His first cast is pretty shallow, and with a huff, he reels in quickly. The second ends up flinging his lure into the tree behind us. Silence be damned, I can’t help but laugh.
“I thought you said you knew how to fish.” I give him a taste of the way he mocked me when I tried playing his video game. “What kind of a cast was that?”
His lips press together and he squints at the tree behind us. “I’m used to fishing in a boat.”
“Oh,sorry,Mister Fancy Pants.” Once my own line’s been reeled back in, I gingerly amble across the hot rocks to get his hook untangled from a branch that’s a bit too high for him to reach. “Do you like fishing on a boat because when you send your lure behind you, it still hits the water?”
“Well, sometimes it hits Grandpa.” He giggles, clearly reminded of a fond memory. “He doesn’t like that.”
“Yeah, somehow I can’t imagine your grandpa wanting a cute nose or lip ring.” With a stretch that zips throughout my body, I struggle to pull the shiny fishing lure—designed to look like a blue and green minnow—out of the towering pine tree. I hesitate before handing it to him, looking him up and down with a discerning brow. “I don’t know if I trust you to have this.”
He shakes his head, tugging the line until it slips from my fingers, and steps back onto the rocks to try another cast.
Poised with his rod raised in his right hand, he looks over his shoulder. “Do you want a lip or nose ring? Stay still and it won’t hurt too bad. Promise.”
Kid is a menace. I love him.
I lunge out of the potential line of fire, dancing a bit to find a spot to stand that isn’t littered in sharp pine needles and pointy pebbles. “If you’re going to do it, I want something prettier than a trout minnow dangling from my face.”
After a quick inspection of my tackle box, he must decide there’s no suitable options because he focuses back on the water and finally manages a pretty good cast for a ten-year-old. I let him have a couple practice rounds before I feel safe enough to return to my spot on the large flat boulder.
“Told you I can fish,” he gloats, sticking out his tongue.
“And surprisingly you’re not cocky about it at all.”
The glimmering lake surface is the calmest I’ve ever seen, not even a ripple from a jumping fish. You can watch clouds pass by without looking up. The sun’s still hot, but with my bare feet in the cool water, I’m comfortable.
For the next few hours, we alternate between comfortable silence and casual conversation, about video games and the ranch and fishing and Betty’s whipped cream addiction. Though I want to ask exactly how often his dad cancels on him, I opt to keep things light.
I vividly remember the morning of my twelfth birthday. Mom had decorated the kitchen with orange streamers and baked a cake after I’d gone to bed the night before, and she’d agreed to let me skip school to go fishing with my dad. Halfway through my second bowl of Lucky Charms, the phone rang. Dad was fourteen hours away on a small cattle ranch. He must’ve known at least a full day before that he wouldn’t make it home in time. My uncle let my older cousin skip school with me, and the three of us spent the day in their aluminum fishing boat.
All I wanted from that day was to have fun. Forget about my dad fucking me over.
I wager Jonas feels the same way.
Sometime in the late afternoon, Jonas takes a swig from his water bottle and reaches for a granola bar in his backpack. To my surprise, he quietly holds a second one out for me to take.
He unwraps his and shoves the entire thing into his mouth, chewing thoughtfully for a moment before speaking. “I used to go fishing with Grandpa all the time before Grandma got sick.”
“You should ask him to go fishing with you this summer. Bet he’d love it.”
“Yeah…maybe.”
“Grandparents live for that shit. Makes them feel cool and young to hang out with kids.”
“Is that why you invited me fishing?” He smirks.
My mouth falls open with an audible gasp and I poke him in the ribs, making him jump. “Jonas Poopsie McFartsalot.Are you calling me old?”
His laughter carries over the lake and along the banks and drifts up through the trees like a howling wind. The sound’s a salve settling across thick, hard-earned scars on my soul.
Still wheezing, he says, “That’s not my name.”
“Well, I don’t know what your full name is, so I made itup.”
“Jonas Alexander Hart,” he corrects me with a beaming grin.
Though his dad may be represented by his middle name, Jonas being a Hart tells meeverything. Whit is a badass. She’s most likely been doing this on her own since the beginning, and there’s a good chance she faced backlash for not giving him Alex’s family name.
