“Do you play cards?”
“I’m not going, Kai. We can’t go on dates to your fucking grandma’s house.”
I try not to flinch. Instead, I tap out the address and text it to him. “If you change your mind, that’s where I’ll be.”
It feels worse to leave him than I was afraid of, but I do it anyway. And I don’t just leave him. I walk out of V&V without looking back and ride my bike to Winooski.
I just about give my grandma a heart attack. She’s not expecting me to show up at all, let alone at the speed of fuckin’ light. It takes me a while and some rounds of gin rummy to calm her down. By then, my mom is home and all up in my shit. I’m lucky she cares, and I know that too, butChristit makes a man want to drink.
One beer.
Maybe two.
At three, I stop, but I’m out of practice and the buzz is real. I almost forget about my silent phone and anxious heart, but not quite. I can’t. My mom asks about Joss every six seconds.
“Mom, cut it out. I invited him, but he’s working. Why are you so obsessed with him?”
Cheryl probes me with a gaze that is nothing like mine. Shrewd and green, her eyes are wiser than wise. “You seem different since he’s lived with you. I want to meet the young man who’s made you yourself again.”
“I never said he was young. You don’t know anything about him.”
“Don’t I? You think I don’t have friends in Burlington anymore?”
My mom has friends everywhere, so I don’t bother to answer. I try to busy myself eating my grandma’s macaroni salad, but it’s bad and I’ve been spoiled by Joss’s cooking. By how he can take the simplest of things and make magic.
“Are you sure he can’t stop by when he’s finished?” Cheryl presses. “We’re night owls in this house so it doesn’t matter if it’s late.”
“Mom. Leave it alone.”
She finally gets the message. The conversation moves on, but I find myself indifferent and when my sister FaceTimes from her place in Woodstock, I go outside.
My mom’s porch wraps around the whole front of the house. It was frail and wobbly when she bought the house. I spent an entire summer shoring it up and painting it. A year later I was in college. Then mountain rescue came to call, and I figured I knew who I was.
Naive?
Maybe.
Does it matter?
Maybe not.
My mom kept nothing from her marriage to my dad except an old lawn chair. It’s pink and orange and ugly as hell, but a symbol of survival. I fold myself into it and watch the sun go down and the stars over Vermont come out, bright and clear. Sometimes I think I prefer the night sky to the blazing sun. I can stare at it with naked eyes and believe what I see. It doesn’t translate to sleeping well, but I can’t have it all.
Inside, I hear the rowdy poker game restart. No one comes looking for me. I’m glad of it and not just because I’m a horrible poker player. I came here to take a breather, but my mom’s inquisition has stoked the fire in me instead. I think about Joss. His frustration and misplaced anger. The remorse he’ll beat himself with later. It doesn’t seem right. It certainly ain’t fair.
Text him.
But I don’t know what to say. I’m beyond sorry that he’s upset, but it’s not my fault—Iknowthat—and pretending it is helps no one.
Fuck it. I let my eyes fall closed, listening to the sounds of my mom’s neighborhood. To the freak show she’s got going on inside. I’ve never lived in this house, but somehow it still feels like home. Where I come to feel safe when I let myself. Over the summer, I’ve found the same sanctuary in Joss, but I need to let it go.
“That’s the weirdest chair I’ve ever seen.”
I jerk upright, neck cracking. Joss is standing over me, a foil-covered dish in one hand, his phone in the other, and it takes me a second to compute that he’s real. That he’s onmy mom’sfuckin’ porch. “Uh. It’s a marriage killer. Legendary powers.”
“I thought it was rogue dick that fucked up your childhood.”
“It was. I mean, my childhood wasn’t fucked up, but my dad gave it a good college try with his—you know what? That sentence is better left unsaid.”
