Chapter 9 #2
“Busier than I want to be. It’s been a long few days. I’m not sleeping because of my adorable new granddaughter. Pat asked for help mending a fence today. And yesterday, I helped Chevy after someone burned up all of Wolf Waters’s campaign signs.”
Now, I feel guilty. Tank has been out doing big things while I was being kind of a baby about him not being around.
“Wow. You are busy. And that sounds pretty extreme about the campaign signs. I didn’t think Sheet Cake was the kind of town that dealt with things like that. Or is it because this mayoral race is brother versus brother?”
“More of the second, I suspect.”
“Is Wolf okay?”
Though I haven’t officially been introduced to him, Wolf stopped by the coffee shop Saturday morning and was very friendly.
Kalli seems to like him, and I’d trust her judgment.
Though she did say several of the rules she has posted on the wall of the shop are directly Wolf-inspired, notably the rules banning stilts but requiring pants.
I didn’t ask for details though I was dying to.
He bought three cupcakes and half a dozen cookies, which also works in his favor.
Tank sighs. “I’m not sure. Chevy and I tried to talk to him about it, but we couldn’t reach him. Wouldn’t answer his phone, and his bar was closed up, which is a first.”
I realize when I glance up that Tank is leaning forward, his eyes bright as they watch me move through the levels. Thankfully, I haven’t died any more stupid deaths. Not like my video game skills should really matter here, but I find myself wanting to impress Tank in any way I can.
“Did you play Nintendo when you were a kid?” I ask.
“I wanted to,” Tank says with surprising emotion in his voice. “But my mom thought video games would rot my brain, so she refused to buy Nintendo or anything else. Sometimes I got to play video games at friends’ houses. Mostly Atari though.”
I grab the second controller, then walk back to the couch and hold it out. “Want to play?”
Tank stares for a moment, his gaze bouncing between the controller and my face. Which gives me too long to take in just how handsome he is up close and also rethink this impulsive invitation to play Super Mario Bros, of all things.
Why would he want to do this? We aren’t kids. We have kids. Grandkids in his case. Of course he doesn’t want—
“Yes.” Tank snatches the controller out of my hand. “Let’s go.”
When I sit down, I choose a spot just a little closer than where I was before. Then I reset the game to make it two players, and we get started.
Two and a half hours later, we are sitting close enough for our arms to brush when we play, and we haven’t made it past level 3-3.
Well, Tank hasn’t made it past level 3-3.
The two-player setup for the original Super Mario is like two parallel games, so our progress is separate.
Which means when he’s dead, my game keeps going.
I keep having to die on purpose so he’ll get a turn.
I probably should have started with Mario 3, where both players work on completing a world together, level by level.
Tank seems to be having fun, even if he’s remarkably bad.
Rather than getting frustrated, he laughs every time he walks right into a turtle or falls into a hole.
But I can also see his grip tighten on the controller when his turn starts and the way his jaw tenses and his whole body leans forward toward the screen.
The man has more determination and competitiveness than maybe anyone I’ve met.
Somehow, though, he balances that intensity with good humor.
It’s surprising, and it makes gaming with him really, really fun.
I also get a sense of how he must have been while playing football. He’s definitely the kind of man who doesn’t like being bad at things. Where I tend to either not try or quit things if I don’t have an affinity right away, Tank keeps pushing through.
And that’s not the only way we’re different—I guess you can learn more about a person than I expected by playing video games.
“Didn’t you tell me there’s a secret passage down that tunnel?” Tank asks when I leap right over one of the green pipes.
“Yep. But it only has coins, so I don’t care. If it had an extra life or maybe a fire flower, I’d do it.”
“And you just passed a question box,” he points out. I can tell he’s curious so I don’t mind him questioning my choices. “Was it just a coin?”
“It was another fire flower, actually. But I didn’t need it, did I?” I grin and nudge him with my elbow as I land on the top spot of the flagpole, completing the level. “I’m more about speed and efficiency. You’re more …”
I turn to face him, and he meets my gaze. Having those blue eyes fixed on me makes all my words dry up. We’re sitting much closer than we were to start, which puts our faces very close together.
Should I move away?
Probably.
But I don’t.
And I suddenly realize I can smell the woodsy scent coming off of him. It’s masculine and a little intoxicating and does nothing to make me want to put more distance between us.
He smiles and says, “I think what you mean to say is that I’m interested in getting as many points as possible. I am about the high score.”
“I was going to say you’re more into hoarding, but that works too. Also, it’s hard to get the high score when you die trying to get all the gold coins.”
This makes him laugh, and I’m glad. Getting to know someone can sometimes feel like tiptoeing through a minefield.
You never know what topic, word, or comment might trigger something.
So far, though, he’s seemed just as comfortable talking about his late wife as he does letting me tease him about his gameplay.
I like that he’s good with both. Especially with the teasing.
The last thing I want is to constantly compare Tank to David, but it’s only natural for me to notice how they stack up. My marriage was a lot more serious because David was more serious. His smiles were hard-earned, and there was definitely not a ton of laughter when he was home.
Not because he was some kind of rain cloud hanging over everything. It was more that the kids and I would sort of snap to attention when he was around. A kind of Captain von Trapp effect, though neither David nor his family had any military connection. It was simply his personality.
We had no shortage of love, but the atmosphere was just more … formal.
I’m not sure I even realized this until about a year after he was gone.
On a very random school night. I was trying to make dinner while John and Chelsea sat at the kitchen table, doing homework.
Somehow, I managed to pick up a box of spaghetti by the wrong end.
The open side was facing down, and of course it wasn’t properly closed.
Dried pasta went everywhere. I didn’t know how one box could hold so many noodles.
John and Chelsea both glanced over at me to see my reaction, and I swear, they winced a little. I’m not sure what they expected me to do, but they looked worried, like this might be the thing to break me.
Instead, I laughed. The whole thing seemed suddenly hilarious to me. Water boiling on the stove. A whole box of pasta like a game of edible pick-up sticks surrounding me on the tile floor.
And then I sat down among the spilled spaghetti. I threw fistfuls of it up into the air and let it rain down around me.
Chelsea was the first to join me, giggling and throwing pasta as well.
John, who is a lot more like his father, stood there staring until Chelsea and I began pelting him with spaghetti.
The three of us ended up in an all-out dried pasta war, which ended with me having to sweep and order a pizza for dinner.
That kind of thing never would have happened with David. He would have walked into the room and assumed I was having some kind of mental break.
But it was more like … a breakthrough.
I may not have been able to put words to it in the moment, but later I realized that this was me, reclaiming a part of me that somehow got muted in my marriage.
And though I never would have wished to lose him when we did, in some way, after he died, I think my light started to shine brighter after years of being a little dimmer.
For a man with such an imposingly large build, Tank possesses a surprising amount of lightness and warmth.
He hands out smiles like he’s got an unlimited supply.
That doesn’t make them any less special.
Though I don’t care about collecting—or hoarding—coins in the game, I find myself taking mental snapshots each time Tank aims that megawatt grin my way.