Page 14 of The Single Dad Grump Next Door (Stuck Together In Mermaid Shores)

Chapter Fourteen: Gabe

T ruthfully, when I included the couple that Alina is staying with in the dinner invitation, I didn’t expect to like Andy.

At first glance, he’s everything I find exhausting in a person: upbeat, outgoing, and somehow always talking. He seems like the type who thrives on small talk and even more so on making others join in.

He also seems like the kind of guy who has never had a difficult time fitting in, socially speaking. He carries himself with an unshakeable confidence that I’ve learned to recognize as the sort of quality that lifelong popular kids have. That’s why I tend to avoid his type. Growing up a scrawny weird kid who liked to play the violin more than anything else, I didn’t exactly have an easy time in school. I wasn’t necessarily bullied, but I didn’t have many friends. It wasn’t until I went to Juilliard that I realized there were plenty of like-minded people in this world, and that I could avoid all the jocks and frat guys and social butterflies if I wanted to.

What I didn’t expect was that, somewhere between his rambling stories and his over-the-top enthusiasm about lacrosse strategies, I’d start finding his company pretty bearable. He’s more genuine than I assumed a guy like him would be—the sort of person who is so unapologetic about who they are that they’re incapable of ulterior motives.

It’s a quality I’ve learned to value, even if it comes packaged with an energy level I can’t hope to match.

Unfortunately, getting along with the similarly-aged man next door doesn’t just mean that I can live the rest of the summer in respectful camaraderie with the neighbors.

It means, apparently, that I have a new friend.

“Come on, man,” Andy says, slapping me on the shoulder like we’ve been pals for years. “Just one drink. You can’t stay cooped up in this house all summer.”

“I’m not cooped up,” I reply, glancing toward the living room where Wren is sprawled on the rug, absorbed in a jigsaw puzzle that Karina, Andy’s wife, gave her when we crossed paths on the patio earlier this morning.

We’re all just becoming one big happy family, practically overnight.

I haven’t seen Alina around, though. Not since she ducked out of dinner early, muttering something about how she was feeling a headache coming on.

Not that I’m wondering where she is. Not that I care.

Andy grins at me, leaning in conspiratorially. “Karina can watch Wren while we’re out, if you’re cool with it. She’s great with kids. The Siren and Sword has great beer and even better fried pickles. You’re missing out, man. Also, I can introduce you to my friend Matt—he plays the guitar! Actually, now that I think about it, there are probably tons of famous musicians in town that you could befriend… and we’d find them all at the local watering hole!”

I hesitate, trying to process his cheerful rambling. It’s been a long day, doting on Wren to make sure she’s perfectly hydrated and then slipping away when I can to work on my newest composition. The thought of dealing with the noise and crowd of a bar doesn’t exactly appeal to me.

Unfortunately, I think Andy’s relentless optimism is wearing me down. It’s the same thing that Wren does to me. I can’t say no to the hopeful.

“Fine,” I say with a sigh. “One drink.”

“Heck yeah!” he cheers. “You won’t regret it, dude.”

The Siren & Sword, a traditional pub-restaurant in the style of a cozy dive you might wander into on the cobbled streets of Dublin or Edinburgh or somewhere similarly ancient and proud, is packed when we arrive at about half past eight. The din of conversation and laughter spills out into the street, a cacophony at odds with the classic rock music playing from the sound system.

Andy strides in like he owns the place, his booming voice cutting through the chatter as he greets the bartender and half the patrons like old friends.

I hang back, my hands in my pockets, already regretting my decision to come. This isn’t my scene. Even when I was younger, freshly turned twenty-one and allowed to enter bars, I avoided places like this. I don’t do well in large crowds. It’s not that they make me anxious, but rather that I just don’t know what to do. How do people balance so many conversations at once? How do they switch from one to the next so seamlessly, so naturally?

At least that’s one thing Alina and I had in common. She didn’t seem to be a big fan of large party atmospheres in college, either. I always assumed it was because of her general aura of snobbery—she merely thought she was too good for that kind of socializing.

Now, I’m sure I judged her too harshly.

