Nineteen, page 9
I’m seriously that sprung on her.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
“Why are you watching this?” Mama asks from the kitchen. It’s massive and white with subway tile on the wall that she installed before she got sick of seeing Joanna Gaines do it on TV. From where Mama is standing behind the island, she can see into the entire living room. She nods to the television over the fireplace, her hands covered in flour from the dough she’s rolling. “You hate baseball.”
“It’s alright.”
She frowns even though she tries to hide it. “John isn’t even here, baby. You don’t have to watch it.”
“I really don’t care.”
And it’s his house. His TV. His couch I’m lying around on. It only seems right I turn the channel to something he’ll want to see when he comes home.
“If you’re not gonna watch what you wanna, put on something for me,” she commands.
“Like what?”
“You know what.”
I obediently turn it to HGTV where a couple in Minneapolis is house hunting.
Five minutes in and Mama tsks disapprovingly at the screen. “Stupid. That backyard is tiny.”
“They don’t care. They don’t have kids or a dog.”
“How can she have a garden with a yard that small?”
“Maybe she doesn’t garden.”
Mama snickers. “She’s livin’ wrong.”
I grin, glancing up from my phone to catch her roll her eyes at the unknowing women on the screen.
Mama doesn’t understand people who don’t garden. They’re right up there with people who claim to be taken by aliens. ‘Psychos’, that’s what she calls them. All of them.
“It’s good to have you home,” she says suddenly. She stops kneading her dough to look at me. She’s probably taking a mental picture, storing me away for another time when she needs me and I’m nowhere to be found.
“Thanks, Mama.” I smile at her over the back of the couch. “It’s good to be home.”
And I mean it. I struggle with her coming to visit me in Oregon, but I like coming home to her in South Carolina. This is comfortable. Her on campus in leggings and an Oregon hoodie, her hair curled and her face younger and fresher than most of the mom’s there, that feels weird. That turns into my classmates, sometimes even teammates, checking her out. Flirting with her. Then, as the visit winds down to the end, she gets sad that I’m so far away. She starts judging the way I live, mothering me too hard, and trying to change things. That’s when I start to lose it. It’s stressful having her touch that part of my life, so I keep her distant from it.
“It should be for longer,” she laments. “Two weeks is too short. I thought your summer vacation would be longer, but it’s no better than Christmas break.”
“It’s all the time I’ve got before summer semester starts.”
“I get the why. It doesn’t mean I have to like it.”
“Sorry.”
She sighs, shaking her head and hands. A cloud of white dust swirls around her, her blue eyes finding mine through the fog. “Don’t be sorry for being great, Butler. You’ll be sorry your whole life if you start that now.”
The sound of Big John’s truck rumbles in the distance.
On instinct, Mama glances at the clock. “Right on time,” she muses proudly.
I reach for the remote to turn it back to baseball.
“Don’t you dare,” she scolds me sharply. “I wanna see which house they choose.”
“Second one.”
“No. Third. It had a spare room to convert into a nursery.”
“No, they don’t have kids,” I argue.
Mama smiles knowingly. “She’ll be pregnant by the time they check back in with them. Trust me.”
The backdoor swings open. I hear Big John’s boots hit the floor as he shoves them off his feet in the mudroom. Quince, our thirteen-year-old black lab, meanders his way back there to sniff the dirt on his shoes, asking where he’s been. He’ll get ear scratches and a small rawhide for his trouble. It’s the best part of Quince’s day when Big John comes home.
Our house is in the sticks, but it’s no log cabin. My stepdad started a construction company twenty years ago, growing the business from just him and his brothers to over a hundred employees in three different cities. Mama met him when it was really starting to take off. She got hired on as a painter with Cousin Jules, and they spent days inside the houses Big John Cohen was building.
John fell in love with Mama in the first five minutes. That’s what he says. Mama says she loved his laugh, and the rest came later. He thinks that’s funny. They love to tell that story together.
In high school, he was King Shit of everything. He ran track, played football and baseball, but he never went to college so he never went pro. He was close, that’s what everyone says, but John says close only counts in horseshoes and grenades. It took me a lot of years to figure out what that meant. Now that I’m at the University of Oregon with all this talk about what I’ll do and how far I’ll go, I get it. I see the difference between getting close to a thing and actually doing it.
Big John walks into the kitchen looking larger every time I see him. He walks up to Mama, kissing her on the cheek and muttering something in her ear that makes her smile. He goes to the sink to wash his hands, his eyes on the TV. Then me.
He smiles broadly. “How you doin’, Butler?”
“Good. How was work?”
“Busy. How’s havin’ downtime?”
“Weird.”
“I bet,” he chuckles. “You been makin’ the most of it?”
“Tryin’.”
“That’s good.” He opens the fridge. Grabs a long neck. He makes a gesture asking if I want one.
I shake my head ‘no’.
“You need the break,” he continues. “You deserve it. You’re workin’ hard, son.”
“I’m tryin’,” I repeat.
“Your mama and I, we we’re talkin’ about getting away this weekend. That house we like on the beach in Wilmington is available.”
