Page 5

I checked my phone and my heart flipped. When I had this many messages, it was usually about my dad, and it was usually bad, but these were from Iva…oh, the baby! She wasn’t due for weeks yet—what had happened?

When I quickly scanned her texts, I still didn’t totally understand but it seemed like she was ok. She was asking if I’d seen something, but she hadn’t said anything about herself or her pregnancy—

“I’m all through here,” the siding contractor announced. He wiped his forehead with his sleeve, because it was hot again today and he’d been working outside Building C for several hours. “I hope you don’t mind me saying this, but these buildings are pieces of shit. I don’t think there’s any insulation in this wall, and it’s exterior. I don’t know how they could have gotten away with that.”

“It explains the heating bills that I’m always hearing about,” I said. There were many complaints in the winter. “Thanks for coming out so fast.” Iva would be happy to hear that I’d gotten this project done, one of the many that she hadn’t wanted to leave unfinished before she’d gone on her leave. The repair guy and I walked together toward the front and I read my messages more carefully once I got into the relative coolness of my office. Since it was just an old trailer, it never seemed to maintain the temperature we really wanted, but it was better…what was all this?

“I don’t get what you mean,” I wrote back to my boss. She had asked me if I’d seen, if it was true, and said she couldn’t believe it. Before she had time to answer, though, a couple knocked and walked in from the parking lot. They had questions about renting here, and I ended up showing them around and we talked for a while. All in all, it had been a great day for me; I’d accomplished so much for both my jobs and now I had interest from possible renters.

They were just leaving when Tyler also walked into the trailer, and they stopped dead and gaped so that the three of them got jammed into the doorway together.

“This is one of our residents,” I said, thinking that his timing couldn’t have been better. Now they would see that a Woodsmen player lived here, and that was such a draw! “Thank you for stopping by.” With my hands on their backs to guide them, they eventually left, still staring with their mouths agape. I turned to him. “Thank you, too. I think you just sealed the deal for me. I bet they’ll sign by the end of the week.”

“You didn’t see,” he stated. He pointed to my phone, lying on my desk.

“Um…” I picked it up and I did see that Iva had texted at least ten more times while I’d been meeting with that couple. “My boss is saying something about your girlfriend. What’s happening?”

“Fuck.” He sat down in the extra chair, which creaked as he tried to fit within its confines. “Shay’s going crazy.”

“Why?”

“It was that picture,” he said. “It was the picture we took together at lunch on Saturday. She saw it.”

“She did? How?” I hadn’t even seen it yet myself. The photographer at the practice facility had told me that all the shots would be posted on a website, and I had wanted to show my father.

“Somebody sent it to her.” He pulled his own phone from his pocket, the really nice, super-new phone that I’d seen him glued to before. He held it out and I looked, and then took it from him.

“This is great,” I said as I studied our two smiling faces. “Look how happy we both are! Good grief, it looks like I could feed fifteen people with the amount I have on my plate. I was really full when we left.” We’d had so much fun, though. We’d stayed at our end of the table until the family I’d met before, the Nours, came over to chat again. Tyler hadn’t said much, either nice or insulting, and it had gone well. Then we’d all walked on the field to play games and I’d gotten to run like I was scoring a touchdown. I’d laughed so hard I’d had to sit down in the end zone to recuperate, and Tyler had watched and then shook his head and smiled. He’d held out a hand and pulled me up.

“Everything about that day was great,” I recalled, but he was shaking his head again now.

“Read the caption under the picture,” he ordered.

I blew it up so I could see better. “Woodsmen tight end Tyler Hennessy and girlfriend Kasia Decker enjoy the catered lunch.” I stared at it for a moment longer and then burst out laughing again. “This is hilarious! How did the photographer get the idea that I was your girlfriend?” I asked, then answered my own question. “I guess it was because everyone else there meant something to the players, like they were wives or actual girlfriends. She must have just assumed and I didn’t think to say, ‘No, I’m barely an acquaintance. I’m an employee.’ Oh, well. At least they got my name right.”

