“YOU GONNA WALK me to my door?” I ask as Charlie makes her way up the long driveway.
“Does that make me a gentleman?” she says, laughing.
“I hope not,” I say, leaning one elbow on the windowsill of her car, the windows rolled down to the night air.
After the swimming hole, we went out and got a drink at Strangeways, one of a few bars in town, and then we talked until they kicked us out at midnight. I told her how much I always hated it when the cops in town called me son, especially after my dad died.
I don’t bring up the close call with Officer Sherman. I don’t bring up what an arrest or prosecution could have meant for me; I don’t bring up that if I’d gotten really unlucky, I could have landed on the sex offender registry.
I know she didn’t think any of that through before taking me there. She wanted to do it, and she did. There’s a beauty in the simplicity of it, a beauty that I envy when I feel like every decision in my life is a complex flow chart.
She parks, we get out and walk to my house, bumping into each other’s sides as we walk, glancing up at the stars. In front of the door she turns, and we kiss, ignoring the bugs buzzing around the porch light over our heads.
“You want to come inside?” I ask, my hand on her back, even though my mom is home and nothing can happen.
“Isn’t that supposed to be my line?” she teases, eyes sparking.
There’s a slight rush of blood downward at the mere words, and I ignore it, looking away.
“I’m kidding,” she says, one hand on my chest.
“I know,” I say, leaning my head down, my forehead against hers. “That was reckless of us.”
We were half a second from having to find an open pharmacy that carried the morning after pill, I think. We’re in the rural Virginia boondocks. I have no idea how far we’d have to drive. Hours, maybe.
“It was good, though,” she says softly, and I bite my lips together, so I don’t agree with her aloud.
“We should be more careful,” I say, pushing my fingers through her wild curls, some of them still slightly damp. “Of all people, I should know better.”
Charlie sighs, takes my hand in hers, kisses the back.
“I’m sorry,” she says. “I’ll be more responsible.”
It’s not really what I want. I want her wild, impulsive; I want her skinny dipping and fucking me bare on the rocks, and I want to come inside her and hold her close and never let go.
But I don’t want another kid, at least, not yet, and I know full well that Charlie’s not on birth control. She’d never remember to take it every day.
“I love you,” I tell her.
“I love you too,” she whispers, and we kiss, and then I go inside and Charlie drives away and I wish, for at least the thousandth time, that instead she were staying with me, that I could fall asleep next to her, wake up next to her, that when Rusty jumped on my bed in excitement for breakfast cereal and cartoons, that Charlie could be there, too.
I fall asleep wishing for her, wondering how soon is too soon.
“IT NEEDS BLUEBERRIES FOR EYES,” Rusty says critically, standing on a step stool by the stove. “And a nose. And you weren’t supposed to give it a tail.”
“I’ll cut the tail off,” I tell her, carefully plonking two blueberries onto her pancake, approximately where a wombat’s eyes should be.
Suddenly Rusty hesitates, then looks up at me.
“It’s okay, Dad,” she says. “I’ll eat it anyway. It’s fine.”
I flip the pancake over on the griddle, the bottom perfectly golden brown. I’m no Eli, but I’m pretty good at blueberry pancakes these days, even if my art direction could probably use some help.
“How was your date with Charlie?” she asks, still watching the pancake, suddenly sounding seventeen and not seven. She’s been doing that sometimes lately. I’m not sure how I feel about it.
Well, sweetheart, we barebacked on some rocks because I thought with my dick instead of my brain and then we nearly got arrested, and I had a great time anyway, I think.
I do not say that out loud.
“It went well,” I tell her. “She says hi. How was your game night with Grandma?”
“I won,” Rusty says, matter-of-factly. “I don’t think Grandma’s very good at games.”
My phone buzzes on the counter, and I glance at it as I flip the wombat off the griddle and onto a waiting plate, then hand it to Rusty.
“It’s Uncle Seth,” she says, leaning over to look at it.
“Yo,” I answer.
“We have a code fucking red goddamn disaster,” he says, more than a note of panic in his voice. “Someone didn’t put the release valve on the wort tank that’s brewing the double and it exploded last night, and now there’s fucking sticky half-beer everywhere—”
“It exploded?” I ask, frozen in place, a wombat pancake in one hand.
“Yes!” he says, sounding exasperated.
“They’re not supposed to explode—”
“No shit.”
Rusty walks over, takes her plate from me, and starts eating quietly at the table. She can definitely tell something’s wrong.
“It’s a whole batch, Daniel, we already had the orders in for the kegs and now we’re gonna have to delay those, not to mention that every goddamn thing in this place is sticky right now plus the floor is still covered in beer,” he says.
Fuck. Fuck. The double IPA is one of our biggest sellers and missing a batch of it hurts.
Not to mention that I have no idea what else went wrong when it exploded. Was it infected with bad yeast? Is everything in the brewery infected? Is it all just waiting to explode because someone didn’t sanitize the equipment properly?
Fuck.
“I’ll be down,” I tell him, and hang up before he can start ranting in my ear again, because when Seth gets worked up, he can really get worked up.
“What happened?” Rusty asks, still chewing, and I sigh.
We were going to go to the park, take a short hike, maybe follow it up with a swim. Definitely ice cream downtown, just the two of us, since lately I’ve felt like I haven’t spent enough one-on-one time with my kid.
“There’s a problem at the brewery, I’ve gotta go in,” I say. “Do you mind eating the rest of that in the car?”
