25. Wade
— ? —
Wade
The dunk tank water was exactly as cold as I deserved.
I surfaced, gasping, my suit jacket plastered to every line of me.
The crowd roared with laughter, actual roaring, the kind of sound I used to hear at shareholder meetings when someone made a particularly cutting remark about a competitor’s quarterly losses.
Except this was better. This was a four-year-old girl doing a victory dance while her mother laughed so hard she had to lean against a fence post for support.
“AGAIN!” Poppy shrieked, already reaching for another ball.
“Sweetheart, you’ve already dunked him five times-”
“AGAIN!”
I hauled myself back onto the platform, water streaming from my hair, my two-thousand-dollar shoes squelching with every step. The suit was ruined. Completely, irrevocably destroyed. I’d never felt better about anything in my life.
“Come on, dragon,” I called down to her. “Show me what you’ve got.”
She wound up like a professional pitcher, or like a four-year-old’s approximation of one, which mostly involved wiggling her entire body before hurling the ball in the general direction of the target. It missed by two feet.
“Almost!”
“That was terrible,” Luisa said, but she was smiling. Actually smiling at me, her eyes bright with a gleam dangerously close to joy. “Her form is atrocious.”
“She’s four.”
“I was hitting targets at four.”
“Not everyone can be a prodigy, Luve.”
The nickname slipped out before I could stop it. Her smile faltered, just for a second, and then Poppy threw another ball and this one connected and I was underwater again, the cold shock erasing whatever moment we’d almost had.
I came up laughing.
“SIX!” Poppy screamed. “THAT’S SIX TIMES, MAMA! I DUNKED HIM SIX TIMES!”
“I heard, baby. The whole festival heard.”
I climbed off the platform for the last time, wringing water from my tie. Agnes appeared beside me with a towel roughly the size of a postage stamp, her eyes twinkling with mischief.
“That was quite a show, dear.”
“Happy to entertain.”
“You know what would really entertain us?”
I knew that tone. It was the tone the grandmothers used right before they suggested a scheme that would either embarrass me completely or further their apparent mission to reunite me with my ex-wife. Sometimes both.
“What?”
“The raffle.”
“What about the raffle?”
Doris materialized on my other side. “We’re raising money for the library renovation. Very important cause.”
“I’ll donate.”
“Oh, you will.” Fern stepped in front of me, blocking my path with a smile that was seventy percent innocent and thirty percent terrifying. “But we were thinking of something more… visual.”
“Visual.”
“For the raffle.” Maude completed the circle, the four of them surrounding me like a very polite, very determined geriatric wolf pack. “We need a prize that will really get people bidding.”
“What kind of prize?”
“You.”
I blinked. “I’m sorry?”
“Not you you,” Doris clarified. “Just… a portion of you.”
“The top portion,” Fern added.
“The shirtless portion,” Agnes finished.
I stared at them. Looked over at Luisa, who was watching this exchange with an expression of horrified fascination. Looked back at the grandmothers.
“You want me to take my shirt off. For the raffle.”
“It’s for CHARITY, hon,” Doris said.
“The library needs new computers,” Fern added.
“And a children’s reading corner,” Maude continued.
“And you have very nice shoulders,” Agnes concluded. “We’ve noticed.”
“You’ve-” I held up a hand. “I’m not taking my shirt off in the middle of-”
“Fifty dollars!” someone shouted from the crowd.
I turned. A woman I vaguely recognized from the grocery store was waving a bill in the air.
“For what?”
“For the shirt thing! Fifty dollars if you do the shirt thing!”
“Seventy-five!” Another voice. Another bill.
“One hundred!” This from a group of women who looked like they’d come straight from a yoga class. “One hundred dollars for the library if he takes his shirt off!”
The grandmothers were beaming.
Luisa was covering her face with her hands.
Poppy was tugging on my arm. “Wade, what’s the shirt thing? Why does everyone want your shirt?”
I looked down at her upturned face. Looked at her mother, who was peeking through her fingers with an expression that suggested she was simultaneously mortified and deeply curious about how this would play out, then at the crowd, which had grown considerably and was now chanting “SHIRT! SHIRT! SHIRT!” in a rhythm that was frankly impressive for a spontaneous mob.
My father would have died of embarrassment.
Good.
“Fine,” I said.
The crowd cheered.