“Cousin Jules can come,” Mama adds, sweetening the pot.
She knows I love Cousin Jules. She’s brash and funny. She crosses lines, even when she doesn’t mean to. She’s a lot like me. It’s in the blood, Jules always tells me. Usually when one of us has gone too far.
“Is she still dating that dog beautician?” I ask.
“Professional Pet Groomer, and yes. She is. For almost a year. He makes house calls now. He has his own truck and everything,” she says, like owning a van somehow legitimizes you.
“You think you wanna go?” Big John presses.
I shrug. “Sure. Yeah. I like the beach.”
Mama smiles. “Good. I’ll set it up.”
“Do you wanna bring a friend?” Big John asks. “There’s plenty of room.”
My mind immediately goes to Brooklyn. Would I want to bring her to the beach and see her on the sand in the sun? In a bikini. A red one with that thin strap around the back of her neck. Where was she in that Insta picture? Has she ever seen the South Carolina coastline?
But Brooklyn is not an option. She’s home in Ohio, seven hours away. She’s not who Big John is talking about. He’s asking if I want to invite any of my friends from high school who either never left Rock Hill or they came back for the summer. I got here four days ago and I’ve been out with them every night. I’m going out again tonight with some guys from my high school team. It’ll be fun, but the idea of having one of them tag along for a whole weekend sounds exhausting. They’ll want to drink the entire time and even though I’m on vacation, I’m still in training. I can’t slack off more than a day or two.
“Nah,” I tell my parents. “Cousin Jules is probably all I can handle.”
Big John snorts. “Amen to that,” he mutters into his beer.
Mama swats him playfully in the stomach. She leaves a small white spot of flour on his dusty black T-shirt. “Go take a shower. Dinner’ll be ready soon.”
He kisses her cheek, taking his beer with him upstairs.
While Mama focuses on cooking and baseball drones in the background, I turn to my phone. I think I’m gonna look on Facebook or Insta, but the first thing I do is text B. She left for Ohio just this morning and I want to know if she made it home okay.
Did you crash and burn? I text her.
Two minutes later she answers, How shitty would you feel if I actually did?
The shittiest.
Good. You should. You’re a monster.
You’re alive, though, I remind her. So it’s not shitty. It’s funny. For now.
Easy, Bundy. You’re tipping your hand. I’m going to get suspicious.
I’m glad you didn’t die.
Me too. It’d be a fucking bummer.
For most of the spring semester, Brooklyn and I were obsessed with each other. We texted all day. We talked almost every night. We didn’t see each other much because I always had practice and she worked a lot at a drive-up coffee kiosk in a Home Depot parking lot. We tried though. We wanted to see each other and that’s better than nothing.
Anything is better than not knowing her at all.
When it got down to Finals Week, we realized our schedules were not going to line up. I was flying out the morning after my last test and she was taking a final at that same time. We both had to study the entire week before that. It had been almost a month since we’d seen each other at that point and we weren’t going to see each other again until after the summer.
I got real anxious about that. More than I wanna admit. Brooklyn saw it or heard it or, hell, maybe she felt it too. She drove down two nights before I left and met me at the library. We sat across from each other in silence for most of the night, both of us studying and sipping cold coffee, but it was good. It was enough to be able to look up and see her sitting there in front of me. To smell her perfume whenever she stood up to stretch.
When we said goodbye that night, she hugged me.
She told me not to forget her over the summer.
I told her I couldn’t if I tried.
Then I intentionally called her by the wrong name to keep her humble.
‘Cause I’m an asshole.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Cousin Jules and her boyfriend show up at the beach house three hours late. It’s a three hour drive from Rock Hill. That means they left right around the time they were actually supposed to be here. Mama isn’t fazed by it, either because she’s used to it or because shit like that genuinely doesn’t bother her. Like socks in the middle of the living room floor. Big John and me, though, we’re shook.
“How do you show up three hours late to anything?” he asks me.
I shake my head, my hands in my pockets. “How do you drive around in a dog grooming van and still take yourself seriously?”
“He owns his own business. I’ll give him credit for that. It seems successful.”
“I looked up his website. One of the services he offers is ‘anal gland expression’.”
Big John smirks. “He’s filling a need, I guess.”
We look out over the ocean view, our backs to the house. We’re hiding on the third story porch outside the bedroom he’s sharing with Mama. I’m next door. Cousin Jules and Anal Glands are on the other side of me, and I swear to God if I hear any of them having sex through the walls again this year, I’m coming out on this porch and diving headfirst onto the pavement below.
“How are classes going?” he asks conversationally. “Are you on track to graduate in three like you planned?”
“I should be.”
“What are your grades lookin’ like?”
“All As and Bs.”
He shakes his head in awe. “That’s impressive, Butler. I couldn’t pull As and Bs in high school, and I wasn’t under half the pressure you are.”
“I’m careful about managing my time and keeping focus. We set small goals that we can achieve quickly that work toward a larger goal. It keeps you motivated.”
“Did your coaches teach you that?”
