TWENTY-THREE Risk Assessment
“ I t was pretty cool,” Wyatt told Roman. “Bailey hung with me a lot and made sure I knew where I was going, and I sat with her and her friends at lunch. They’re cool, I think.”
He used tongs to flip a steak on the grill and looked up at Roman to make sure he’d done it right.
While the guys were doing the apparently manly parts of dinner prep, I was setting the table. I’d already made rolls and two salads—potato and leafy green—and brewed up a batch of sweet tea.
I stayed quiet and listened in on their confab, a combination of Wyatt recounting the story of his first day (which I’d heard in the car) and Roman teaching him how to grill steaks.
Those two were working together to navigate the terrain of their relationship. What they were now or would become to each other, it was too early to say, but a mutual affection had blossomed between them, and a mutual respect.
I was trying to be attentive but not overbearing. I felt the need to pay attention because Roman and I were still figuring our relationship out, and I didn’t want Wyatt to get pulled into that in the wrong ways. If Roman and I really took, if this was a long-term kind of serious, then he would come to stand in the place where a father stood. But I didn’t know if Wyatt would want that, or when he might want it. I needed to be vigilant and make sure Roman didn’t cross a boundary Wyatt needed—and conversely, I needed to make sure Wyatt didn’t throw up any boundaries that got between Roman and me—or if he did, I needed to understand why.
So I was paying attention but trying not to get in their way. In case you’re wondering, parenting babies is soooo much easier than parenting teenagers. The nights are still sleepless, but the problems of babies have actually correct answers. With teenagers, it’s nothing but guesses in every direction.
Roman nodded at the grill. “You tell me. How’s it look?”
After a moment’s study of the steak, Wyatt said, “I think it looks good. The crust thing you were talking about is kinda gold.”
“That’s right. Good job. Better flip the other steaks before they cook past that point.”
As Wyatt flipped, Roman asked, “Any teachers make a good first impression?”
“Yeah, I think so. Mr. DeValle—he does English and drama—seems pretty cool. He said I should try out for the fall play. And Ms. Flint in biology—she’s funny, I think.”
“How about sports? You thinking about trying out for any teams?”
Hearing that question, I almost interrupted. Wyatt was not into team sports, and since Micah’s death he wasn’t much interested in outdoorsy activities, either.
Sports are so entangled with traditional (and toxic) ideas of masculinity, and I wasn’t sure what Roman’s ideas about that were. His brand of masculinity isn’t toxic at all, but sports has a tendency to bring out the caveman in most men. I didn’t want him to say something that accidentally hurt Wyatt out of an assumption about what ‘all’ guys like.
I held back, though, and that was the right call.
Wyatt shrugged and said, “I’m not that into sports. I’d rather do plays and maybe choir.”
I thought I detected a hint of defensiveness in my son’s tone.
But Roman said, “That’s great—you know, art and music are a lot more important to the world than sports.”
“You don’t like sports?” Wyatt asked.
“No, I do. I like to watch baseball and basketball—baseball especially—but I’m not that good at playing them myself. There’s lots of good about sports, but they don’t really change the world. Art and music change the world all the time. All the true things are said there.”
Wyatt looked at Roman and smiled. I knew that smile. That smile meant my son felt seen.
I stood behind them at a table ready for the dinner they were grilling, and my eyes filled with tears. There was literally no better answer he could have given my son.
It’s possible that this is the moment I fell in love with Roman Mendoza.
DINNER WAS DELICIOUS . The steaks were perfect, the rolls were fresh and buttery, the salads crisp. Roman and I shared a bottle of wine, and Wyatt had sweet tea in a wine glass so he could feel like a grownup with us. By the time we were ready for dessert—cupcakes from Sprinkles, three Mexican hot chocolate and three raspberry-lemon—dark had fallen completely, and Roman’s back yard was a fairyland of twinkling lights.
In the long tradition of family dinners, our conversation wended through the topics topmost in our minds. We described our days, the most typical of which had been Roman’s. I talked about lunch with my friends, and the adventure with Daddy Ned, and how both had seemed to work together to create a space for Erin and me to rebuild our friendship. Mostly we were interested in Wyatt’s first day, and he was happy to answer the questions we peppered him with.
Then, as he started to peel the paper off his second raspberry-lemon cupcake, Wyatt said, “Actually, there’s something I want to ask you, Mom.”
I sucked cayenne-infused chocolate frosting off my thumb and said, “Okay, hit me.”
“On Friday, there’s a bonfire thing on Bluster Beach. Bailey and everybody are going, and they want me to go.”
Roman and I made eye contact across the table. We’d both gone to Bendixen High and knew the Bendixen Bonfire. I had, sadly, forgotten about it, so I was not prepared for this talk.