“Shay saw this and she believed it.”

“No, she couldn’t have,” I said, but he just looked at me steadily. “Didn’t you explain who I was?”

“She knows who you are, and she’s extremely pissed off.”

“Just tell her that it was a mistake,” I said. “No one could ever believe that you and I are actually together. She can’t really think so.”

“Give me my phone.”

I did, and he flipped around for a second before he handed it back again. This time, it was a post from Shay Galton’s account, a video of her and she was clearly crying. I turned up the volume to hear her speak in a shaky voice. “This isn’t the first time he cheated,” she said, and she wiped under her eyes. Somehow, her makeup remained intact and amazing. “I try to be strong and deal, because I love him so much. It’s just unfair that I have to go away for work and a girl like that worms her way into his life. I hate her! She’s tearing us apart! My heart is shattered! Tyler, I love you!” She put her hand over her eyes and her beautiful lips quivered. Wow, what a great shade of gloss and what a performance, I thought. I might try to cry in front of my mirror tonight, to see if I could do it on command.

“She got more reactions to this than to her last twenty posts,” he stated.

“It’s very good,” I said. “She looks beautiful when she goes tragic. Would it help if I called her and tried to explain?”

“You don’t get it. She said your name.”

“She did?” I replayed the clip and she had, kind of. At the beginning she had called me “Casey,” and she’d talked about the picture of Tyler and me. The top comment under the video was a screenshot of that very picture, and it had my name clearly and correctly spelled. “I guess she did. That wasn’t very nice.”

“Nice? No. She’s telling all her followers that it’s your fault. They’re going to come after you.”

“Like they’re coming to my house or something?” I shook my head. “I’d like to see them try to get down our road. No one has touched any of the potholes in at least twenty years.”

“I mean online. They’ll dig up everything.”

“I don’t think there’s a lot to dig,” I told him. “There may be some really bad pictures of me playing the flute in band, but I haven’t even looked at my accounts in about five years. I had only posted some bad poetry I wrote and it’s already set to private, anyway. I can delete it all now.”

“You’re not taking this seriously.”

“No, because it’s stupid,” I told him. “You and I had lunch together when I went to a Woodsmen family event, and you only asked me to come because your actual girlfriend was too busy and you didn’t want to be the only guy there who was alone. A picture got miscaptioned. None of this is a big deal and I don’t really understand why she’s crying about it.” I looked at the other responses to the video. “The comments are saying that I’m a slut and they hate me.”

“They’re also saying that about me.”

That was too bad for him, and I hoped it didn’t mess with his endorsement stuff. But on my end? “I don’t actually care what any of her followers think. What would the opinions of these strangers mean anything?”

“People will recognize you. They’ll say shit to your face.”

“So?” I asked. “So what? Shay Galton will come here soon enough and you’ll make up, and everyone will forget. Are you sure I shouldn’t try to talk to her?”

“I’m very sure.” He was looking at me like he was confused. “You’re not upset about this,” he stated.

“I guess I am, some,” I admitted. “I don’t like being called names and I don’t like having my own name broadcast around. I don’t want to be famous like that.” I paused. “I don’t want to be famous in any way at all, but it’s not like we can do anything about it now. Unless Shay Galton admits that she was wrong and says that it was all a misunderstanding, which it is. Are you upset? You must be, if she’s acting this bananas. What did you say to her?”

“She’s not talking to me right now. She blew up my phone when she saw that picture and then she blocked me, and I saw the video when I got out of practice.”

“So she did all this without even talking to you about it? Why?”

He took his phone from my hand and looked at it for a moment before he clicked it off. “She flies off the handle sometimes.”

