Chapter 28 The Pop Shop
The Pop Shop
Blair took off on Allie’s bike the next morning, and Jack paced the cabin with Warm Caffeinated Liquid and brooded.
Something Blair had said yesterday had him on edge.
It was such an inane thing on which to fixate.
If he’d wanted to obsess over something Blair-related, there were more reasonable options.
Her trying to give him too much credit for helping her that last night in LA, say.
It was more than he thought he was due, but that was her prerogative.
Or her telling him he should have opted out of the early-morning icy swims with his dad. The idea that he’d had that power all along was disconcerting, but she was, ultimately, right.
No, what he was fretting about had just been a throwaway line.
I had to face the fact that I couldn’t have a semireclusive writer living in my pool house full-time.
It had been a joke, intended to be self-deprecating. But when she’d said it, something had risen inside his chest, had lunged toward the idea.
It was absurd, the idea that he could live in her pool house forever.
Worse: that maybe he wanted to.
No. No. He was losing his mind. He was reacting to the stress of writing the last book and the fear of not being able to write the next one.
He went out to the deck and looked at the lake and thought about how strange it was that he was a few miles from his father but had no plan or desire to go see him.
He thought about how strange it was that Dad probably knew he was here—there was no way Allie telling Mary hadn’t made its way back to him—but had made no overtures.
In fact, he hadn’t heard from his father since March 15, when he’d called under the guise of saying hello but really to check that Jack had turned in his book.
He got out his phone. He started typing a text but decided that texting, Blair excepted, was not his forte. He dialed Allie.
“You have a minute?” he asked when she answered.
“I’m watching a soccer game, and did you know that watching tweens play soccer is only slightly more exciting than watching paint dry? So yes, I have a minute. I have many minutes. What’s up?”
“The other day, when you said I didn’t remember stuff because I was traumatized. Can you elaborate on that?”
“Wow, OK. Hang on, I’m going to dismount the bleachers and go for a stroll.”
“Did something happen to me that I don’t remember?” Was he about to hear something horrible? Was he about to find out he could have starred in an after-school special?
“I don’t think there’s any one thing. It’s more that your dad was a grade-A asshole in general. My dad and I talked about it a lot.”
“But they were friends.”
“They were friends, historically. But by the time we were teenagers, my dad was only hanging in there so you’d have a place to escape when you needed to.”
That was… a lot to take in. “You’re making it sound like he beat me or something.”
“Well, not to be too melodramatic, but he probably beat your spirit. You remember the time we wanted to join that summer softball league in town and he thought it was stupid and forbade it?”
“Vaguely.” It sounded like his dad, who thought team sports were for the simpleminded and prized instead the triumph of man over nature: fishing, hiking, running, skiing.
“We were thirteen. What kind of parent doesn’t let their thirteen-year-old play softball? He had this idea of you, I think, of how he wanted you to be.”
“He wanted me to be like him.”
“Correct. There was one summer he wasn’t going to let you hang out with me because you’d gotten some B’s the previous school year. My dad talked him out of it, told him he would make us do study sessions. You remember Mary ordered those trigonometry books for us?”
“Which we ignored.” Unless he had forgotten trig study sessions, which was entirely possible.
“Yes, but not as far as your father knew.”
“And then he did ground me, and that’s when we started writing letters.”
“Well, we both got grounded for that canoe episode, and I have to say we deserved it. But yes. You wrote me mostly about how much you hated him.” She paused. “I still have those letters. You want me to send them to you?”
“No, no.” Nothing was more unappealing than the prospect of reading the innermost thoughts of his teenage self.
“Anyway, my point is just that you didn’t have it easy.
Your dad was a giant jerk. Everyone knew it.
That’s why we only ever hung out at my house.
I worried about you. My dad did, too. I loved hanging out with you in the summers and was selfishly always sad when September rolled around, but I also knew it was good that you were going back to your mom. ”
Allie and Mr. Jensen had been his family, back then. He just hadn’t realized it.
“Allie, I have to go. I appreciate this more than you know.” He would elaborate on that later. Thank her for looking out for him. For being his sister. He’d referenced her before, to Blair, as “almost a sister,” but there wasn’t any almost about it.