For something like seventy years, students have celebrated the new school year with a bonfire on Bluster Beach the first Friday night of the semester. It’s a tradition and a rite of passage—and, like every other social ritual of high school, booze flows and weed wafts freely.
I had not been allowed to attend, of course, but I’d managed it twice: my sophomore year, when my mother was in the hospital for a few days for gall-bladder surgery (best days of my childhood), and my senior year, when I’d developed enough cynical crust to do it and not care about the punishment I’d get when I got home.
As it is a tradition, and as Bluster is the kind of town where just about literally every adult went to Bendixen High and experienced its rituals, the bonfire is pretty safe, despite the underage imbibing going on. The whole town keeps tabs, and most of the kids stay close to the beach through the night, either camping there if the weather’s warm enough or returning very late to their homes in the town proper (or couch surfing at the homes of their friends who live in the town proper).
My hesitation that night was that we didn’t live in town. We lived several miles outside of town. Roman lived farther out than we did.
Actually, there was more trouble than just that. Wyatt was brand new to Bendixen and Bluster. He didn’t have strong relationships yet. Nobody his age he could really trust. Nobody I could really trust for him. The Bendixen Bonfire was jumping into the deep end of high school—huge party, lots of drinking and general tomfoolery, and Wyatt would be surrounded by strangers.
“I don’t know, bud,” I said, hedging while my brain spun. “That bonfire gets pretty wild.”
But god , it’s such an important event in the school culture. I didn’t want to do something that made him an outlier. I had plenty of first-hand knowledge about how much that sucked.
“Mom, please? Bailey says it’s critical.”
It kinda was. I mean, not everybody goes, obviously, but those who don’t are known for not going. It definitely oxidizes one’s reputation. “I could ... I could go with you,” I offered, trying to come up a workable solution.
You’d think I’d told him I’d put him in a diaper and carry him to the bonfire like a baby. His eyes popped wide and his cheeks washed out.
“Mom! You can’t go to a high school party! You might as well sell me to a freak show!”
Roman and I both laughed, and Wyatt gave us a suspicious squint.
“We’re laughing because that was a funny joke, Wy. Not at you,” Roman said.
Another perfect response. Sometimes I forgot that Roman was a father. Gabriel had lived to nearly Wyatt’s age now; his father understood about teenagers.
I addressed the truly pressing point. “Bud, I’m just trying to see how to get you home safely afterward. I can pick you up—”
“Bailey says last year her grandma let her and her friends sleep in the diner that night, and she says she’ll do it this year, too. She makes up the back room like a dorm, and everybody brings a sleeping bag, then Catherine makes breakfast for everybody in the morning.”
That was a new wrinkle in the tradition, probably because now Catherine had a kid of her own to take care of. I found myself looking first to Roman, as if the decision needed his input. That was silly, and he only smiled back, waiting, like Wyatt, to hear what I’d say.
“Okay,” I said. “When we go back in, I’ll call Catherine and verify, and if you understand the situation correctly, yes. I can get behind that plan.”
“Yes!” my son cheered. “Awesome! Thank you!”
I hadn’t seen that exuberance from my son in a very long time.
AFTER DINNER, WE CLEANED up the yard and carted the dishes and everything else into Roman’s kitchen. Wyatt had a little bit of homework after his first day of school, so he made himself comfortable in the living room and worked on that while Roman and I finished the cleanup.
First, though, I snagged my phone from my bag to call Catherine before it got too late. I wanted to be able to give Wyatt the full green light tonight, while he was still coasting on that high.
There was a notification on the screen—an email from the last of four banks where I’d applied for a loan. The other three had told me thanks but no thanks.
The preview text showed only the anodyne opening: Thank you for your application ...
I tapped it and opened the full message.
Thanks but no thanks.
I was not going to get a loan. I was not going to be able to restore the Sea-Mist and get it open again. I was not going to be able to pay the back taxes, not even a negotiated lower amount.
I was going to lose the property.
“Leo?” Roman came over and set his hand on my back. It was damp from the sink. “You okay?”
I was too focused on fighting off despair to manufacture any words, so I handed my phone to him.
He took it, read the email, and muttered, “Fuck.”
“Yeah,” I managed. “That’s it, then. We lose. Manfred wins.”
“No,” he said at once, his tone one I’d never heard from him before: almost menacing in its resolve.
Thinking I knew why, I shook my head. “Don’t offer to lend me the money again, Ro. We’ve had that argument. It’s too much, and I don’t want it between us.”
“I know. And I see your point. I don’t want to put anything between us that makes pressure. But Manfred getting that property is more than you losing your inheritance. That’s huge, and you deserve something good from your mother, but it’s not the only thing. He wants to tear the forest down and put luxury condos and a fucking golf course in there. It’ll change Bluster. It’ll unmake us.”
