I sighed.
I needed to avert a glitter glue feast and a frog crisis. I didn’t have time to think about Garrison Nash.
So I put my hands on my hips, caught my class’s attention…and got to work.
SIX
nash
I’d never really beenacommunityguy.
Okay…Rick’s was, in a manner of speaking, a community space. Locals knew it and went there when they needed a cheap, fast drink and a shoulder to cry on. Tourists found it and called it a hidden gem, and somehow we still managed to fly under the radar. But that bar wasmyplace, where I made the rules. It was more like my living room than anything else.
I wasn’t as good in settings like this: surrounded by other parents, kids running rampant and screaming and laughing and crying, absolutely surrounded by corny—and I do mean that literally—decorations, pumpkins, and carnival games.
“You hate this, don’t you?”
I looked over at my sister, who was watching me with a bemused smile instead of keeping an eye on her kids. Her goofyass husband, Andy, was currently sprinting around in a scarecrow costume, chasing Henry and Rosie and Nell around a hay bale like his life depended on it. Nell was shrieking with delight. Rosie was trying to bite the scarecrow. Henry, who was seven, was filming himself making silly faces on Claire’s phone, which she’d asked him to use to take pictures of the kids and the festival with.
“I don’t hate it,” I said.
“You look miserable.”
“That’s just how I look in the daylight,” I said. “I’m a night owl and it’s early.”
“It’s ten in the morning.”
“Exactly.”
Claire snorted. She was wearing a flannel and jeans and somehow looked completely at home here the way she did almost everywhere, the way I never quite managed outside of Rick’s. Lawyer, mother of three, still the only person in the world who could make me feel like I was seventeen and being called out for something I thought I’d gotten away with.
“You know if Reid is coming?” I asked. “Haven’t seen him at family dinner lately.”
Claire’s face fell. “I don’t know. He said he’d try.”
Which meant probably not. Which meant his oldest, Maya, was at home managing three siblings while her dad sat in that house trying to remember how to be a person. I made a mental note to stop by later, bring some beers, just sit with him.
It may have been a little strange, sure—trying to console the guy who’d married my high school sweetheart—but I’d found myself part of a pretty unconventional family, especially since my folks passed and Nell came along. People even joked that me and Reid were brothers before Amy passed…liked to say she ‘had a type.’ They rarely said the quiet part out loud: that Reid was a more successful, actuallyavailableversion of me.
“You should call him,” Claire said, even though I was already way ahead of her. “Andy’s great, but I think he’s a little…I don’t know—too open?”
“So you’re saying I should call him because I’m not emotionally available.”
“I’m saying you should call him because you know what it’s like to feel like you don’t deserve to take up space,” Claire said simply. “And Reid is currently disappearing.”
I looked at her.
She looked back, and there was nothing apologetic in her expression. That was Claire. She’d say the thing, let it land, and then not rescue you from it.
She wasn’t wrong.
“I’ll call him,” I said.
“Today.”
“Today,” I agreed.
She nodded, satisfied, and looked back out at the field where Andy was still being used as a jungle gym. Henry had given up the phone entirely and was now sitting on Andy’s chest declaring himself the winner of something. Rosie was attempting to put a hay bale piece in her mouth. Nell had detached from the pile and was standing a few feet away, brushing herself off with great dignity, the way she did when she’d had enough chaos and needed to regroup.
