‘Fu–aw, man,’ I groan. This kid. I check the clock on the dashboard. I’m already cutting it close, with about five minutes till camp starts and three left in this drive. I pride myself on never being late, but when the sitter cancels, there’s only so much a guy can do. It’s a miracle I remembered to pack lunches.
I absolutely bin my parking job once we end up in the lot, but I do it with a few minutes to spare. I heft Tali out of her booster, slamming the car door closed and slinging my backpack over my shoulder, nearly clocking myself with the protruding handles of the lacrosse sticks. She grips my hand with a stern, ‘Daddy, pull yourself together.’
‘Good stuff, Tal.’ I exhale heavily, and we speed-walk across the pavement to the chain-link fence, already propped open with Benny and Jordan at the table checking kids in.
‘Jordan!’ Tali yelps the second we’re within screeching distance. She promptly breaks into a happy skip, pulling meforward at an even more eager pace so we can meet Jordan at the table.
‘Tali! Hey, dude!’ Jordan grins broadly, to her credit, completely unfazed by my daughter’s Red-Bull energy. She has on a pair of hot-pink-framed sunglasses that Tali’s already eyeing longingly. Around a drag of water (or chai, actually) from her massive tumbler, she says, ‘Is it bring-your-dad-to-work day?’
‘That was a dad joke,’ Tali proclaims, pigtails bouncing. ‘Daddy said Kelsey is a slacker.’
‘The babysitter.’ I push a stray strand of hair off my forehead and hike my quickly slipping backpack strap up higher. ‘Flaked on us this morning for some concert in NYC tonight. My sister’s out at the winery with my other sister before she comes to town. It’s—’
‘Everyone has crazy days, Rod,’ Jordan reassures me. ‘It’s fine. One more kid won’t hurt. And Tali,’ she beams at my daughter, ‘is great. Don’t worry. Get your cleats on. She can sit at the table with us for a minute.’
‘Okay. Good. Thank you.’ I manage a quick grimace of a grateful smile before rushing through the fence to chuck my bag in the bleachers and get my shoes on. By the time I’m lacing up, it looks like Benny and Jordan are already closing up shop. Our crowd of kids is beginning to flood the field, and the two of them, Tali between them, bring up the rear.
‘LOOK!’ Tali practically sprints over to me, sporting a toothy grin when she grabs my leg with a grip way too iron for a six-year-old. ‘Daddy! You like ’em?’
Her face is literally swimming in Jordan’s big pink sunglasses. She looks so happy, though, and that’s the thing with kids. They could do the most ridiculous stuff, and you wouldn’t care, aslong as they have the shit-eating grin on their face. When it’s my own kid, all bets are off. I’m by no means a devil-may-care parent, but I’d do whatever it took to see that light in Tali’s eyes, over and over again.
My gaze flits across the field to Jordan, who’s waving an arm to round up the campers, now down a pair of pink sunglasses to the little gremlin in front of me.
‘They look awesome,’ I tell Tali.
She squeals happily, adjusting the massive fashion fixture before it goes flying off her face, and I can’t help the smile that inadvertently creeps across my face as we head towards our campers to get them started on warm-ups.
‘You know, I wish I’d had something like this as a kid.’
Jordan and I haul equipment into the shed at the end of the day, our usual routine, while Benny checks campers out, his brand-new assistant Tali up at the table with him.
‘Lacrosse camp?’ I ask her through a particularly vicious shove of a row of stubborn hurdles to get our cones on the shelf.
‘Yeah. That and just … someplace. Population five hundred doesn’t really get a summer camp,’ she remarks wryly. We leave the shed, and the still-brutal sun immediately flashes right into our eyes.
I pop my sunglasses down. ‘Five hundred, huh?’
‘That’s a guess. No one’s actually sure,’ snorts Jordan. ‘But it’s like …’ She sighs, stretches her arms over her head. ‘I grew up on the ranch. The movies do a bang-up job of making it look romantic and aesthetic, but it’s a lot of grunt work. You do that kinda work from childhood onward, you start wishing therewas somewhere everything didn’t feel like a chore.’ A tentative note enters Jordan’s voice as she squints against the sun, tucks a hair behind her ear. ‘This is real nice, what you’ve built.’
‘Thank you.’ I feel something unusually warm in my chest when she returns my words with a gentle smile, one that’s more vulnerable than anything I’ve seen in the last week. ‘I’m glad you like it.’
‘It’s good.’ A hint of that vulnerability leaves her smile and, for some reason, I find myself wanting it back. Missing it. ‘Perfect time to finally cut loose. Right?’
‘Right,’ I echo. We make our way to the bleachers, Jordan still shielding her eyes, and maybe it’s just to fill the silence, but I say, ‘You didn’t have to give Tali your glasses, Jordan.’
‘Rod. Look at her!’ she replies with a laugh. It’s a fucking beautiful laugh, full of life, fulfilment. She gestures towards Tali, sitting with Benny on the bottom row of the stands, kicking her feet while Benny cuts the plastic off a juice pop for her. She’s still wearing those sunglasses, and I don’t think they’ll be coming off anytime soon. Jordan’s right. Kids, the littlest things light up their world. The more I work with Jordan, the more I kind of envy how well she’s got that figured out.
‘Have juice pops!’ Tali calls with a brisk tap of Benny’s shoulder. Our boss immediately procures two more, one red and one blue.
‘Yes, please,’ Jordan accepts eagerly, leaning over and plucking her pop from Benny’s hand with a ‘thank you very much’ and a grin.
‘Tal—’
‘Are you gonna say corn syrup again?’ my kid crosses her arms and demands. I cannot get anything past her. I know shedoesn’t get it from me, because I was a pretty awful student in high school and college, at least until I figured out what I wanted to do and stuck to it, but her mom’s whip-smart. Unfortunately, that means my daughter’s also feisty and knows it.
‘Tali, high-fructose corn syrup is very real and very bad,’ I insist, but it’s not worth an argument.
Jordan roots through her bag and comes out with a baby-blue Reapers cap. She slides it on before raising her juice pop with a smile. ‘One freezer pop won’t kill you, Popeye.’
