“You’re leaving?” he asked.
“I’ve got a dentist appointment to go to. Got to make sure that my teeth are nice and healthy.” She smiled, showing him a nice row of white teeth. “But maybe I’ll see you later on, okay? Good job riding the bike.”
Many hours later, my best friend, Ben, came over. He, no doubt, had slept in, consumed copious amounts of coffee, and probably dicked around on the Internet for a while before finally deciding to get his day started. He strolled in right at I was coming downstairs from putting Declan down for his nap.
“This will probably be the last summer he takes a nap,” I said, feeling a twinge of regret. I’d gotten used to having an hour to myself in the middle of the day.
Ben yawned. “I could go for a nap.”
“Didn’t you just get up?”
“Nah, I’ve been up for hours. Went for a ride this morning on the Yeti, got some breakfast, came back home, rode the Merlin over here.”
“So you’ve gone on two rides today.”
“Guess so. I should be tired.” He yawned again and stretched, and I tried to swallow that benign envy that here it was, early afternoon, and he’d already been out twice.
“Damn, dude,” he said suddenly. He was looking out the side door, toward Allie’s house. “That’s your neighbor? I was expecting some old hag. She’s fine.”
“We just met her the other day,” I said. “Her name’s Allie. Declan took a real shine to her.”
“She single?”
“I don’t know, I didn’t ask.”
“I don’t even care if she wasn’t—I’d hit that shit regardless.”
Ben and I had been friends since we were kids, and though we were in our early 30s now, his attitude hadn’t changed much since we were 18. A point of pride for him.
“Let’s not make a bad first impression, okay? I’m the one who has to live next to her.”
“Bad first impression? Moi? I don’t think so. What do you know about her?”
“Not much. She’s a
teacher at Declan’s school.”
“Ooh, so she’s a teacher. So she’s smart and shit. I’m going to go proposition her.”
He was out of the house in a flash, before I could even say anything. I watched through the window as he strolled into her yard. Allie sat up from the weeding and brushed her hands off on her shorts. She was wearing a T-shirt and a pair of running shorts, showing off those long, muscular legs of hers. The window was open, but I couldn’t hear what they were saying, no matter how hard I strained. Ben’s back was to me, and he was partially blocking Allie’s face, though it looked like they were having a conversation of sorts. She had a smile on her face, I could see that much, and then it looked like she was laughing at something he said. It occurred to me, suddenly, that perhaps she would say yes, and they’d end up sleeping together. This was more bothersome to me than I’d been expecting, and when Ben finally made his way back, I was expecting the worst. His expression wasn’t really telling me either way.
He turned the brim of his Red Sox cap so it was backward. “Well...” he said, and then he paused, letting the moment draw out. Bastard.
“So how’d it go?” I asked, trying to sound nonchalant.
“Denied,” he said. “She sure is hot. She was cool about it, though. Said she wasn’t really looking to get in a relationship right now.” He laughed. “Not that I was asking about a relationship. I told her I didn’t want to be anyone’s boyfriend, either!”
“Classy,” I said.
Ben and I retreated to the garage, and he worked on my mountain bike for a little bit. The drivetrain would need to be replaced soon, but he thought it looked like I could get another couple hundred miles out of it first. When Declan woke up, we all piled into my car and went to Moose Lake. The water was still on the cold side this time of year, but I liked that; it felt refreshing.
I had moved here to Chapin right after Declan’s first birthday, about a two-hour drive from the coastal town I’d grown up in, where my parents still lived. How had I picked Chapin? I’d gotten a call from one of my former professors at Boston University, and she told me a friend of hers who worked at a clinic in rural Maine was going to be moving to California soon and was actively looking to hire a replacement, as opposed to shutting the clinic. When I had first started my residency, I’d had these grand ideas in my head, a busy urban office, sleek décor, half a dozen colleagues, maybe some sort of specialized medicine. But then, you know, life happened, and I decided to take a chance and move to Chapin.
It was going better than I expected; I liked working in a small-town. I liked getting to know the people and being able to spend more than five minutes with them. What I hadn’t been expecting was Ben to move, too, but he did, some six months later, saying that he wanted a change of scenery, even though all he was really trading was the ocean of eastern Maine for the mountains in the western foothills.
Whatever his motives were, I was grateful he had done so. I had some other parent acquaintances, but no real friends. There were also very few other dads at the playground; most often it would be me, pushing Declan in the swing or chasing him down the plastic slide, with a gaggle of mothers all sitting together, gossiping at a picnic table, while their children played. The teachers at Declan’s school were always kind, but again, I was one of very few guys who was doing the daily drop-off/pick-up duty.
It wasn’t at all the way I thought things were going to have worked out, but this was the reality now, and there was nothing I could do to change that. It was easy to think back to mistakes that had been made and how things could have been done differently, but what was the point? There was no way to take certain things back, and you just had to deal with the choices you had made.