I wake up the next morning, late, to the sound of my phone’s video call ring. I’m in no mood to answer—I drank too much last night, having stopped off at a corner market on my walk home to buy six cans of lousy beer, and my mouth might as well be full of sand. Sensible Ben would have had two glasses of water and a couple of painkillers before bed, but if I remember right, there’d been a moment where I’d thought of it, and then decided I’d deserved the hangover.
Even though I’ve pretty much lost hope on the Kit-calling-me-back front, I’m too conditioned to check the screen, just in case.
It’s River’s number, and I scoot up in bed, glad that I’ve got a t-shirt and shorts on.
“Hey,” I say, wincing as I see myself in that little corner box. I look like shit.
“You look like shit,” says my dad, who’s standing behind River, the windows of the salvage yard’s office visible behind them. The kid has entirely lost the lavender hair color, but he’s replaced it with a few bright red tips at the front. It looks ridiculous, but whatever. We’re all entitled to being fourteen, I guess, and anyways, I’m too grateful for the call. It’s the first time I’ve talked to River since I’ve been gone. He doesn’t hear all that well on the phone, and so I’ve had to settle for texts or updates from Dad.
“Hey, man,” I say to him, conscious of the way my mouth moves, making sure he’ll be able to follow me.“How’s classes?”
“Summer session ended yesterday. I got a B-plus in physics,” he says, plain as anything, but there’s a little quirk to the corner of his mouth that tells me he’s proud.
“That’s great. Now you’re a free man.” I pick up the phone and take it with me to the kitchen, awkwardly holding it out in front, but I’ve got to get some water in me. Even this little bit of conversation feels impossible around the dryness of my mouth and throat.
“Still got another month here,” he says.
“Oh, it’s some big chore, huh?” Dad shouts, too loud. He’s terrible at FaceTime—this is why we never do it on our own.“You know it’s Saturday, right, kid? That’s supposed to be your day off.”
Even with the crappy picture, I don’t miss the flags of color on River’s cheeks.“Your dad sucks at social media,” he says, by way of explanation.
I swallow down another few gulps of water, wipe my mouth with the back of my hand.“That seems like a given, Riv. What are you up to?”
River shrugs, does the hair toss for hair that’s not there anymore.“I set the yard up with a Twitter account.”
“What a bunch of nonsense!” Dad shouts again, and River reaches up to adjust his hearing aids.
“It’s a good idea,” River says, looking at me now, and the way he goes to me for approval—it gets to me, makes me feel ten feet tall and terrible, all at the same time.“Most local businesses are on there, and they’re already following us back. Plus, those auction sites you guys use, they’re on here, and it’s a better way of watching what’s coming up for bidding.”
Fuck if I don’t feel a little streak of pride, hearing River talk about yard business. And a little bit of envy too.“It’s a great idea,” I say.“Dad, do what River says.” River doesn’t quitebeam, but he definitely looks happy, proud.
We talk for a bit about yard business, mostly me trying to ignore the pounding in my head while River and my dad talk about customers, new stuff they’ve had coming in. They ask me about work, and I offer the most mundane, disinterested answers. I’d rather hear about them. From all these miles away, it feels comforting to have this piece of the yard, and of Dad and River, with me.“We gotta go, Smalls,” Dad says, too loud still, then turns to look at me.“Closing the yard for a couple of hours to go to River’s house for lunch.” He puts a finger up to the side of his head, twirls it to indicate what he thinks of River’s mom.
“Dude,” River says, pointing toward the screen.“I can see youright there.” But he’s laughing a little, a pattering huff to his breath. Suddenly I want to be at that crazy lunch more than anything. The day ahead of me feels formless, empty—just computer work and whatever I keep on the TV as background noise.
River gets up and goes out of frame, so my dad looks down through the screen at me. He’s got this furrow in his brow, a look I remember well. I’d given my dad so many years of brow-furrowing shit before I’d left home.“Miss you, kid,” he says, and it takes me so much by surprise I almost drop the phone. My dad has never told me that before, not even when I first left home.
I clear my throat, once, twice, a third time, even though it’s still dry as the Sahara in there.“I miss you too.” For a second, we’re just looking at each other in our little boxes, me and Dad. He looks the way I hope to look when I’m his age—sure, he was hurt, but he’s still strong, still healthy. He was my hero my whole life, and he still is.
“I’ll call you later,” he says, still furrowed up in the brow, and I know he knows I was out drinking last night. I know he’ll call to make sure I’m not doing the same tonight, that I’m not out doing something stupid.
“Yeah, all right.”
“Hey, Ben, wait,” River says, coming back into frame right as I’m reaching to press the button to disconnect. There it is, that ten-foot-tall feeling again, because River’s actually never called me by my name before.
“Yeah?”
“Tell Kit about my B-plus, okay?”
Terrible feeling, back again.“Sure, man.”
Once the screen has gone black, I lean forward, my forearms pressing on the cold granite countertops. From here I can see the whole living space of my apartment, pristine and un-lived in, except for where I tossed my suit jacket on the arm of the couch last night. I can hear, barely over the quiet hum of my refrigerator, the city sounds outside. I wonder whether Kit misses me, or whether that look in her eyes at the hospital telegraphed exactly how easy it was for her to cut me out of her life.
I don’t want to be here anymore, I think, with a clarity that is completely uncharacteristic of the hangover I’m sporting. I want to fly home today, hear my dad tell me in person about the lunch with River’s family, maybe watch a ballgame with him and Sharon. I want to open the salvage yard tomorrow and start working on that fucking chandelier again. Mostly I want to sit on Kit’s porch until she talks to me. Until she lets me back in that house again—her home, her place. But I know I can’t. I know I have to slow down, think of my responsibilities. Yesterday, Jasper was right. I’ve worked a long time toward the goals he and I had set together, and no matter what, I’d been unfair to the job, and to him. I’d done what felt good in the moment, hadn’t talked about the hard things, and because of that I’d hurt someone I’d loved. I’d possibly fucked up a friendship.
Back when I’d left home all those years ago, I’d told myself I’d finally figured it out—I’d seen that garage go up in flames, scared sick, and I’d sat in that detention facility for months, thinking over how bad I’d screwed up, how dangerous I’d been. And I told myself I’d do the grown-up thing: get serious about school, keep my head down until I could get out of town and start over. It’s not as if I’d made a terrible decision—I’d learned a lot, made friends, been successful, seen the world. But I’d missed things too—missed home, and my dad, and the business that was part of our family. Back then, I didn’t—couldn’t—see any other way.
I decide something then. Being with Kit, seeing her choose everything so carefully for her house, watching her with her friends, sitting with her through the sadness she’d felt over her brother, hearing her talk about her colleagues and her work—all of that, I realize, taught me something I hadn’t really managed to teach myself in all the years I’d been out here on my own. Kit was deliberate about her life, her choices, even when they weren’t perfect or easy to make. She’d been lucky, winning that jackpot, but she didn’t rely on luck. Shedidn’tlet life just happen to her. She wasn’t reckless or one-track minded.