“I guess so! This is full-on stupid, though. Unless…well, she said that you’d cheated on her before.” And I had read plenty about the football players and their women. There was a lot of gossip about a lot of them having a lot of partners. I’d witnessed it happening, too, after the away games I’d attended, when I’d waited with the other Woodsmen fans to see the guys come out of the visiting teams’ stadiums. There were always beautiful, dressed-up girls waiting there with us and at first, I hadn’t known what was going on but some other people had clued me in. Those women were trying to make connections with the guys, and they were in the lobbies of the hotels the night before the games, too, and at clubs where the players liked to party in those cities. I also knew that a few of the married or otherwise-taken Woodsmen had girlfriends on the side right here in Michigan, either in our area or down in Detroit.

So it wouldn’t have been so farfetched that Tyler Hennessy would have stepped out on Shay Galton, but he got very pissed off when I said it now, even though I’d only been echoing her words. “No, I haven’t fucking cheated on her!” he told me angrily.

“Ok, great,” I answered. “It’s none of my business anyway, so calm down. I don’t care.”

He apparently cared a lot, because he continued to defend himself. “When we first got together, we didn’t have any ground rules. We were both doing whatever we wanted.”

“With many other people, whenever and however,” I said, and I meant that comment to demonstrate my understanding of the situation.

He took it as a criticism, and it only pissed him off more. “Why the hell not? She wasn’t thinking about me when she was with someone else, and I didn’t give a fuck what she was doing.”

It seemed like a great way to begin a relationship, with neither party caring about the other. “Ok, fine! You can add my name to the list of people who aren’t interested in your sexual history, not of either of you.”

“I wasn’t cheating any more than she was,” he continued to insist, a point which I now totally understood.

“Got it,” I assured him. “You weren’t exclusive but when you decided to be, you stuck that way.” He nodded and seemed to calm. “Does she really think that you and I…”

“It’s hard to tell. It might just be for clicks.”

“So she’s saying this because it sounds good to paint herself as a victim? Or to be relatable or something?”

“She likes the drama. It’s good for her, for her brand. Anything that makes people pay attention is a positive,” Tyler told me. “She was really worried about leaving California and moving so far away from the pulse of things. She thought that she’d be out of the loop, living up here in the middle of nowhere.”

“She doesn’t really live in Michigan,” I pointed out. “She visited twice but she never even slept in your condo. She came and made a mess with the movers and then left again, and that might also have been for attention. Attention from you.” He was glowering and I got the feeling that I wasn’t helping matters. “If it’s all about drama, then she’ll get over it fast when you see each other and the two of you can discuss things,” I said. “Didn’t you tell me that she was coming here?”

“Yeah, she was supposed to. I’m leaving tomorrow for a place called Mackerel, something like that.”

“Mackinac Island,” I filled in, and he nodded.

“Shay was supposed to show up when I got back. Now I’m not sure what she’ll do.”

“I have to think that this will work out, because as I said, it’s just so very, very dumb. Maybe she can find something else to be dramatic about,” I suggested. “Like, she could pose at the beach I showed you. There are no big snakes, but she could do something suggestive with a tree or she could put sand in…uncomfortable places. That could be sexy.”

He looked up at the low ceiling above us and mouthed a word which I assumed was obscene.

Those comments hadn’t helped, either. “We can’t do anything about it, so there’s no use in worrying. Do you want to see what I did in your condo today?”

“You really don’t care?” Tyler asked me. “You really don’t mind that she was slandering you for no reason?”

“I said that I don’t like it and I’ll tell your girlfriend the same thing when I see her.” I thought of how she’d ignored me when I’d asked her to get the moving trucks out of the parking lot. “It probably won’t make any difference if I get mad and yell, and I doubt she’ll apologize.” I wanted to take her fur hat and smack her with it, but what was the point? “You know, I’m sorry, and I don’t have a problem saying it.”

“What are you sorry for? Posing with me?”

“No, that was very a normal thing to do. I like that picture,” I said. “It just seems to suck that you have to deal with this when you’re starting a new season with a new team, although it also seems like you enjoy being a pot-stirrer yourself. You know, how you caused problems with the rest of the Woodsmen,” I reminded him, and he started to glower again. “Never mind. Let’s get out of here and go to your condo. It’s too hot in this office.”