“Packers fans? Alright! Drinks are on me!” Andy announces to a nearby table, and a cheer goes up from the group of people gathered around it, followed by playful jeers from others next to them.

Within minutes, he’s in the thick of it, swapping stories and cracking jokes like he’s known these people for years instead of mere minutes. I watch in awe as he sweet-talks our fellow vacationers, then laughs with the bartender, and then waves cheerfully at a red-haired waitress when she greets him.

This guy knows everyone , and he clearly doesn’t need me to have a good time. Just like that, I’m wondering why he even bothered to invite me. Did he feel bad for me? Is that what this is? A pity invitation? An offering to pay me back for having them over for dinner?

Or does he feel bad for me in a more general sense? Could Alina have shared with them all the things that I revealed to her? Do they now all know how much of a loser I am?

Or am I completely overthinking this entire circumstance?

My wife was always better at these things. Her name tickles the edges of my memories, but I carefully fold it away in the quiet, restless shadows where it belongs. I loved her, but it was a simple love. An easy love. No fireworks, no overwhelming passion.

Part of me is worried she wasted her last precious years being married to me when she might’ve been able to find her soulmate. There’s no point in dwelling on that, though. I’ll never know. She’s gone and I’m still here, and it would probably be a huge dishonor to her memory to mope around this bar when I know for a fact that she’d be working the room just like my neighbor currently is.

I nurse the beer Andy hands me as I stand at the edge of the chaos. I wonder how long I have to hover on the periphery before I’ll get a chance to slip away into the night.

As Andy’s laughter echoes across the room, I retreat toward the bar, weaving through the crowd until I find a quieter corner.

I’m not the only one in search of some relative solitude, though.

Alina is here.

She keeps appearing like this. Out of nowhere, just when I’ve resolved to avoid thinking about her, she pops up like a ghost sent to haunt me.

She’s sitting alone at the bar, an untouched cocktail in front of her and an air of quiet detachment about her. She doesn’t notice me at first, her gaze fixed on the swirling ice in her glass.

For a moment, I consider turning around and walking away. But something about the way her shoulders are hunched, like she’s carrying the weight of the world upon them, stops me.

“Fancy seeing you here,” I say before I realize how stupid that sounds.

Idiot.

This is why I don’t do social events. This is why I don’t date, why I latched onto the first woman who liked me enough and then proposed at a recklessly young age. When it comes to navigating interpersonal connections, I’m a fumbling fool.

Still, it’s too late to run away. I force myself to slide onto the stool beside her.

Alina startles slightly, as if she didn’t even hear my ridiculous greeting, looking up with wide eyes. Then recognition dawns, and her expression softens. Then hardens. Then softens just a little bit. Then hardens again.

I get it. I’m still trying to figure out how I feel about her, too.

“Gabe,” she says, her voice carefully neutral. “Didn’t peg you for the bar type.”

“I’m not,” I admit, taking a sip of my beer. “Andy convinced me to come out. Karina is watching Wren.”

She raises an eyebrow at me. “So, you’re a cool dad, huh?”

“A cool dad?”

“Leaving your kid with a stranger so you can come out and party?”

I roll my eyes. We both know she’s baiting me, which means she’s definitely in a sour mood right now.

“You’re saying I shouldn’t have left my kid with your cousin?”

Alina purses her lips. Then, as if it pains her, she grumbles, “No, it’s fine. Karina is amazing with kids. She can’t wait to be a mom.”

“Well, Wren will be good practice. She’s a handful.”

Honestly, all I want to do is run back to the house and tuck my daughter into bed, read her a story, and shut myself into my music room for the rest of the night. I don’t love the idea of letting Wren run free under the authority of others, but it’s become a necessity in recent years to rely on nannies while I’m traveling to Los Angeles so often.

We lapse into awkward silence, the noise of the bar filling the space between us.

“What are you drinking?” I ask, nodding toward her glass.

“Something fruity and overpriced,” she replies with a shrug. “I didn’t catch the name.”

“Is it good?”

“It’s decent.”

Another pause.

“Are you… okay?” I venture, keeping my voice low.

She exhales slowly, her fingers tracing the rim of her glass. “I got my MRI results this morning. They sent it in an email, like it was no big deal.”

