not what I notice, first, though. No, I focus on the discoloration of her right cheek, and the splint on two of the fingers of her left hand. My nostrils flare with the big intake of air I use to get a grip on my instant anger. She doesn’t need to see that.
Even if it’s not directed at her, but for her.
Instead, I force a half smile, raise my hand in a peaceful gesture, nod, then finish my journey to my own house.
Me:
Food has been delivered. I’ll keep an eye on things.
Again, my brain runs wild with assumptions. She could have been in an accident; a car crash, tumbled off a slope while skiing, fell down a flight of stairs. Maybe she’s embarrassed about how bad she looks and only wants to hide out until she’s healed.
It might not be that a man threw his fist in her face.
Or it might be exactly that. The possibility, the high probability that it is exactly that has my blood pushing through my veins too fast and with too much force. It’s almost time for my nightly chat with Paige, but I need to get some of this adrenaline out, first.
At the end of the hall is the bedroom I grew up in.
When I moved back here after the divorce, I pulled everything out of there.
My parents had kept it as my room for when I’d come home for visits.
Mom always wanted me to have somewhere familiar to come home to.
She told me she never understood parents that couldn’t wait for their kids to go back to school after a long summer break or got excited about their kids turning eighteen and moving out.
She always wanted me around. Every day I came home from school, she’d light up like she’d been missing me all day. She’s still like that.
I didn’t want my old room to be Paige’s, though.
I wanted her to have a space that’s only ever been hers.
So, I made the old spare room that used to mostly just house my mom’s holiday decorations into my daughter’s room.
And my old room has become my home gym, of sorts.
One of the bad things about a small town is that we don’t have a twenty-four-hour gym.
We don’t have twenty-four-hour anything. Except maybe the gossip mill that’s always active in a place where almost everyone knows almost everyone else.
There’s still a bed in here for when my parents come out for their annual city reprieve, but the other half of the room is where I go when I need to get some pent-up energy out.
I start with the punching bag, an easy way to warm up my body while I imagine some faceless man putting his hands on the woman next door.
Her predicament isn’t my business. It only becomes mine if someone shows up to cause trouble. Or harm.
Next, I move to my pull-up bar. Other than a few free weights I keep in the closet, these are the only two pieces of equipment I have in here.
It’s enough, as I can add cardio with a good jog on the beach anytime.
If I need more, we have a small gym at the firehouse, but I see enough of that place as it is.
Without enough physical activity, I get antsy. Antsy is never a good thing. Antsy makes me choose stupid decisions. Antsy is how I ended up married.
After a few reps, Paige video-calls me. I love that this is how she wants to communicate with me. I’m a lot like my mother—Paige is my favorite human and I’m always excited to see her.
“Hey, Squid, how was your day?”
“Oh my gosh, Dad. I gained eight pounds this year. You have got to stop calling me that. I’m so big now,” she says, throwing her arms in the air and sounding a bit like a snake from her missing tooth. The new one is halfway in and goofy-as-fuck looking, but I love it.
“No deal, kiddo. You’ll always be my Squid and, I fear, Papa is always going to call you Piglet.” It’s the nickname he gave her the first time they met because she was so tiny and pink.
“Well, then I’m never going to stop calling him Eeyore,” she says, accompanied by an exaggerated eye roll.
“If the shoe fits,” I say. “And it sure does in Papa’s case. How was the doctor?”
“It was fine. I got the paper thingy that says I can do gymnastics.”
“The paper thingy,” I repeat with a laugh. “Happy to hear that. You excited to start?”
“Yeah! So excited! I want to learn how to do a cartwheel on the balance beam!”
Fucking hell, that sounds awful.
“Will you do your old man a favor and start with cartwheels on the floor?”
“I guess,” she says, spinning around a couple of times before she abruptly stops. “You know what else, Dad?”
“What else?”
“Bryant, the new kid, said hi to me today at recess. He just ran up and said hi!” A huge smile grows on her face.
“Nope,” I say in protest. There is no reason my eight-year-old daughter needs to pay boys any kind of attention.
“Daaaaad,” she groans.
“Ugh, fine, Paige. But you know the rules.”
“Right. Rule number one is to know what I like about a person.”
“Yep, so what do you like about Ant?”
“brYant,” she clarifies, and I nod for her to continue. “He’s nice. He never picks on anyone like some of the other boys do. And he smiles, like, all the time.”
“Those are great reasons.”
“Rule number two is to think about how a person makes me feel,” she says. She squints and scrunches her face while she thinks about it. “His smile makes me smile and that makes me feel happy. He’s silly and I get to be silly too. I like that because we always have to be so quiet in class.”
“He gives you a nice break from being studious.”
“What does that mean?”
“Paying attention to learning.”
“Oh, then yeah. He does that. It makes the day go by easier.”
“Well, I guess I have no complaints about that,” I tell her. “But what’s rule number three?”
“Always remember who I am and don’t try to be anything for anyone else.”
I don’t know if my parenting skills, or lack thereof, are any damn good.
This routine could be way over the top, for all I know.
But fuck me if I’m going to raise a kid, especially a daughter, who doesn’t know who she is.
Or who lets a fuckboy pull the wool over her eyes, or some little snobby girl rope her into doing something stupid.
And yeah, I get that they’re a bunch of elementary school kids, but it’s never too early to learn that sometimes people just suck.
Besides, I’m not there every day to protect her from life. I have to teach her some defenses.
“Good girl. What do you want to do this weekend when you come to see me?”
“Can we have breakfast at Miss B’s?”
“Of course we can,” I tell her. We do that every weekend she’s here; it’s become a tradition.
“Can we work on the garden too?”
“Absolutely. I may even have a surprise for you.”
“Oh, my goodness, I love surprises!”
“I know you do. Do you know what I love?”
“What?”
“You.”
“I love you too, Dad.”
We chat for a while longer. She tells me about this week’s spelling list and how she particularly likes the word agog because it sounds like eggnog, and eggnog looks like snot.
Then, she grills me on who I saw today and what is happening in Stowaway.
I saw all the regular people and nothing new is happening.
Paige doesn’t like to miss things here, though.
When she’s here, she doesn’t like to miss anything that’s happening in Portland. Ideally, we wouldn’t live ninety minutes apart and she wouldn’t have to miss anything.
Like every night, when we say goodbye, I plaster on my smile and pretend that it doesn’t kill me a little that I can’t tuck her in bed and kiss her forehead goodnight.
Life can come at you hard. No matter how careful you are, or all the planning you do, sometimes, this world picks you up by the nutsack and shakes you like a fucking rag doll. Every morning I wake up with the renewed energy to fuck it right back.