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I side-eyed him, trying to read if he was for real. “Well, it’s nice to see you too then, Max.”
“I’d hug ya, but it still looks like you’re gonna sock me in the eye,” he said with a chuckle.
I snorted.
He put a hand up to track down the bartender and quickly ordered another beer before turning to face me again. “Where ya livin’ now?”
“In Detroit. I had an apartment with Claire, but I’m probably going to have to start searching for a new place to live seeing as she’ll be moving out.” I nodded back at Claire on the dance floor.
Max leaned his back against the bar to watch Duke and Claire slow dancing. “Yeah, he’s a goner for her though, I bet he’d let you live with them if Claire asked.”
“Nah,” I sighed. “It’s time to get my own place. Let the two love birds have their own space and all that.”
Max squinted at me suspiciously. “You hate being alone, Addie.” He knew me well. We used to work the concession stand together at the rink as teenagers. I’d always beg him to work during slow shifts with me because I hated feeling lonely.
I shrugged. “I’ll be fine, always am,” I said before drowning the rest of my whiskey coke.
Besides, if things worked out the way I was planning, I wouldn’t be alone for long…
2. Addie
Two weeks later, I was back at work in Detroit feeling like I never even had a vacation home for Claire’s wedding. Granted, I was super busy looking for a new apartment as soon as my plane touched down at DTW, but there was no way I could continue to afford where Claire and I lived with only my pay, especially considering the fact that I was currently trying to save up for my new life.
Just as Max had predicted, Claire had offered to let me stay with her and Duke, but I didn’t want to step on their toes. I ended up securing my own affordable place pretty quickly, and since then, my life turned into working then boxing shit up and walking five blocks to move it all. Duke and Claire helped as much as they could, but I didn’t want to be a bother. Besides, every time one of them came to help, they’d have ice packs wrapped around a part of their body because of sore muscles, and I felt guilty putting them to work.
I finally finished moving the last of my boxes last night, and now I was just sore and tired here at work. It felt like I’d been staring at the clock, willing it to be 5 p.m., all day long.
When it finally hit 4:30 p.m., I pushed out of my pink chair in my little cubicle and slowly followed the rest of the writers into the large glass room for the weekly pitch meeting.
Once I was in the swing of covering the regular season of a sport, I stopped attending these pitch meetings because I knew I’d be writing game recaps. But seeing as it was the beginning of September and hockey– the main sports I covered– was still in their preseason, I didn’t have a story yet. My guess was that I’d be assigned a longer, fluffier feature piece previewing the coming season.
Hank, the spiffy-looking forty-year-old Editor-In-Chief, kicked off the meeting with a bad dad joke as per usual. He’d been practicing all his jokes ever since his wife became pregnant. We all thought the jokes would stop once he wasn’t getting as much sleep when the baby arrived, but I think the baby being earth-side just made him kick it up a notch. We laughed politely, but we all just wanted to get the hell out of work already.
He held up his dry-erase marker and started pitching the stories. He always drew out the story names of each section on the panel of glass behind him, then wrote the person who was assigned the story’s name next to it. This wasn’t really necessary because a massive weekly google doc containing all the same info would be shared with each of us after the meeting anyway… but I think Hank just liked writing with the marker on the glass.
I stifled a yawn and started chugging the rest of my iced coffee– I had to savor my fill of caffeine before I was limited to only one cup a day. I never paid too much attention to the meeting until the sports stories were pitched. I was solely a sports section writer for the Detroit Gazette, and I had no cares or qualms about what the US news or city news or weekend life or arts or obituary people were doing.
I only ever knew what was going on with the Arts page because my friend Erin was the section editor, and she could talk for days on end. We always grabbed lunch together when we weren’t out of the office for a story, which was usually only two or three days a week, but that was enough time for her to feed me all the gossip. It was an easy friendship– she could talk as much as she wanted, and I just got to listen.
A bony elbow nudged my side, and I looked up to see Brandon, my fellow sportswriting buddy, wearing his large, black-framed, bluelight glasses and pulling a face as he nodded his angular chin toward the front of the room.
I internally cringed and fixed my own glasses before turning to face Hank, who was standing at the head of the table looking directly at me.
“Sor–” I cut myself off and cleared my throat. “Thank you for waiting. You were saying?” I was still trying to force myself out of saying the word‘sorry’so much– specifically in situations where I had no real need to apologize. It was a habit I’d developed as a kid and I couldn’t stand it.
“There’s a new rookie on the Crewmen. His name’s Tyler…” He snapped his fingers, searching for the last name in his mind, but I knew what he was going to say…
Don’t say it, don’t say it, don’t say it.
“Jettersen!” Brandon called out beside me. “He’s going to be great for the team!”
Fuck.
I knew that name. And I wanted no part in reconnecting or writing a story about him.
“Thank you, Brandon,” Hank said. “I’d like the front page of sports to run a feature on Tyler Jettersen. A feel-good, welcome back to Detroit piece. Let’s run it before the first regular season game.”
I grinded my teeth. He wasn’t really from Detroit. Sure, he was born here, but he grew up in Northfield, Minnesota… With his brother… And me…