My chest tightens. “And?”

Not that it’s any of my business. Again, not like I care.

She lets out a bitter laugh. “Inconclusive. Which means they found absolutely nothing wrong with me. Everything’s perfectly normal. One could argue that it’s all just a figment of my imagination.”

Her voice cracks on the last word, and she quickly takes a sip of her drink as if she’s trying to drown the emotion threatening to spill over.

“But you’re still in pain,” I say quietly.

She nods, her gaze dropping to her lap. “Every day. And no one can tell me why. Which means that nobody can offer me real treatment, either.”

I don’t know what to say. The Alina I remember—the fierce, confident prodigy who always seemed so sure of herself—looks lost.

“I’m sorry, Alina.” I mean it.

She glances at me like she’s trying to gauge my sincerity.

“Thanks.” Her voice is soft. “Anyway, it’s stupid. I feel like all I’ve been doing lately is whining. Other people have it worse than me.”

“True.” I shrug. “But that doesn’t mean that the difficulties you’re experiencing aren’t difficult. We all have our own scales, our own limits to what we can handle.”

“And I clearly can’t handle it.”

“No, you’re handling it,” I argue lightly. “As best you can, I mean.”

Her response is a half-hearted, one-shouldered shrug. She’s fiddling with the edge of the napkin that her cocktail is resting on.

Just like that, it strikes me how pretty she looks right now.

Of course, Alina Sokolov always looks pretty. She’s a very pretty person. It’s a fact of life, just like how the sky is blue and the grass is green.

But, in this precise moment, there’s something about the way the dim lighting is glinting off her gold-brown hair that makes her seem like she’s glowing.

The noise of the bar feels way too overwhelming all of a sudden, the laughter and clinking glasses grating against my nerves. I glance toward the door, longing for fresh air. Andy is who knows where, having clearly forgotten about me in favor of the twenty other friends he’s made in the past fifteen minutes.

“Do you want to get out of here?” I ask, the words spurting out before I can think twice.

Alina jerks her head back in shock. “What?”

“I mean…” I gesture toward the crowd. “It’s loud. Do you want to take a walk with me? Or something?”

What am I doing?

She hesitates, her gaze flicking toward the door. I’m certain that she’s going to snarl and tell me to leave her alone, but she surprises me.

Alina nods. “Yeah. Okay.”

***

The night air is cool and refreshing in comparison to the stifling heat of the bar. We walk in silence at first, our footsteps shuffling against the smooth boardwalk that borders the beach. In silence, we descend the wooden steps built into the sand. The ocean stretches out before us, dark and endless, the waves lapping gently against the shore.

Alina crosses her arms, her posture stiff.

“You know, I’m not usually the kind of person who drinks alone in bars,” she says suddenly. “I just—I needed to get out of my head for a while. I didn’t even know Andy was going to be there.”

“I get it,” I say.

She looks at me, her brow furrowed. “Do you?”

“More than you think,” I admit. “After my wife… there have been days over the past few years where I couldn’t stand being in my own skin.”

She clears her throat quietly. “I’m really sorry, Gabe.”

“Yeah. Thank you.”

We stop at the edge of the water, the waves licking at our shoes.

“I didn’t mean to be so standoffish yesterday,” she says after a minute, surprising me again. “At dinner, I mean. I know Wren looks up to you, and I shouldn’t have made it weird. I shouldn’t have left early.”

“You don’t have to apologize. It was weird, but not because of you. Honestly, that might’ve been the first time you and I ate dinner together, despite living in the same dorm for four years.”

She smiles faintly, her gaze fixed on the horizon. “Yeah… By the way, Wren’s a cool kid.”

“Thanks. She’s everything to me.”

“I can tell.”

We stand there for a long moment, the silence between us no longer uncomfortable.

Alina tilts her head back to gaze up at the stars. Her profile is delicate and graceful, all smooth lines and soft shadows. She has a lovely mouth, pouty and permanently frowning, but in an endearing sort of way.

I swallow hard, forcing myself to tear my gaze away from her. I can’t let my thoughts go there. Even if it’s a place they’ve been to before.