“Morning, Dad.”
It was a mystery for the ages how he routinely managed to be up and at ‘em before me, even while I was in training, but the fact still remained he consistently was. He couldn’t have gotten more than three hours a sleep a night.
“Hungry?”
“Sure.”
“Eat up.”
Dad put a high protein breakfast, drawn from newly bought preserved meats, in front of me. I still missed Mom, but as far as single dads went, I had nothing to complain about. He could be annoying on occasion, but who wasn’t?
Belly full and motivation high, I exited the kitchen and went at a fast walk to the forest gate Elise had told me about. Things had been going pretty well in that respect. We’d both been at the duplex for just over a week, without any major incidents. The worst things had really gotten was that first coffee.
Tensions as high as they’d been when we were at high school before I left for college. Raging and mutual, the animosity hadn’t quelled in the last year or so. Old wounds aching in unison. How things changed so radically was as baffling as when I saw her again for the first time, but there it was.
All it really took for us to break through that seemingly impenetrable wall was to basically give each other a chance. Suddenly, I wasn’t sure how I’d gotten along without her. The girl I’d considered an antagonist, or at least someone I didn’t like, was very rapidly becoming one of my closest friends. Mostly by necessity, granted, but initial desperation had led to something more. Particularly when we discovered how much we had in common.
The gate creaked open, giving access to a different sort of world. I never would have guessed that such a landscape could be hiding behind the duplex, I’d lived there much of my life but had never noticed the gate. It usually helped to have a second pair of eyes; you never knew what you might find.
Taking it slow down the hill, trying not to lose my footing, I set off at a steady jog, swinging off to the right to more easily circumvent the pond Elise warned me about. I had limited time, having landed the job I’d interviewed for on the spot. I only had a little while before my first shift, but I was nothing if not efficient.
Winding through the standing trees, like a wild born thing, getting more in touch with wherever it was existence derived from. The pound of my heart in my ears reminded me that I was alive.
Dad had disappeared when I got back. Returned to the depths of his home office/gym. A unique combination to be sure, but he was always clear that one should work out one’s mind as well as one’s body. His influence was the most likely origin of the notion that going to school on a sports scholarship didn’t mean coasting. It was possible to achieve some sort of balance. Using on to help the other. The old Jocks v. Nerds trope, only really existed in broad, low-budget fiction.
The tap knob shrieked as I turned it. The slumlord had fixed the plumbing, or at least so he had claimed. He probably just clanked around with a wrench for a while, to make a show of it, making it worse if anything. I would undoubtedly have to go back to using the shower on the other side, at least for the foreseeable. A prospect that held much less terror now that we were all on good terms.
It was like the mirror joke used in old TV shows, Elise and I reaching the sizable gap in the wall at the same instant. She had apparently had the shower idea as well, albeit a little earlier, and was still trying to tie the towel around her lovely raven hair. Much to the detriment of the one wrapped around her body, the tuck coming loose, and the towel fluttering to the floor.
There was a time I would have been paralyzed in wonderment. The sight of her beautiful body held me in place, never wanting the moment to end. I wasn’t thought. Difficult as it could be to compartmentalize, Elise was my friend, and she was in a spot of bother.
Eyes on the floor, I sprang into action and hopped through the gap, picking up the towel, wrapping it back around her before she even had time to cover herself with her arms. Without a word, I tucked it in tight, trying to ignore the way my thumb brushed the curve of her breast as I did, and returned to my room until the coast was clear.
Bringing my clothes in with me, I made use of the shower on the Vaughn side, and headed out, bus fare jingling in my pocket like percussion.