“Yeah.”
“That’s good. You’re not just getting an education in the classroom. You’re getting it on the field too.” He nods slowly as he thinks it over. “That’s really good.”
“They know I’m going pro. They’re trying to get me ready.”
“Did they teach you that too? To say you’re going pro like it’s a fact, not a maybe?”
“No,” I reply seriously. “That’s all me.”
***
That night after a long dinner with a lot of questions about school and football and who am I dating and why am I not dating anyone, I’m such a handsome, charming guy, I go to bed feeling sick in a way I can’t explain. My head doesn’t hurt but it feels full. My stomach is a mess from the shift in food. I was eating a lot of lean protein and whole foods in Oregon, and now I’m gorging myself on processed everything cooked in three different kinds of fat. It’s fucking delicious but it’s killing me on the inside. I feel off balance and lonely.
I’ve never felt lonely before in my life.
On the deck, looking out over the ocean in the dark, I breathe in deeply. The air tastes like salt. The good kind. The clean kind that rushes up off the beach with every exhale of the ocean. I can hear it breathing.
In and out.
In and out.
I’m breathing with it, my eyes sliding closed.
In and out.
In and—
“Ohhhh, God!” Cousin Jules cries out.
It sounds like she’s standing right next to me, screaming in my ear.
“Yes! Yes! Yes! Right there!”
“Not again,” I moan miserably.
“Bend over,” Jessup, AKA Anal Glands, grunts. “Get on your knees.”
“Oh fuck!”
“Yeah. That’s good. So good, baby.”
He’s doing her doggy style.
Doggy. Style.
With the window wide open.
“Flick it. Hurry! I wanna come.”
I rush back into my room, slamming the door shut hard. “Fucking Christ,” I groan through gritted teeth. “Every time.”
My aunt’s muffled cries vibrate through the wall. She moans so loud I’m worried she’s going to wake my parents on the other side of the house.
I guess he flicked it.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
On our last day in Wilmington, we have brunch in the historic district. Horse drawn carriages drive tourists down tree lined streets of Victorian homes, ending at a massive, plantation style mansion.
We eat in a Victorian house that’s been converted into a restaurant with slow service but delicious omelets. Inside it’s hot and loud. Luckily, we’re seated on the peripheral next to a big bay window filled with houseplants in mismatched ceramic pots.
We order coffee and overpriced juice. It comes in small glasses that look like they belonged to someone’s Grandy sixty years ago. I can almost taste the menthol cigarettes on the rim. Big John talks about business and how Rock Hill is expanding. He’s careful not to say too much about me joining his team someday, but it’s what he’s thinking. He wants me to have a Plan B, they both do, him and Mama, but no one ever says it. To say it would be to suggest that I won’t make it to the NFL and saying that is like telling me my reason for breathing is bullshit.
“We’re movin’ our territory farther across South Carolina,” Big John explains. “I got a lead on a place closing up shop in White Oak that I might jump on. I’ll need someone to run it for me once it’s functioning again, but that’s years down the road.”
“Gives you plenty of time to hire,” I joke, dodging the implication. “Why’s the old place closing?”
“The guy’s a drunk and a gambler. The shop was thriving until he drove it six feet under, now his whole staff is out of work. Good men who did good work are out of jobs they should be able to count on.”
“John’s hopin’ he can help them,” Mama tells me.
She’s reminding me what a good guy he is. She does that. A lot. It’s an old habit from the days when Big John first came into our lives. I took a long time to warm up to him, and even now there are times where I shy away from him. I don’t know why. I can’t control it. I don’t even think it has anything to do with him. I think it’s the way he came into our lives, the timing of it. I was young. Suddenly there was this man in our house and Mama showed him love, something I’d never seen her do with any other man but me, and, yeah, I know how fucked that can come across.
I wasn’t ready to share my mama with another man. That’s it. I wanted all of her love for me. It wasn’t that she was mine. The problem was, I’d always been hers, and suddenly Big John was hers too, and that felt like shit.
It felt like I was being cut in half.
Now I look at him and he’s this part of myself that I never wanted to give up, but there it is. There it goes, making him seem bigger than ever and me… I’m smaller. I’m less than I used to be. All because my mama learned to love someone other than me.
“Too bad Butler will be busy makin’ millions so he can take care of all of us in our old age,” Cousin Jules says, her eyes on mine. Her mouth in a sly smile. “Otherwise he’d probably help you out, John.”
I love her for that. For never doubting me.
Mama smiles supportively. “He has a couple more years of school before that happens.”
“How’s it goin’ at school?” Jules asks.
“All As and Bs,” Big John answers.
“The campus is beautiful,” Mama gushes to Jules and Jessup. “It’s very green. When we visited it for the first time, we were blown away by how many trees there were, weren’t we Butler?”
I shake my head. “I don’t really remember.”
“I think he was more impressed by the gym than the trees,” Big John tells the table.
“I probably did, yeah.”
“You sure you like it there?” Cousin Jules challenges skeptically. “You seem pretty lukewarm about everything.”
