Johnny
On weekends when I was actually in town, Elle hosted breakfast.
She’d been doing it for years—ever since I’d walked out of prison and straight to her door, needing somewhere to land.
The boys had been ten, then, and Elle had found a more reliable partner in a woman named Kim, who was about fifteen years older than her and a successful attorney.
A lot had changed since then—Cassius was a photographer for the Chicago Times, Marco had a baby on the way—but Kim and Elle had stuck together.
They lived in a three-bedroom house in Oak Park, twelve minutes from the city on a good day, on a street with old elms that had somehow survived every storm and every winter.
The house was Elle’s—she’d bought it at some point when I was in jail, had been here ever since and resisted every request for her to sell.
Kim had moved in shortly thereafter, and they’d started adding on with a proper kitchen and all of what Kim described as essentials and Elle described as luxuries.
Saturday breakfast was the only time I didn’t eat eggs and bacon—because Elle made pancakes topped with whatever fruit Kim had picked up at the grocery store. I could smell syrup and powdered sugar from outside the door, even in the cold.
Kim was the one who yanked the door open, voices coming from inside, a scowl on her face. She had her reading glasses on and the weekend edition in her hand.
“You’re late,” she said.
“By four minutes.”
She quirked an eyebrow.
I cracked a smile.
She reached out and pulled me inside.
“Get in here,” she said. “I’m fucking with you—you know that, right?”
“Yeah, I know, I know…”
The kitchen was loud with Elle at the stove and what sounded like a sports recap playing from somewhere, which meant Cassius was already here.
Marco would be close behind—he lived twenty minutes out now, in a place he and his girlfriend Dee had bought when they found out about the baby.
Elle turned from the stove when she heard us come in and a smile bloomed on her face, the same smile she’d been giving me for twenty-five years without ever shaming me for the trouble I’d brought on her family.
“John!” she said. “I hope Kim isn’t giving you too much trouble…”
“Just enough,” I said, crossing the kitchen to pull Elle into a one-armed hug. She was tiny and blonde and round, Kim tall and brown and reedy. They made quite the pair. “How are you, Shortstack?”
“Living the good life,” she said. “As usual.” She gave me a onceover. “And you…look the same.”
“Gee, thanks,” I chuckled.
“No, not the same as usual. Different. You look like you’re good, for once.” She cocked her head. “Did the matchmaker finally find the right lady for ya?”
“...not exactly.”
Kim extended a cup of coffee toward me. “Tell us everything.”
“Johnny?” Cassius was coming around the corner, grinning when he saw me and going for a hug even though I was now holding a cup of coffee–which I promptly spilled a little bit on the floor. “Hey, man…how’s it going?”
“John was just about to regale us with an update on his love life,” Kim said dryly.
“Was I?” I said.
“You absolutely were,” Kim said. She had settled back into her chair at the kitchen table with the newspaper. “Elle noticed it too. You look different.”
“I look the same.”
“You look like something happened,” Elle said, turning to the stove to flip a pancake. “Something good. Your shoulders are down.”
“Maybe I started doing yoga.”
Cassius let out a loud laugh. “Nah, dude…you do, in fact, look different.” He sat at the table and put his hands on his chin. “Tell us everything.”
“You know I don’t kiss and tell.”
“That implied there was a kiss…” Elle teased, glancing over her shoulder.
“Figure of speech,” I shot back.
Elle gave me a look that said she didn’t believe that for a second but was willing to let it go…for now.
Kim didn’t share that feeling.
“Is it someone from the agency?”
“It’s complicated.”
“Come on, Johnny,” Cassius said. “Who are we going to tell?”
“Lawyers talk,” I said. “I mean—Kim recommended me to the agency because she knows their attorney—”
“I’m not telling Cole North anything,” Kim said, “but you are making me want to ask him about this.”
I shook my head and rubbed my eyes. “Why do I even hang out with you people…”
“Because you love us,” Elle said.
The front door opened before I could respond to that—thank fuck—then I heard Marco’s voice, softly asking Dee if she needed help with anything. She was in her third trimester, big enough that she usually needed a hand.
Still, she liked to very loudly refuse.
“Sorry, sorry—” Marco appeared in the kitchen doorway, coat half off, already talking. “Dee couldn’t find her other boot and then there was a thing with the car…”
We all exchanged hello’s and hugs…the usual merry-go-round of familial affection. I stood to make sure Dee had a place to sit, taking the large lidded bowl out of her hands.
“There are tangerines and whip in there,” Dee said. “I thought that would be tasty with the pancakes.”
“I would tell you not to subject us all to your pregnancy cravings, but that sounds delicious,” Cassius teased.
Dee lowered herself into the chair I’d vacated, Marco hovering near her. She batted at him and he gave her just a few more inches of space—still hovering, but not in as much of a hovering way.
“How are you feeling, honey?” Elle asked.
“Like a person who is thirty-two weeks pregnant.”
"Like a person who is thirty-two weeks pregnant."
"Three more weeks until she's technically full term," Marco said, sitting beside her.
"Seven more weeks until I evict her regardless," Dee said.
Elle set a plate of pancakes in the center of the table and everyone reached for them in the way families do — no ceremony, just hands and forks and someone asking someone else to pass the syrup.
Cassius opened Dee's bowl and spooned tangerines into a smaller dish, slid it toward her without being asked.
Marco poured her water. The sports recap was still going somewhere in the background.
I ate.
The conversation moved the way it always did on Saturdays — easy and overlapping, nobody finishing a sentence before someone else started one.
Baby names came up and got shot down. Cassius had a new assignment, something out of state.
Kim had thoughts about the parking situation on their street that she had apparently been saving for a captive audience.
I listened. Ate my pancakes.
Participated enough so no one would know what I was thinking about.
Because what I was thinking…it was about a compatibility report. Long-term thinking. That I had marked, yes, I want kids, on my intake form…and that Poppy must have marked that in the affirmative too.
I was thinking about Poppy in my kitchen, kissing her on the counter.
About if my sheets would smell like her perfume next week. Sooner.
About her round with my baby, me looking at her like Marco looked at Dee.
“You okay?” Elle asked under her breath from where she sat next to me. “You just…you look good, but I worry.”
“I’m good,” I nodded. “I promise.”