After the call, Jack launched the canoe and paddled across the bay to check on the green light. It was battery powered, and he didn’t want it to go out. He had no idea what the evening would bring, but if Blair wanted to look at the light, he wanted the light to be working.
In truth, he was reeling internally from everything Allie had said, as well as from the landslide of memories the cabin had triggered. His phone dinged.
Blair: I got some fish to cook for dinner.
Blair: I thought I’d try Mimi’s fried catfish treatment on walleye.
Blair: But there’s no hurry. Just thought I’d let you know I had dinner covered, in case you’re out and about and contemplating groceries or takeout.
There. That was what the evening would bring: another excellent Mimi recipe, perhaps followed by some staring at the green light, perhaps followed by some earth-shattering sex. He smiled despite himself.
He smiled despite himself. Didn’t that just about sum up everything to do with Blair?
He’d been thrown off balance from the childhood memories and revelations, but more than one thing could be true, and the other thing was that… he was happy? He thought so, anyway. He didn’t have a lot of experience with happiness. He did contentment well. Satisfaction. Pride.
But when was the last time the anticipation of a simple pleasure with a favorite person had had him just plain happy?
Probably not since his years with Allie, actually.
And of course, his relationship with Blair was entirely different from his relationship with Allie.
He turned the canoe around and started paddling.
He told himself to shelve the Dad stuff. Blair wouldn’t be here much longer. Which meant his foray into uncomplicated happiness was necessarily short-lived. Which was fine, honestly; uncomplicated happiness made him feel simple, and he didn’t like feeling simple.
Blair just… switched his brain off sometimes.
He would have laughed at himself, but he caught sight of her on the deck.
She hadn’t seen him yet—he hadn’t replied to her texts, so she didn’t know he was out on the lake.
She was leaning her elbows on the railing, staring down at the water.
She had her hair in a French braid, which he’d noticed she did when she went off on the bicycle.
He could see her as a girl, reading on the terrace, mindlessly twirling the braid.
He could see her as a girl, being damaged by her parents.
But the girl existed inside the woman, the woman who was a mogul and a mother, and scarily good at both.
He drew close, and she caught sight of him. She shrieked and, grinning, waved—and then ran off.
He dragged the canoe onto the shore, wondering where she’d rushed off to.
He climbed the stairs, and suddenly she appeared in the half-open Dutch door.
“Welcome to the pop shop.” She bent down so she was obscured by the closed half of the door and sprang back up holding a can of orange Crush.
He sucked in a breath.
It wasn’t a big deal. It was a can of pop.
“They still have this in the vending machine at the laundromat!” she exclaimed.
It was at once the nicest thing anyone had ever done for him, and too much.
Because it wasn’t just a can of pop. It was an unmistakable gesture of caring.
“I’m not a Sprite person, though, so I decided to copy you.” She disappeared again and popped up holding a second can of orange Crush. She held out a hand. “That will be ten leaves, please.”
No, he told himself. It wasn’t too much. It wouldn’t kill him to allow himself a bit of lightheartedness. There was no one around to see him.
He cleared his throat. “Ten! It used to only be two.”
“That was a lot of years ago, old man. Haven’t you heard of inflation?”
“They didn’t teach inflation in my MFA program.”
“Right. Well.” She wiggled the fingers of her open palm, and was he going to go around hunting for ten leaves with which to “purchase” a can of pop?
Apparently he was. Because after he bought the pop, they would go to the hammock, because that was what happened after the pop shop.
They would swing and laugh—well, she would laugh, and he would love hearing it—and talk.
It was likely that one thing would lead to another. Dinner was still a couple hours off.
Ten leaves was a harder ask than she probably appreciated, because the property was filled with coniferous trees.
There were some oaks near the road, though, so he said, “I’ll be right back,” and jogged around the cabin.
The lowest branches were higher than he could reach.
He jumped and managed to grab two leaves.
Oh, and there were two more on the ground.
It took him a while, and it was extremely undignified, but eventually he managed to amass ten leaves.
He jogged back around the house, whereupon he ran into his dad.
He was standing on one side of the door and Blair was standing on the other. His dad was talking and Blair was a deer in headlights, eyes wide. The picture they made would almost have been funny—Dad at the pop shop—if it hadn’t been so… what?