Page 3 of The Cadence

“I always drip like a leaky faucet when I cry.” I offered him a tissue, too, but he declined.

He also declined a drink and a plate of food, so we settled into the chairs, equally uncomfortable because both of us were too large for them.

Will must have been too large for almost anything, including airplane seats.

“Did you fly down here?” I asked.

“There’s a direct route from Detroit.”

“Do you go first-class?”

He turned to look at me. “Why? Is that how you travel?”

For the first time in what seemed like years, I felt myself smile. “Sure! Every time I jet off somewhere, I’m only going the best.” I even laughed a little, just a “ha” but it was a relief to know that I had some emotion other than sadness left in me.

“Have you ever gone anywhere?” he asked, and I stopped smiling.

“No,” I answered. “I’ve been busy here.”

“You were taking care of your grandmother.”

“I had to study hard, too. School was never my strongest point,” I remarked. “Do you remember how it was when I started freshman year?”

“I do. It was a disaster.”

I nodded, since that was true.

“What have you been doing since high school?”

“I started beauty school but then I had to quit and help my grandma,” I answered. “She got worse right around then.”

“I thought you said that she only got bad a few months ago.”

“For the last few months, she was very, very sick,” I explained, “but she needed me here before that. Why did you come again tonight?”

Will rocked the chair forward then back, just once in each direction. “I was thinking that I should have stayed longer when I was over before.”

“No, because you must have been so uncomfortable,” I said. “Just you and a bunch of older ladies staring like their eyes were going to pop out of their heads.”

“They must be Woodsmen fans. That’s the name of my new team.”

I smiled again. “I bet they wouldn’t know a Woodsmen if they ran one down with their cars.”

“I hope to hell it’s not me who ends up flattened.” He looked at me closely. “You don’t need the tissues anymore.”

“I probably will soon enough. All these emotions are a real roller coaster.”

“What’s next?”

“I’m not quite sure, but probably crying—”

“I mean, what are you going to do next, now that you don’t need to take care of your grandmother any longer?” he clarified. “Will you go back to beauty school?”

“No,” I said, shaking my head. “I’m not quite sure what’s next for a job, either.”

“I always like to have a plan.”

“I remember,” I told him. “You had it written in your phone, all your goals. What else is on your list?”

“A league championship, among other things. Why don’t you want to do hair?”

“Well, I may,” I said, “but first I have more important stuff to take care of. I’ll move soon.”

“You’re selling this place?”

“It belongs to someone else,” I explained.

“We needed money, so my grandma did something with the bank—I’m not exactly sure what, because she never wanted to talk about it.

She didn’t want me to worry and she probably didn’t think that I’d understand, and it was already done by the time I heard.

But we ended up owing a lot and now I’ll have to move out, since it’s not mine. I’ll get a job wherever I go next.”

He stared at me almost angrily. “Was it a foreclosure? Didn’t she own this place outright after all the years she lived here? Did she take out a second mortgage?”

I shrugged again, and my mind flashed back to the first time he’d come over and knocked sharply on my grandma’s front door.

“I’m Will Bodine,” he’d said, as if I hadn’t been aware of that.

Almost from the moment I’d set foot in that terrifyingly large high school, one thing had been clear: this man had been the king.

Even as a know-nothing freshman, I’d noticed how everyone admired him, all the students and also the administration.

I’d said hello and my grandma had thanked him for coming to help, but he hadn’t wanted to bother with small talk on that hot August evening.

We’d gotten right down to business and he had asked what I needed help with…

and the answer to that question was “everything,” because I was already failing almost all my classes, including PE.

Before I started ninth grade at that school, I had never believed that I was stupid, or maybe I had just never been made aware.

I quickly found out, and every time I’d listened to a teacher without a glimmer of understanding or had a paper returned with a ridiculously low number circled at the top, it had felt like another scoop out of my supply of confidence.

Right now I had no idea of the answers to any of Will’s questions about mortgages and foreclosures, but I wasn’t that teenager anymore. I didn’t have to go cry in the bathroom, pulling up my feet and pushing my palm against my mouth so that no one would see or hear.

“To be honest, the situation with my grandma’s house isn’t any of your business,” I told him. “I shouldn’t have said anything about it and I wouldn’t have under normal circumstances. I’m upset and worried, so it popped out.”

Will stared at me again, but it wasn’t the same as seven years before when I’d told him about my academic issues. Back then, he’d looked equal parts horrified and shocked, like he couldn’t believe that he was stuck with me and he also couldn’t believe that anyone could fail PE.

Now, his features didn’t move to show any emotion, so it was hard to determine if he was angry at what I’d just said. “I wasn’t trying to be ugly,” I told him.

“Neither was I, and your financial situation is none of my business.” His voice sounded flat but that did give me a clue that he might have been mad.

“I appreciate your concern and I appreciate your presence, too. Even if you didn’t fly home for the funeral, you still came to pay your respects. You’re here again, and you said that you hadn’t forgotten your wallet or something like that. Right?” I nodded. “Thank you.”

“I was remembering how your grandma used to send me home with food.”

“She was worried that you’d get hungry along the way,” I explained. “You used to eat a lot.”

“I was stupid,” Will said. “I hadn’t realized that y’all didn’t have enough for yourselves.”

“Oh, no,” I reassured him. “We never went without. It’s just that, in the last few years, she couldn’t work and I wasn’t able to very much either because she needed me here. But she was always very happy to see you enjoy her cooking, so don’t worry about that.”

He nodded, just a brief movement of his chin. Another thing that was different from high school was that he’d grown a beard, which covered the lower part of his face and made it even harder to figure out his expression.

“Is that why you came over again?” I asked. “Was it because you were thinking about my finances, or because you felt guilty for taking food out of our mouths? You don’t need to worry about either one.”

“And you don’t need to try to console me on the day of your grandmother’s funeral. Should we leave?” He stood up fast from his chair and it rocked back and forth pretty wildly.

“Leave? Where do you want to go?”

“We could…” He seemed to be at a loss. “You can’t be hungry after the buffet you put out today.”

“No, I haven’t been hungry in days,” I agreed. “I’m not sure what we could do around here, because I bet that you can’t walk six inches without getting swarmed.” I stood too, more careful of my chair. “You’re the most famous person in town.”

“Besides the woman who just broke a record for having the longest toenails.”

“You’ve been keeping up with the local news,” I approved. “But she’s a seven-day wonder. Anyway, no one can gawk at her because she can’t enter any establishment barefoot.”

“We could go to my hotel.”

That could have been what my grandmother called “suggestive.” But even with him holding his face so steady behind that beard, I could tell that nothing about him suggested any interest in sex with me. Nothing had changed in that arena.

“Ok,” I agreed. “Let me get shoes on.”

“You were taller today when you wore the black ones.”

I stopped partway into the house. “Did you remember how tall I was when we knew each other before?”

“I remember,” Will Bodine said. “I remember everything.”

So did I.