And he had to log on to fucking Facebook to do it.
After an enraging ten minutes of figuring out how to change his password, he sat on Georgia’s couch and looked up Ryan first. His actual best friend from Before. But as he had thought, Ryan was in Chicago, with a wife and two kids and a cat.
Part of him still wanted to go see Ryan’s folks, though, more than he wanted to see Chris or Waylon. He’d been a child who always felt more comfortable around adults than other kids. Like he was ready to be old.
But maybe Ryan’s parents had actually gotten old. Maybe one of them had had a stroke, too.
No, Georgia would have told him.
Georgia had always been so good at telling him things.
Dell rubbed a hand over his face. Released a hard breath. And tried again.
Waylon was still in the UP, but had moved up to Marquette. And good for him.
Chris, though, appeared to still be right here, in the middle of fucking nowhere. The place Dell had romanticized in his head a bit, the longer he’d been away. The place he was struggling to reconcile, now that he was actually here. It was both as lovely as he’d remembered and as rough: a small, hard-working place. He could smell the snow coming in the air.
Dell sent Chris a message, both hoping Chris didn’t check his Facebook messages and hoping he did, mostly so he wouldn’t let Georgia down.
A couple hours later, they had plans to throw a ball around at the park the next night.
* * *
Throwing a ball around in November in the UP was a fucking dumb idea.
“Shit, it’s cold.” Dell rubbed his hands along his arms, mitt stuck under his armpit. He’d had to root around the garage to find it.
“Yeah, nice to see you too,” Chris laughed. He held out a hand, drew Dell into a back-slapping hug when Dell shook it. “We can always head somewhere else if you want.”
“Nah, this is good. Just do me a favor?” Dell rubbed his shoulder, already stiff from the wind. “Try not to slug me right here. Got an injury there, few years back.”
“I’ll do my best.” Chris threw a dirty ball up in the air, caught it in his palm. “Been a while since I’ve actually done this with anyone.” He smiled, and Dell found himself surprised at how easy this felt. “Thanks for reaching out, man. It’s good to see you.”
“Yeah. Good to see you, too.”
They walked toward the outfield. The park was almost empty. A woman walked her dog around the perimeter. A bundled-up kid ran around the playground in the opposite corner.
“Sorry to hear about your mom,” Chris said. “She recovering okay?”
“Yeah. Just has a lot of occupational therapy to do now. Doctors say she’ll hopefully be back home in a few weeks. It was good it happened where someone could call for help.”
“Yeah. Shit.”
“Your mom doing okay?”
Dell almost saidyour parents, but at the last second remembered that Chris’s dad had taken off back in middle school. Funny how many details he’d locked away about the people he used to know. How they were tumbling back open the longer he stayed here.
“Ah, well.” Chris rubbed at his jaw. “Been struggling a bit with cancer for a while now.”
“Fuck. I’m sorry, Chris.”
“Eh, it is what it is. She’s in remission now, which is good. But I don’t know. You hear enough stories about it coming back harder than before…”
“Yeah.” Dell almost left it at that, because what more could you say? But after a second he added, because Chris had answered his message, because he’d met him out here to play catch in the freezing cold: “Hope it doesn’t, though.”
“Yeah, me too.”
And then they threw a ball around for a while. No need to talk. A blessed thing.
