Page 2 of Baby, It’s You (Clairesville #1)

Hunter

“Let’s take a break, dude,” I say, putting down my camera as I watch him throw his board in frustration into the nearby bushes.

Chuckling because I know that feeling all too well—wanting to get the trick so badly but the more you think about it, the more you psych yourself out—I turn away to give him a moment to cool down.

Suddenly, I feel my pocket buzz and look down to see a call coming in.

The name on the screen is “Dennis.” Because I’m a glutton for punishment, I answer.

“Hello, Dennis,” I say.

“ Cuz ! How’s it going?” he says, but before I can even respond he continues, “Hey, man, I need to ask you for a little favor. My girl kicked me out again over something stupid. Can I crash at your place?”

Rolling my eyes, I think about the last time Dennis stayed with me when he graduated college, “couldn’t find a job” (meaning he didn’t want to), proceeded to eat all my food for months, and destroyed my place.

I eventually kicked him out after catching him trying to kiss the girl I was seeing at the time, Cecily.

“Have you exhausted all of your other options, which is why you’re coming to me after years of no communication?” I ask.

He lets out a half laugh in response. “Listen, man, if you’re still mad at me for eating all your Cheetos and ramen back in the day, I can reimburse you now.”

I look over my shoulder to see Wes digging through the bushes for his board and turn back to my call. “What? No. I don’t care about that. If anything, I would be mad about the situation with Cecily.”

“Who’s Cecily?” he asks. Unbelievable. Then he continues, “Listen, bro, you’re my favorite cousin. I always talk about how great you are to everyone. If you could just do me a solid and let me sleep on your couch for a few days until my girl calms down, that would be great.”

I sigh and look off into the distance, deciding whether I want to be the good guy or the bad one. We used to have great times together as kids and Dennis stayed with us often growing up because his dad, my uncle, was in and out of his life frequently.

Feeling sympathetic because of his upbringing, I reluctantly comply. “Okay, yes. You can stay with me. Just for a few days, I mean it. I will be traveling for work starting Friday and I don’t want anyone staying at my place while I’m gone.”

“You got it, thanks, man. I owe you one. Text me your address,” he says and then abruptly hangs up.

That’s typically how our conversations go in our adult lives: he contacts me when he needs something and then disappears when he doesn’t.

I text him my address, already feeling the dread of an unwanted house guest. Then I turn back to my equipment and put my phone in my back pocket. Wes has successfully retrieved his board from the nearby bushes and walks back towards me.

“Hey, dude, I think I’m gonna call it for today, my knee is starting to bug me. I don’t want to end up having to wear the brace again,” he says.

Wes has always been a skateboarding prodigy and started attracting attention at an early age when I began filming him doing tricks at an empty Big Lots parking lot behind our houses.

I always messed around skating, too, but I mainly enjoyed filming my friends on my crappy phone as a fourteen-year-old.

Then I would edit the choppy clips on iMovie and upload them to YouTube.

As Wes’s talent grew, so did my passion for filming, and one day some of the clips I uploaded of him went viral.

This attracted attention from the skate community and that's where my career began.

I used to feel alive watching someone attempt a trick that they’d daydreamed about and then, when they finally pulled it off: magic.

It was the greatest feeling knowing that I was the one to capture that moment in time for them.

The electricity that hummed off the skater, the pride everyone else around watching had as they smacked their boards on the concrete in congratulations…

there is no way to describe that feeling to someone that hasn’t skated before.

“No problem,” I let him know. “Hit me up later. I might want to go out with you guys tonight for Eddie’s birthday.”

Wes turns back from walking to his car. “The old man actually wants to leave his place and go out? I think hell will freeze over first.”

“Yeah, yeah.” I shake my head and accept his playful jab. “Don’t give me a hard time or I will change my mind.”

He chuckles and waves goodbye.

I am not known as the most outgoing. In my younger years when I first started filming and traveling with pro skateboarders, we would go out and party. But even then, I was the more introverted guy, never going out of my way to get attention and always too shy to ask a girl for her number.

I’ve always been told I’m conventionally attractive.

I am tall and have a “ luscious head of hair,” my mom’s sixty-five-year-old hairdresser, Barb, always says.

I don’t have the self-assured nature to back it up, though.

I have always been shy and have decided it’s usually easier to just be quiet than to say the wrong thing.

It’s rare for me to feel comfortable with people quickly; it usually takes years to show my true self.

I take the lens off my Sony FX6 and load it into my backpack, along with my extra battery pack and light.

Wiping the sweat from my brow, I look up into the unforgiving heat of July and vow to take an ice-cold shower when I get home.

Is that something people do? It’s got to be.

I feel like I’ve seen a TED Talk about it being good for you.

I manually unlock my old crew cab navy blue Ford F-150 that I restored a few years back with my father, and slide into the driver’s seat.

Dad always had a huge passion for cars but was never able to spend the money or time restoring them.

When we found out that he was diagnosed with stage 4 colon cancer when I was twenty-four, that changed quickly.

I luckily had the financial means from my success on YouTube to buy an old truck he loved. I made it my mission for us to fix it up together. We spent a year working on the car every time I was in town and not traveling for work, customizing the steering wheel and restoring the old leather seats.

It was the greatest gift, the time I had with him before his passing. The truck really brought us together in the end. Every time I sit in the front seat, I can hear him muttering, “You got your good looks and your taste in cars from me. You're welcome, son,” in the playful way he always did.

I plug my phone into the aux cord attached to the new stereo we added and then shuffle my playlist. The soulful sound of “Just Dropped in” by Kenny Rogers begins to flood from my speakers. I roll all my windows down and take off along the winding, tree-lined road, back to my house.