We left together and I locked the door. Despite saying that I wasn’t worried about Shay Galton’s angry followers, I did glance around quickly to make sure that the parking lot was empty. “You don’t actually think they’d come after me in person, right?” I asked.

His answer wasn’t negative at all and it wasn’t reassuring. “They’re looking for her approval,” he told me. “They’re pretty into her. She has one guy who thinks they’re married.”

“Oh, that’s scary,” I said.

“Yeah, she went and got a restraining order. But then she…” he said, and then stopped.

“What?”

“I agreed that she needed to take out the order against him. What did you do in the condo?” he asked me, and I fiddled with the lock.

“Ta-da!” I said as I flung open the door.

Tyler didn’t say anything. He walked inside and looked all around, though, turning his head and then turning his body in a circle to take it in. There were no more boxes, not even one. I’d cleaned from top to bottom today and then I’d rolled out rugs, hung some art on removable hooks and, with a dolly and a whole lot of difficulty, I’d put the furniture in place. There was now an appropriate number of tables, chairs, and couches.

He walked upstairs and I followed, and just as silently, he examined the three guest bedrooms that were fully furnished and the guest bathrooms that were also complete down to toilet paper on the rollers, hand soap, and towels hung up on the bars. We trooped the two flights to the basement where I’d done the least, but I had managed to get his lighter-weight kettlebells down here, one at a time and by dragging instead of lifting them.

The main bedroom was the last place we visited. I’d had an actual mattress delivered this morning and they’d put it on one of the beds that Shay Galton had stolen from Tyler’s former home in California. I had an itemized list, along with pictures, of every piece of furniture from there and all the accessories, too. He could decide if he wanted to keep things, and then he could buy the stuff (I’d already bargained down the prices, but they still felt horrendously high). Whatever he didn’t want, I would ship back. That was also going to be horrendously expensive but I kept in mind his new sponsorship for Sauf! , the energy drink from Germany. He could afford it, just like he could afford to pay me for all the work I’d completed in this condo. I’d put in a lot of hours and it had added up to a lovely sum.

But maybe what I’d done wasn’t right, because he still hadn’t spoken. The casket was still in here, and maybe that was the problem…just as I’d told Iva about her blow job situation, it was better to ask.

“Remember that I’m working for you, so if you don’t like it, let me know and I’ll fix it,” I said. If I hired more movers on his dime, I could even get the casket out. “You have to say something.”

He finally did. “Every night when I came here, I saw a difference,” he told me. “I could see how much you were getting done. Now, it’s pretty unbelievable. All that shit was overwhelming but you made it look like a real home.”

“Good,” I said, nodding. “I’m glad you feel that way. And just like in other real homes, there are a lot of bills to deal with. I have them all on the laptop—”

“I’ll look later,” he said. He went to the kitchen and checked the refrigerator, which I had restocked. I had been watching what he ate and keeping track of what he’d asked for, too, and now he was on a weekly grocery delivery with those items. They would bring it to my office so I could put it all away for him in here—if he wanted to keep me on the payroll, I would do that.

Now he took out a bottle of sparkling water, and he cut a lime and squeezed it with one of the kitchen tools he had. “Want some of this?” he asked me. I nodded, so he poured out two glasses. He’d already had a set of very nice ones, in three sizes and they all matched.

“Thank you,” I said as I took it. “I had to look up what that thing was.”

“A citrus reamer?”

I nodded. “In my house, we don’t ream enough to need a specific implement for it. You know, the stuff in your boxes was kind of strange.”

“Like kitchen tools you don’t use?”