Maybe this mindset is unique in the US to coastal NorCal or the Pacific Northwest, I don’t know. I do know we have more than our share of counterculture oddballs hanging off both sides of the political spectrum. The one thing those two fringes tend to agree on is a general disdain for the very rich, and that means there’s a hard limit to what they’ll tolerate in terms of those political buckets of bullshit like ‘job creation’ and ‘wealth opportunities.’
Bluster is situated on some of the most beautiful land in the entire world. Redwood forests. The Pacific Ocean. Mountains and beaches, all within a sedate half-hour’s drive of each other. To the north on 101 and to the south, some communities have welcomed the kind of development that make them tourist destinations. But Bluster has resisted. Hard.
The only chain restaurant in town is a McDonald’s. The only guest accommodations, aside from a few Airbnb bungalows locals offer, is the Sea-Mist and the relatively new, eight-room Bluster Inn, a bed and breakfast.
We aren’t hostile to tourists—in fact, while I was away, the town buffed up the sheen on Bluster specifically to draw tourists in. Two new restaurants opened. We have a couple of small museums and other minor attractions like mini-golf and bowling. A new sign went up on 101 advertising the few blocks of Bower Street with the kind of quaint shops that lure in passersby. There’s also the marina, and the lighthouse the town reverted to human-operated because it has tourist appeal.
Bluster doesn’t mind tourists. But we prefer our visitors to stop by on their way somewhere else. We don’t want outsiders changing who we are.
In Little Rock, Arkansas, Manfred’s luxury condo and golf course development would likely be embraced with open arms and celebrated with a parade. In Bluster, California, not even the mayor was excited about it. Darryl Manfred being a festering asshole didn’t help.
“I know,” I told Roman. “But I don’t know how I can stop him. I’m trying to find a solution, but I’m failing . God! I’ve done nothing but fail since Micah died!”
My chest and head were so full of emotion I thought my eyeballs might pop from their sockets, but I fought to keep my voice low and as calm as possible so Wyatt didn’t hear. All of this affected him, too, and I didn’t want to lie and pretend everything was great and there was nothing in our way toward happiness; however, he was finally starting to act like a kid again, finally setting aside the mantle of ‘man of the house,’ and I wanted him to keep hold of that light as long as he could.
“Let me help , Leo,” Roman said, drawing me into his arms. “You don’t have to fight this on your own.”
“It’s too much money! I barely clawed enough out of my old life to be able to fix up what I thought the Sea-Mist would need and keep Wyatt and me fed and warm while we did it. Now the property needs all I thought and a whole lot more, and there’s a two-hundred-thousand-dollar tax lien on the place! I will not borrow that money from you. I don’t want to fail at being with you.”
He smiled. “I didn’t say let me lend you the money. In fact, I think I said, just a minute ago, that I agree it would be too much pressure. But I can cosign for you. Will you let me do that?”
“How is that different? It’s still you on the hook if I can’t pay.”
“It’s different because the money stays with me, doing me good, unless you can’t pay. That’s how it’s different.” He took a step back and held my hands. “This is not just me trying to save you. I’ve heard you on that point, and I understand. Now I need you to hear me and understand: I’m telling you this is for me, too. Because I want to be of help to you, yes, but also because I want to do what I can to keep Manfred out of town.”
It wasn’t the first time the idea of a cosigner had entered my head; each of the loan applications I’d filled out had fields for cosigners to complete. But I’d discounted the idea for the same reason I’d refused the idea of Roman taking a big chunk of his investment portfolio out—with penalty—to lend me the money outright: I hadn’t seen a material difference between lending me the money outright or being responsible for covering the debt if I failed to repay. It all came down to Roman risking his financial health on mine, and mine was in hospice.
Now, though, the idea sparked. I don’t know if it was because my last-chance loan application had been denied, or if Roman’s case really made sense. I hope it was both—that my heightened desperation made me see the real sense in Roman’s case.
Whatever it was, I nodded. “Okay.”
He grinned brightly, like I’d handed him a gift. “Okay? Yeah?”
“Yeah. We can talk to somebody about that, at least. If it doesn’t make too much trouble for you, then yes. I will take that help and thank you for it.”
As scared as I still was, I cannot exaggerate the immensity of the relief as hope lifted the panic from my chest. Accepting Roman’s offer to cosign opened the first viable path toward saving the Sea-Mist. But I had to make sure it didn’t come between us.
He pulled me close again. “And I thank you for trusting me.”
“It’s not you I don’t trust,” I told him.
His eyes darkened with sadness. “I wish you could see you the way I do.”
Too overwhelmed with emotion—all of them, it seemed, clamoring at once—to hold his gaze, I let my head fall forward and rest on his chest. He held me close and kissed my head.
“It’s going to work out,” he whispered. “You’re going to be happy here, Leo. The way you’ve always deserved to be.”
Oh, how I hoped he was right.