I undid my tie first, slowly, deliberately, making eye contact with no one and everyone simultaneously. Then the buttons of my shirt, one by one, revealing the white undershirt beneath. The crowd groaned.
“The whole thing!” someone yelled.
“For the children’s reading corner!” another added.
I pulled both shirts over my head in one motion.
The crowd went absolutely insane.
I stood there in my soaked suit pants and ruined shoes, bare-chested in the middle of the Bellhaven Lobster Festival, while middle-aged women waved money in the air and the grandmothers collected bills with the efficiency of seasoned carnival workers.
Fern needed to sit down.
“Oh my,” she said, fanning herself with a raffle ticket. “Oh my goodness gracious. Doris, get me a chair.”
“Get yourself a chair, I’m busy counting.”
“Agnes, I think I’m having a hot flash.”
“That’s not a hot flash, dear. That’s just eyeballs.”
I caught Luisa’s eye across the crowd. She was still half-hidden behind her hands, but I could see her cheeks were flushed and her shoulders were shaking with suppressed laughter.
Worth it.
“WADE!” Poppy’s voice cut through the chaos. “WADE, I WANT TO SEE YOUR TATTOOS!”
I crouched down to her level. “Which one do you want to see, dragon?”
“The wolf! Mama said you have a wolf!”
I turned to show her my back. Heard her gasp.
“It’s so BIG! Why do you have a wolf?”
“Because your mom told me once that if she could come back as any animal in her next life, she’d want to be a wolf. Wild and free. No rules.”
“Like Mama?”
The words went through me like a current. I turned back around, met Luisa’s eyes over our daughter’s head.
“Yeah,” I said quietly. “Exactly like Mama.”
The pie-eating contest was a disaster.
“You lost to a nine-year-old,” Luisa said, handing me a napkin. “A nine-year-old named Timothy.”
“Timothy has a gift.”
“Timothy ate four pies in three minutes. You ate half of one and looked like you were going to cry.”
“It was blueberry. I have a complicated relationship with blueberries.”
“You have a complicated relationship with losing.”
I wiped pie filling from my chin, grinning despite my humiliation. “Maybe. But I made you laugh.”
She had. She’d laughed so hard during the contest that she’d had to hold onto Doris’s arm for support. When I’d conceded defeat to Timothy, a freckled menace with the eating speed of a professional competitive eater, she’d actually snorted. Full snort, loud enough that half the festival heard.
“I wasn’t laughing at you.”
“You absolutely were.”
“I was laughing at the situation.”
“The situation was me.”
She bit her lip. Tried to look stern. Failed completely.
“Okay, maybe a little at you.”
“Thank you for your honesty.”
My phone went off in my pocket. I pulled it out on reflex, a number I didn’t recognize, a Boston area code, a message preview that opened with Wade, I know you’re-
I hit block before the sentence finished. Pocketed the phone. Went back to watching Poppy attempt to negotiate a fisherman out of a free lobster.
“Who was that?” Luisa asked.
“Dolores.” I said it the way you’d report a bus schedule. “New number. She’s on her fourth this month. I blocked the last one somewhere between the cake and the pi?ata at Poppy’s birthday. She gets a fresh one, I block it. We’ve got a rhythm going.”
“You didn’t even read it.”
“There’s nothing in it I need.” I found her eyes and held them, because I wanted this part to land clean. “There’s nothing she could say that I want, Lu. That door shut a long time ago. I just keep changing the locks.”
Her shoulders came down an inch. She didn’t answer, but she shifted a half step closer, until her arm was warm against mine, and left it there.
Poppy appeared, dragging a corn dog that was almost as big as she was. “Wade! There’s karaoke! Are you going to sing?”
“Oh, definitely not,” I said.
“Wade has stage fright,” Luisa said to Poppy, her voice dripping with mock sympathy. “He’s very sensitive about it.”
“I don’t have stage fright. I just prefer not to subject innocent bystanders to my singing voice.”
“That sounds like stage fright.”
“It’s consideration for others.”
“Stage. Fright.”
The grandmothers materialized around us like they’d been summoned.
“Karaoke!” Agnes announced. “Wade, you simply must participate.”
“I really mustn’t.”
“It’s a festival tradition,” Doris added. “Everyone sings something.”
“I’ll donate more money to the library instead.”