“Yes, and also how it was packed,” I answered. “I could tell what had been boxed up by the movers because they used way too much paper and bubble wrap. I can’t even imagine what they charged you for all the materials, but I saved most of it in case we send things back to California, and I’ll pack it all myself. They did the accessories and furniture. And Shay Galton’s stuff was jumbled, kind of thrown together.” Like the giant tangle of underwear. I had carefully washed all of it, just in case, and now it was put away in the ample closet I’d shown her on the first tour of this place.

“Her assistant probably did it for her, and that girl is lazy,” he explained.

“It wasn’t all like that, though. Everything for the kitchen was very orderly, very neat.”

“Yeah?”

“So was your personal stuff,” I continued, “all your clothes and gear. You said you didn’t have an assistant.”

“I don’t. I did it myself,” he said. “I packed my shit and then I left the boxes in the garage, ready to go. I had scheduled the pickup, trying to give Shay enough time to do hers. She changed the date and had the movers take everything else, too.”

“So you’re actually an organized person,” I noted, and he shrugged and finished the fizzy lime drink. It did taste good, and it had been easy to make. But I knew, from buying his groceries, that he was also using a big variety of ingredients to prepare meals for himself. From what he’d described (when I’d asked), they sounded tasty, too. Like, he chopped fresh herbs to make his own sauces, and the dishwasher was full each morning of various pots, bowls, spoons, and implements that I didn’t have in my own kitchen.

He was a weird guy, I decided, but then rethought my opinion. No, it wasn’t that he was weird, but that I just didn’t really get him.

As if he’d read my thoughts about food, he looked again into his refrigerator. “I’m going to make dinner.”

“Sounds like a good plan, if you’re hungry.”

“Do you want some?”

“No, thanks. I have to get home to my dad.” We had talked just this morning about Tyler, and Dad had said how he’d like to meet the Woodsmen player…

“You could come with me, instead,” I suggested. “I can make something for all of us.”

“Me, at your house?”

“Sure,” I offered. “You don’t have practice tomorrow. Aren’t you all driving up to the ferry?”

“What ferry?” he asked quickly.

“To Mackinac Island for the team trip.”

“We have to take a boat?” His tone remained sharp. “There’s no bridge to this island?”

“There are no cars allowed on it at all, except for emergency vehicles, I think. Come on to my house,” I urged. “I’ll tell you more about Mackinac and you can see the garden. Although, we’re having a terrible problem with powdery mildew on our cukes, so they’re not the prettiest. And there’s some root rot in the basil, but we’re fighters. We won’t quit on our plants.”

He stared at me.

“Come on,” I told him, and when I looked behind me, he had picked up his keys and was following.

I had a lot of new messages on my phone, mostly from people I hadn’t spoken to in years (and who hadn’t been my friends then, and certainly weren’t now). They were all wondering about the rumor they’d heard that I was with the new Woodsmen player, but I deleted those and blocked them. I also did that with all the super mean messages from other people I didn’t know at all—my number must have leaked somehow. There were also a lot of missed calls and voicemails but I didn’t bother to listen to that trash, either. Then the light turned green, and it was the last one I would see until Monday, when I turned around and came back this way. Where I lived, there were a few stop signs but that was it in terms of traffic control.

The yellow car was behind me all the way to my driveway, bumping over the potholes in the last mile or so where no road crew ever ventured. I got out and he did, too, and looked at the home where I’d lived for my whole life.

His first words about it stated the obvious: “This is tiny.”

“It’s only one bedroom,” I agreed. “I’m not sure what it was meant to be originally. Maybe a summer cottage for people coming up from downstate? We’re pretty far from any lake back here, though. Maybe it was a hunting cabin.” I walked toward the front door. “My parents bought it when they first moved up north, and my dad says it was like a little hideaway in the woods. They were going to move when I got big enough for school but then…Dad?” I said as I let us in. “We’re here.”

I had called him from the car so he wasn’t startled by our appearance, and when he came out of his room, I could see that he’d made an effort with his own appearance, too. He was wearing a shirt with buttons, which must have taken him forever to do, and his hair and beard were combed very neatly. He pushed the walker in front of himself, carefully fitting it through the bedroom door which was really not wide enough.

