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“Damn it, Sissy! Why the hell did you do that?”
“Have a mint,” I suggested, and found one in the drink holder in my console. “And here, take this brush and smoosh down your hair.” His was just like mine, thick and straight, and sometimes it stood up from his head porcupine-style. It looked better and he smelled better, too, after he took my suggestions.
“Have you heard from your sister?” he asked after a long while of silence, and it startled me.
“Aubin?” I asked, as if I had any other sibling. “No, not since we talked after she got back from the honeymoon.” She and Bill had gone to the Caribbean and the pictures she’d posted had been beautiful, both of her and of the beachy island. “Have you?”
He didn’t respond, but I figured the answer was no, not since the wedding. I knew that he’d hoped they would have a closer relationship after he’d helped out with the expenses for that, but it wasn’t happening. Aubin had mostly stopped talking to him when she was in high school, and besides that brief break in the spring, that looked to continue now.
“I’m sorry,” I said, and that was the last of our conversation until I let him out at the back entrance of the country club where he would go to clock in. “I’ll be here at midnight,” I mentioned and he nodded slightly back to me. I watched him walk in a pretty straight line, so I thought he would be ok.
Now I had the length of his shift to kill, and it was a lot of gas to waste to drive all the way back to the cottage. Sometimes when I dropped him off, I tried to sleep in the employee parking lot, and sometimes I read or watched stupid stuff on my phone on the club’s fast network. Tonight, though, I hadn’t brought a book, I didn’t feel like looking at my phone, and even though I knew I’d have to wake up really early to make it to the Woodsmen team Fan Day, I didn’t feel like trying to sleep, either.
Ward would have expected me to be at home. He knew my schedule and sometimes he would watch on his phone to see my location, too. Probably not tonight, though, because he was with his friends and when they were together, he didn’t pay as much attention to my whereabouts. So I didn’t worry about him as I drove the opposite way from our cottage on Laurel Lake and towards Traverse City, toward the bars and restaurants that would be busy in spite of the bad weather.
The summer people had descended last month and they mingled with the year-round residents, all of them looking for a fun time and hoping to get a glimpse of the Woodsmen players. The whole team was back in town now for the Fan Day. It wasn’t a big deal to the guys, but it was the most important day of the summer for a lot of people around the area. The stadium was thrown open for tours, the Wonderwomen performed new routines, and the players sat at tables and signed autographs, took pictures, and socialized with their fans. I had desperately wanted to go when I was a kid and now that I was on the squad, it was expected of me. I loved it just as much as I’d thought that I would.
As I drove slowly down the main street of bars, avoiding other cars looking for parking spots and pedestrians running through the rain, I looked for Aubin’s red BMW. She’d been a fixture on these blocks because she loved to go out with her friends, but maybe that had changed now that she was a married woman. She and Bill were probably home together, cozy in their condo and talking about Fan Day. I’d see both of them there since he worked for the team and she liked to make an appearance as well, to check in on the Wonderwomen and critique our performance without her.
I realized that I was looking for another vehicle, too: the big, black truck that belonged to Bowie. I imagined seeing it, then him getting out and spotting me in return. “Hey there, Lissa,” he’d greet me in the nice accent that made the words sound so smooth, like music. “I’m just about to go inside. Want to come along?” And I would say sure, yes, and I would go.
I’d been to the bars here before with Ward, but this would be different because it would be fun. It was great to be with my boyfriend—it was, it really was. But sometimes, it was a little bit stressful when we were together and out like that. He got very upset about other men being around me and he tended to think that I was doing something to attract them, maybe unconsciously, but he also wasn’t sure about that.
“Why is he staring at you?” he would ask me, and when I’d look and say that I didn’t know that guy or I didn’t think he was staring or something else to calm or distract him, Ward was never satisfied with my answer. He loved me a lot and he worried, which I appreciated, but it made it hard to have fun in bars.
Bowie and I would talk, just like we’d done while we were eating and swimming, too. He’d told me about his family when I’d asked more questions, about his middle brother who managed a hardware store, about the youngest who also played football at a small college, and about his mom and dad. It didn’t sound like he was very close to any of them but it also sounded like he supported them. He’d mentioned that now his mother didn’t have to work at the job she’d hated so much, that she could take a break because she had some health problems or something like that. Later, when we’d seen a guy fishing on my lake, he’d also mentioned that he’d bought his dad a boat similar to that one as a Christmas present.
