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I like to ponder these sorts of deep issues during a hard, sweaty run.
Letting the to-dos and the to-don’ts roll through my head as I pound the path around the park.
Friends-with-benefits sounds good in theory.
But does it work in reality?
Normally, I’d marinate on the possibilities as I ran the Prospect Park loop a couple of times while listening to one of those true-crime podcasts that make me consider becoming a detective if the whole “body shop” thing peters out someday. I like puzzles and shutting down bad guys. Or I think I would.
But today is Sunday, so I’m running with Max, who’s pushing Penny in her jog-friendly stroller while the genius two-year-old demonstrates—over and over again—that she can count to twenty.
I am not thinking about sex.
At all.
Penny makes it to ten, adds a hurrah, then scurries through the next few numbers, skipping fourteen. Also, seventeen.
“All done and no bad numbers,” she says in a singsong voice as Max pushes her beside me.
“What do you have against fourteen?” I ask. “And seventeen, for that matter?”
She gives me a toothy grin. “Ten is better, silly.”
I jerk my gaze to Max. “Explain.”
He shrugs. “Numbers. Some are scary. Am I right or am I right?”
I shrug too, then pat Penny’s stroller in solidarity. “Boo numbers.”
“File it away under ‘kids have an opinion on everything,’” Max adds, then he leans over and ruffles her shiny, nearly black hair. Max’s wife is Korean, and Penny is the spitting image of her mama. The only genes she appears to have inherited from Max are her long fingers and quirky sense of humor. “And that’s what makes you so awesome and brilliant and kind and smart and cool.”
“You’re cool too, Dadda!” Penny shouts.
I raise a skeptical brow. “You taught her to say that, right?”
“Damn straight I did. Kids need to learn the facts of life. And it’s an incontrovertible fact that her dad rocks.”
“Listen, if you ever need some more confidence, just in case you’re running low, I hear there’s a guy in Brooklyn Heights who can hook you up.”
“And you suffer from the same affliction,” he says as we slow our pace, nearing the end of our run. We exit the park not far from my hood, cruising within spitting distance of Perk Up Brooklyn.
Max tips his chin at the café. “The usual? Only one Sunday left of cinnamon and sugar cortados.”
“Let’s do it,” I say, a little more enthusiastically than I feel. I’m going to miss Max a helluva lot. I’ll miss these Sunday runs with him and his little goofball.
“Try not to miss me too much when you’re gone,” he says, reading my mind.
“I’ll do my best.”
Max takes a beat as we slow at the crosswalk. “Though, I suspect it’s not me you’ll be missing most.”
I shoot him a what do you mean look.
He scratches his jaw, Godfather style, then goes full Brando. “Abe told me about you and Ruby last night.”
“Abe? What—is he like a spy now?”
“Shh. Secret agent.”
“Seriously. How did you end up talking to Abe? I mean, I know you get takeout way too much, but I didn’t realize you’d reached exchanging-gossip status with your mushroom hookup.”
Sheepishly, Max says, “Fine. His wife told Theresa. Theresa told me.”
“Ah, the old telephone game,” I say as we cross the street.
“Heard you two were pretty cozy,” he says, then clears his throat. “So, what’s going on there?”
Briefly, I weigh the pros and cons of saying something about Ruby and what’s on my mind. I’m not a grab-a-pint-of-ice-cream-and-gab kind of guy. I tend to keep that shit close to the vest.
But Max is Max. He knew me when Danika kicked me in the teeth. And the gut. And the balls.
My last serious girlfriend.
And the one I learned a hard lesson from.
She was a stuntwoman. We met on a job, fell fast and furiously, and made plenty of promises.
Promises I was sure we’d keep. Promises that we’d be together, that we would, in fact, move to Los Angeles together.
She understood that in order to get bigger gigs, I needed to expand my garage, get more space, more room, and have more access to the Hollywood studios than was possible living on the East Coast.
I’ll wait for you. We’ll go together, she said.
But she didn’t wait.
She didn’t even end up going to L.A. One day, she simply said, “I changed my mind. I’m moving to Georgia instead.”
And she did, taking off to a burgeoning area of the film business and not even asking me to go with her.
She made it clear she was splitting with me right along with New York.
There would be no staying together. No working it out. No opportunities to find a way.
It not only soured me on giving my heart to another person, but on making big, relationship-type promises in general.
They’re too hard to keep, and someone always, always gets hurt.