“Hello,” he said. “I’m Jerry Decker.”

I could tell by how he was using the muscles of his face that he was doing his best to make the words clear. “Hi, Daddy!” I said, smiling at him. It was so nice that he’d gone to all this effort! “This is Tyler, Tyler Hennessy. You know, the guy who catches a football sometimes.”

“I try to,” Tyler said. He stepped forward and put his hand out, like he wanted to shake. Then he seemed to realize how that wouldn’t work, and he dropped it. He stood awkwardly for a moment and added, “It’s nice to meet you, sir.”

“Likewise,” Dad said.

“Have a seat,” I told them both. The living room was also the dining room and it was also the kitchen, so I helped my father into a chair at the table. Tyler took the couch, but then he stood up.

“Aren’t we making dinner?” he asked.

“I’ll do it. You two can talk,” I said. “It’s not like I’ll be excluded from the conversation, either. It’s hard to have secrets in this house.”

“How do you like Michigan?” my dad asked Tyler.

“It’s…it’s all right.” He sat again, kind of stiffly. “There’s a lot of water here.”

I looked over. “It’s the Great Lakes State,” I mentioned, in case he’d missed that in elementary school.

“I’m going to have to be on a boat tomorrow,” he said, and Dad asked him about the trip to Mackinac. As I pieced together the meal, I heard him assure Tyler that it was a big boat, and it probably wouldn’t ever sink. They talked about the Woodsmen, too, with my father asking more questions in the very careful manner he used when speaking to strangers who weren’t used to his voice. I remembered how he used to talk, before the stroke. He had been a great storyteller, totally mesmerizing. I vividly recalled spitting my milk out of my nose when I was a little girl and he’d said something funny that made me laugh. It had shot right onto my plate but he’d helped to clean it up and told me it was ok, that he was glad I was happy.

I heard my name and focused on their conversation. “Kasia looks just like her,” my dad was saying, and I knew they were discussing my mother. “Justyna came from Poland when she was only twenty. I thought she was the prettiest girl I’d ever seen.” He paused and regrouped, moving his jaw a few times before the next words came. “Now Kasia is. They’re exactly alike.”

How had they already gotten onto that topic? I should have paid closer attention to ward it off. “Dad, I promised him that you’d show off the garden. Tyler, can you help my father up?”

“Uh, ok.” He did that by lifting him out of the chair, but he was careful about it. I wished I were that strong and could do it so efficiently. They went outside, down the little ramp I’d built myself, and I heard them talking out there, too. Dad was bragging about how big the pumpkins would be, and that was good for us. I sold them out of the back of my car, along with gourds and some winter squash. The stuff we picked in the summer was for eating, and I also canned and pickled a lot for us to have later.

I watched through the window as they walked slowly through the garden. I couldn’t help keeping an eye on Dad, although I tried not to let him see because he sure didn’t enjoy it. “I’m the parent,” he liked to remind me, and that was true. He was my only parent left and five years before, I had walked into the house after carefully driving down the bumpy road in my new-to-me car, and I’d found him on the floor of our kitchen. He’d been there all day, alone for hours as his brain was blocked from getting the blood it needed. I would never forget it, never.

So I watched as he and Tyler slowly walked around the garden, looking at things and picking a few. I watched to make sure that Dad was steady and I also wanted to make sure that Tyler was being nice. I definitely remembered how he’d acted the first time I’d met him, when he’d thrown open the door of the leasing office and then had refused to speak to me or Iva. I remembered his behavior the next few times we’d met up, too, and also what the girl Dalila had told me about how he’d behaved with the other Woodsmen. “Booty hole” was the term she’d used and it seemed fitting if her story had been accurate.

