11. Ryan
CHAPTER 11
Ryan
O n Friday, a few days after the dog incident, I’m sitting on my couch with a beer trying to decide what to do with myself for the night. Before I can make up my mind, I get a text from Luke.
Luke:
Hey man. Some of the guys are going to The Taproom. You in?
I might just stay in tonight. I have a job tomorrow morning.
Oh come on, it’s Friday! Just one drink and a couple rounds of pool. You can be home by 10.
Fine, but I’m in my truck heading home at 9:45.
It’s a deal, Grandpa. Get down here.
Even though it’s hard to peel myself off the couch, I’m grateful that Luke is pulling me out of the house. Since I haven’t spent more than a few months in one place at a time in the last five years, I didn’t make many friends and the ones I did make weren’t lasting. The loneliness is what really motivated me to move back to Lakeland.
I change out of my athletic shorts and into a pair of jeans. After taking a cursory look in the mirror and running wet hands through my hair to get the worst of the hat-head tamed, I decide it’s good enough.
I enter The Taproom and am surprised to find it crowded with what looks to be every Lakelandian under the age of forty. When Luke suggested playing pool and having a drink, I was expecting a seedy dive bar with a suspiciously stained pool table. Instead, this place has forest green walls, gold accents, and a cigar-room feel.
“Hey, Ry, over here!” Luke, who towers above everyone else, waves to me from one of the three pool tables at the back of the bar. With him are two other guys that he introduces me to as Victor and Chris.
“Nice to meet you, man,” Victor says, giving me the handshake and half-hug that all men seem to know at birth. He has tattoos crawling up his right arm and sticking out the collar of his t-shirt. Chris gives me the same greeting, pushing up his thick-rimmed glasses after I accidentally knocked the corner of the frames with my shoulder.
We order another round of the house brew on tap. Chris and Luke bring the four overfilled glasses to our table and set them down on paper coasters emblazoned with The Taproom’s gold and green logo. Chris and I team up against Victor and Luke for pool and we gather around the table. We play a few rounds and my side loses terribly.
I clap Chris on the shoulder, grimacing a little. “Sorry, when we were picking partners I should have warned you I’m not very good at pool.”
He laughs. “No worries. I just owe Victor a round the next time we go out.”
Luke elbows me and states, “ They play pool. I either watch or relieve one of them when they get bored. Don’t feel bad, they’ve been playing against each other since Victor’s dad got a pool table in the fifth grade.” He guides us to a high-top table near the bar. I give him a look and he says, “It’s only nine, Gramps, you can hang for a little while longer.”
“Fine, but I’m having water. I already had an extra drink,” I say, sliding into the chair and catching the heel of my work boots on the footrest.
“So, does that ever get old?” Victor asks me, nodding to a group of women at the bar who are not-so-subtly staring at me. Judging from the one woman in a sparkly, white, impossibly short dress and tiara, I’d say they’re having a bachelorette party.
“Sometimes,” I answer honestly. At the incredulous look on his face, I go on. “The attention can be nice, sure, but I’m not really a hook-up kind of guy. That’s all most women want from me because they automatically assume that’s all I want from them.”
“What a problem,” Chris smirks, bumping his elbow into my side.
“I know, I know. I’m just more of a serious relationship person, I guess. When I was traveling around, I avoided relationships for the most part because I’d be on to the next place quickly. I’m not above a hook-up here and there, but it gets old fast.” The truth is, the emptiness I felt afterward wasn’t worth the physical release. I also had some major trust issues that I’ve had to work through. I didn’t want to put some innocent woman through that until I felt confident I could figure my shit out.
“I can see that. I’ve been with my girl, Grace, for almost five years now. Married the last two,” Luke says, showing the group the lock screen on his phone where a pretty brunette snuggled into his side smiles at the camera.
“More like ten years. You two were on again, off again since junior year until you finally got your head out of your ass and got serious about her,” Victor states, taking a gulp from his beer.
“She’ll never let me live down not taking her to senior prom,” Luke grimaces before laughing, “In my defense, she broke up with me a month before. At least I didn’t take anyone else.”
After some back and forth, the guys ribbing each other about their various relationships, current and past, Chris turns to me and asks, “So, are you with anyone?”
“Not right now. My last serious relationship ended a few years back. She went overseas for her master's degree and I stayed here. After I got my contractor’s license, I decided to travel around the state a bit. I’d stay in one place long enough for a big job or two, and then I’d move on. We tried to make the long-distance thing work for a year, but… Well, I found out she was cheating on me. I called her one day outside of our usual time and a random guy answered.