I got lost in the idea of seeing his truck right now, of us talking and what we would say. “Can I get you something?” he’d ask when we went inside one of the bars. “How about a Negroni?”
That was Aubin’s choice of cocktail, but no, thank you, I didn’t drink. He would get iced tea for me and something non-alcoholic for himself, too, because he’d say, “I don’t want to worry about my driving. It’s dark on the roads up here, a lot darker than a big city like New York.” He’d tell me about all the places he’d traveled because I was curious. It was so silly that I’d never even been out of Michigan before but he wouldn’t be bothered by that.
I wasn’t only curious about other places; I also wanted to go to them and see new things. I hadn’t flown to Nashville with Aubin’s bridal party but I was hoping that this year, the Woodsmen would get to the league championship. It would be wonderful for Bowie and the rest of the team, and it would also mean that the Wonderwomen squad would accompany them to the big game in San Antonio to perform. I had concerns about what would happen at home in my absence, but I didn’t plan to miss the opportunity, not this time.
I was so involved in imagining Bowie and his truck that when I actually saw him on the sidewalk, I didn’t quite believe it. He and another of the guys from the defensive side of the team were standing outside the Pineapple Lounge in the drizzling rain. Even though there was a small crowd around them, they were easy to see because their heads reached above all the others. He said something to Matteo Sutton and they both laughed and I realized that I was smiling, too.
I saw a spot open up and although I wasn’t great at parallel parking, I immediately signaled and started to edge my way into it. Then, still without much of a plan or even much thought, I pulled up the hood of my rain jacket, got out of the car, and started walking up the sidewalk toward them.
I’d been wrong about the size of the crowd. The football players were actually surrounded by fans several layers deep. I wasn’t sure why the two of them were waiting around on the sidewalk, because from everything I knew about the players’ social lives, the Woodsmen were welcome at any bar, restaurant, or club, at any time. There was no need to wait in line or wait for a table; they were in first and served first.
I stood on the outskirts of the bunch of people and pushed my hood back a little to see them better under the yellow lights of the bar behind them, a place decorated with neon pineapples in the window. The other guy, Sutton, peered around the crowd as if he was looking for someone, but Bowie seemed a little bored. I raised my hand and waved when I thought his eyes were directed toward me, but he didn’t see me through the other bodies and the raindrops, which had started coming down harder.
That was ok. I felt a little dumb, though, standing here alone on the sidewalk and waving like I knew him. He’d only come over to my house once to eat and to swim after a hard workout, so it wasn’t as if we were friends. Maybe he wouldn’t even have recognized me away from the stadium, the place where he said he’d seen me before.
I watched him and thought that I’d recognize him anywhere, and not just because of his size. Now I’d seen him in only his bathing suit, too, so I’d be able to identify his tattoos. He had one of a cross on the top of his arm, his deltoid, and under it was a woman’s name (his grandma who had passed away, I’d found out when I’d asked). His other arm had a flowering vine of barbed wire that wrapped around his biceps and triceps and his chest had various images woven together, like words from a Bible verse, a skull, and a pair of rolling dice, among other things.
I had been staring a lot, I realized, so much that I could have drawn all those tattoos from memory! I’d been staring at the way that the inky line of wire curled around each of the carved muscles in his arm, and I’d been looking at the words written across his pecs but also at the hard—
“Lissa?”
I snapped out of my daydream, in which we’d been in the lake together again and I’d been looking at his tattoos. This time, we’d been standing very close, though, much closer than we had in reality—
“Lissa.” Bowie himself was now very close to me, in this existing reality. “Hey there. Hi.”
“Hi,” I answered, and stepped back to give us a little more distance.
He moved forward again. “Hi,” he repeated, then shook his head. “Where are you headed? Are you here with friends?”
The answer to the first question was, “I don’t know,” and to the second it was, “No, I’m alone like a loser when every other women is with her boyfriend or part of a friend pack.” I did have a boyfriend and Ward and I did go out, sometimes. I tried to think now about the last time we had done that, but I couldn’t seem to remember it.