“The library doesn’t need money,” Fern said. “We just raised eight hundred dollars from your chest alone.”
“Then what does the library need?”
“Entertainment.” Maude smiled. “Your entertainment. Specifically.”
I looked at Luisa for help. She was examining her fingernails with intense fascination, a smirk playing at the corner of her mouth.
“What song?” I asked finally.
“Oh, we have suggestions.”
Ten minutes later, I was standing on a small stage in front of what seemed like the entire population of Bellhaven, holding a microphone and staring at a screen that displayed the lyrics to a song I vaguely recognized from Luisa’s shower playlist. The one she used to sing when she thought no one was listening, with the ridiculous chorus and the key changes that no human being should be expected to hit.
The music started.
I opened my mouth.
What came out was… not good. It was, in fact, the vocal equivalent of a wounded moose attempting to communicate with its dying brethren. The first note was three octaves too low. The second was somehow even worse.
But I committed.
I committed like my life depended on it.
I sang that ridiculous pop song with everything I had, every terrible note, every impossible key change, every lyric about dancing in the rain and never giving up on love.
I pointed at random audience members. I did the hand motions.
I attempted a spin that nearly sent me off the stage.
The crowd loved it.
They were howling. Literally howling, like wolves at a particularly tone-deaf moon. The grandmothers were clapping along off-beat. Timothy the pie-eating champion was recording everything on his phone. Sheriff Pruitt was laughing so hard he had to take off his hat and fan himself.
And Luisa…
Luisa was crying.
Actual tears streaming down her face, her whole body shaking with laughter. She was holding onto Poppy, who was bouncing up and down with delight, and she was crying from how hard she was laughing at me.
I’d never been happier.
The song ended. I took a bow. The crowd erupted in applause that was at least fifty percent ironic and one hundred percent enthusiastic.
I found Luisa in the crowd, made my way to her side.
“That was the worst thing I’ve ever heard,” she said, wiping her eyes.
“Thank you.”
“You hit exactly zero correct notes.”
“I’m aware.”
“You looked like a seal having a seizure during the dance break.”
“That’s very specific and very accurate.”
She laughed again, a softer laugh this time, warm and wondering. “Why would you do that to yourself?”
“Because you love that song.”
She stopped.
“What?”
“You used to sing it in the shower. Every morning. You probably don’t even remember, but I do. I remember every terrible lyric, every impossible key change. I remember what it sounded like coming through the bathroom door while I was making coffee.”
Her eyes were bright. “Wade…”
“I spent five years being too important to be silly. Too worried about my reputation, my family’s reputation, the way things would look.
I wasted so much time being dignified.” I stepped closer, lowered my voice so only she could hear.
“There’s no floor anymore, Luve. No limit to what I’ll do for one of your laughs. ”
She stared at me.
I watched her eyes drop to my chest. I’d put my shirt back on, but it was still damp from the dunk tank, clinging in ways I knew weren’t entirely appropriate. Then her gaze caught, and held.
The chain around my neck.
The one that had slipped out during my karaoke performance.
The one with the ring hanging from it.
“Is that…” Her voice was barely a whisper.
“Yes.”
She went quiet. Reached out, her fingers brushing the ring without quite touching it. The gold glinted in the late afternoon sun.
“I kept it,” I said. “The night you threw it at me. I picked it up off the floor after you left, and I’ve worn it every day since.”
“Wade-”
“I know I don’t have the right to wear your ring. I know what I did. But I couldn’t let it go. It was the only piece of you I had left.”
Her hand was still hovering near the chain. I could see her throat working, see the tears building in her eyes again, different tears this time. Not laughter.
“I don’t know what to say,” she whispered.
“You don’t have to say anything.”
“I-”
“WADE!” Poppy slammed into my legs, nearly knocking me over. “WADE! The lobster-boat race! It’s starting! You PROMISED!”
I looked down at my daughter’s upturned face, then back at Luisa. She was blinking rapidly, composing herself, shoving down whatever she’d been about to say.
“I did promise,” I said.
“You did!” Poppy grabbed my hand, already pulling. “Come ON! We’re going to miss it!”
“Go,” Luisa said, her voice thick. “Go watch the race.”
“Come with us?”
She hesitated. Then, slowly, she nodded.
Poppy grabbed her other hand, and we walked toward the harbor together.