When I confronted her later, she admitted to cheating and swore she’d never do it again. I just couldn’t trust her, especially since she still had to be in the U.K. for another year to finish up her program.” I shrug off the discomfort of talking about Lydia. I’ve been over her for a long time, but the betrayal still stings.
“So, how come you haven’t dated since?” Victor asks, reclining back in his chair.
“Well, since I was traveling around and never in one place for more than a few months, I never started anything serious. I wasn’t willing to do the distance thing again, and I also didn’t feel ready to settle anywhere. Honestly, part of my moving back here is so that I can eventually find someone and put down roots. I’m almost thirty and my younger sister, Layla, is already settled down with her husband and son.” I take a drink from my water in the silence .
Eventually, Luke leans in and says, “I can set you up with one of Lauren’s friends. Unless someone caught your eye?”
I tilt my head in a noncommittal gesture. “I’ve only been in town for a few weeks now. Although, I did meet Summer.” Meet feels like too insignificant a word to use to describe the last week with Summer, from fixing her roof to the random run-ins, but I don’t feel like going into full detail. “She’s definitely got my attention, but I’m not sure if I have hers.”
“Summer Evans? Isn’t she still with Jared?” Victor asks.
“Nah. She and Jared ended things pretty recently, I think. I work with him and overheard him talking about getting an apartment a while ago,” Chris replies.
Victor looks at me, eyebrows raised, “You sure you want to go after someone who just got out of a relationship? You know she has a kid too, right?”
“Yeah, I know. I fixed her roof at the beginning of the week. I’m actually going over there tomorrow to make sure it held up through the rain. She had a picture of all of them in her living room.” I take a sip of my water to give myself time to think over my next words. “As far as going for her, I’m not actively pursuing her. I’m just testing the waters and seeing what happens.” I shrug, hoping I come off casual. I know it isn’t rational how much I’m already into her, but I can’t stop myself.
“So how do you like being in construction?” Chris asks, eventually. “My dad was a project manager for years before he retired. He always talks about how much he enjoyed it but I remember lots of bitching when I was growing up.”
“I like it a lot. I’ve always liked working with my hands and just couldn’t picture myself behind a desk full-time. My old man was a contractor, and when I was a teenager, I worked with him sometimes on the weekends to make a little extra money. I learned that I had an affinity for it and eventually pursued my own license. It’s nice to do different stuff every day. Don’t get me wrong, it can be really frustrating too, and there’s always rude clients, but overall it’s good.”
I don’t mention it, because I don’t know these guys very well yet, but I feel a huge sense of pride in following in my dad's footsteps. He is one of the most hardworking, down-to-earth people I know, and anything I can do to emulate him is worth doing.
When I was floundering around after high school, he was the one to bring up getting into construction. I had never been great at school and couldn’t see myself sitting inside an office all day, so I started an apprenticeship with him. I wasn’t the best protege at first. I always wanted to screw around and thought I could get away with it because my old man was my boss, but he set me straight pretty quickly.
He made me meet him in his office one day after I ditched work and said, “Son, you are in charge of your life now. What you do with it and the choices you make are your own. That’s one of the great privileges of adulthood, but it’s also one of the scariest things about adulthood. You have to make the choices that are in your best interest because from now on, no one else is responsible for you. Make the choices that, in thirty years, you’ll look back on and thank yourself for.”
He then said much less eloquently that I needed to get my head out of my ass. He was right. I spent the next few years with my nose to the grindstone learning everything I could and taking any classes I needed to to round out what my father couldn’t teach me. Before he retired, I felt ready to go it alone.
“So, tell me, what’s with Anthony?” I ask, wanting to change the subject to something I’ve been wondering about. “That guy was staring daggers at me when I walked Summer out of the store the other day.”
Luke informs me that Anthony, along with a woman named Sherry, are the two biggest gossips in town. They frequently swap information like trading cards, in a competition with themselves over who has the juiciest piece of news. It then gets spread through town by word of mouth, since they both see a lot of folks on the daily. Which explains why Mrs. Webber asked me about Summer seemingly out of the blue when I was installing their new lights. Thankfully I gave a diplomatic answer about her leaking roof and diverted her attention.
I shake my head, a little blown away that the whole “small town gossip mill” is a real and active thing. What have I gotten myself into?