But they were talking quietly and walking slowly, and I saw my dad smile, the expression that was kind of lopsided now but that I loved to see on his face. They came back to the door and up the ramp—well, Tyler stepped around rather than on it, which was smart move. I had, after all, built it myself, and I was aware of what my carpentry skills were worth. He weighed a lot more than we did, and in fact, seeing the two of them together was almost shocking. My father looked thin and gaunt, like he’d lost more weight than I’d realized.

“It’s right in here,” Dad was saying, and they walked the few steps through the living room and toward the bedroom.

“Daddy, he doesn’t want to…” I let my words trail off. No, Tyler didn’t want to see this, but it was my dad’s most treasured possession and it was so rare that he got the chance to show it off. I followed them and stood just behind the Woodsmen player’s wide back. I didn’t have to look myself, because I could already see her perfectly in my mind. As always, I saw her face in the frame, not the real woman.

“My friend was an artist and a professor at Eastern Michigan University. He came home one summer when Kasia was a baby and he painted this for us. I don’t know if it captures how lovely she was, but it comes close,” my father said, speaking each word carefully and slowly so that they were clear, and breathing hard after he was done with it all.

It was a picture of my mother, Justyna, sitting on the sand dunes that loomed on the shore of Lake Michigan. Her long, dark hair, a lot like mine, blew in the wind coming off the water, and she was smiling at someone or something just past the artist. I had always imagined that it had been her husband standing there, and that he had been smiling back at her.

“They do look alike,” Tyler said. He glanced over at me. “They have the same eyes.”

“Like the feathers on jay’s wing, that bright blue,” my dad said. I could hear the emotion in his voice. He used to be able to hold it in better, but the stroke had made it harder for him to contain it. “She was wonderful…”

“Dinner’s ready,” I called. I had stepped quickly back to the kitchen, and I loudly plunked three plates onto the little table and jangled some silverware. “Daddy, come on and eat.” After I helped him into his chair, I quickly wiped his cheeks with a kitchen towel.

“This is not going to be up to your standards, but it’s edible,” I told Tyler. “Has he talked about what he likes to cook?” I asked my father, and we discussed that, football, and more about Mackinac Island until dinner was over.

“Thanks for having me over,” Tyler said when I walked him out to his yellow car.

“You’re welcome. Thanks for being so nice to my dad.” I spoke quietly, so that my words wouldn’t carry through the bedroom window where he was resting.

“Why wouldn’t I be nice to him?”

“Thank you,” I repeated. “And don’t worry about tomorrow. The boat ride isn’t that long and you’ll like it once you’re there. Take lots of pictures.”

“Why?”

“Because some people haven’t visited, and they’d like to see. Me,” I clarified. “Send them, or show me when you get back.” My dad and I had never traveled before his stroke, and now I wasn’t allocating money for hotels and meals out. Maybe someday—maybe. There were lots of things to pay for before I thought about trips. Currently, I was thinking about my next tuition payment, new gutters, and an oil change.

Tyler seemed puzzled but he didn’t say no. Before he drove off, though, he did say something else. “Tell me if you’re getting a lot of shit about Shay’s video.”

“What would you do about it?” I asked, but then shook my head. “It will be fine. I bet that by tomorrow, most people will have forgotten.”

“Maybe. Tell me anyway.” He rattled his key chain. “It should be good weather tomorrow.”

“The water will be calm.” I realized that I was slightly anxious about his trip, too, but my feelings didn’t center on the boat ride. “If you behave with your teammates like you did with us tonight, then you’ll be great,” I said. “Why don’t you try it? Wouldn’t that be better?”

He stared at me. “What are you talking about?”

“Have a good trip. Pictures,” I reminded him, and I stood in the driveway until his car disappeared, bumping through the potholes that you really couldn’t avoid, until his lights were out of sight.

Things would be bumpy for me for a while too, I thought, but they would be better soon. Probably by the time he got back from his trip, Shay Galton would be here, and everyone would have forgotten the home-wrecking slut who had made her cry so beautifully.

I just needed to wait a little, and it would be fine.