NOW
18
It’s Monday and Jack goes for a run before our appointment to see the Old Sloop Inn. I put on a sundress so I can seem bridal, like it’s an occasion. Which it is. Outside my bedroom window, my dad is staring at the engine of his old VW Bug, hand resting on the open trunk. He pours money into this car year after year, and it always lets him down. He claims that the sky blue of the paint and the curve of the fender inspired the original Current. I think he just doesn’t like throwing things out.
Wyatt appears from behind the hedge, and I briefly wonder what good a hedge is if it isn’t actually doing its job of keeping us separate. He has his head under the hood now, his toolbox on the ground. I want to hear what they’re saying, but I don’t want to draw attention to myself by opening the window. It’s hard to fathom the two of them together, just shooting the breeze like this. Wyatt is pointing to something and goes in with a wrench. Dad is listening to him, nodding.
Jack returns from his run, a new addition to this silent movie from hell. From my perch I see them together for the first time. My dad introduces them, and they shake hands. The two loves of my life, so different from one another. Everything about Jack is by design. His body is the result of a specific gym regimen engineered for ultimate fitness. His hair is parted and combed to hang at an exact spot on his neck, cut every three weeks by Pablo on Sixty-Eighth Street. Jack might be the privet of people.
Wyatt is bent over, working. His baseball hat is backward and I know exactly how his hair would pop out if he took it off. The muscles tense in his arms in a functional way. He looks fit from surfing and working with his hands.
Dad gets in the car, turns the key, and there’s success. Celebratory smiles and pats on the back all around. My dad is beaming at Wyatt, then Jack, who is considering something. He nods and this odd trio disperses.
“So your dad invited Wyatt on our excursion tonight. He seemed like he wanted me to okay it, so I did,” Jack tells me.
I pull into the Old Sloop Inn parking lot and find a spot before responding. “Why?”
“I don’t know. What was I going to say? ‘You can’t come because you dated my fiancé when she was a kid’? Plus, it wouldn’t hurt to have a mechanic on the boat. I’ve seen how much your dad knows about fixing a car.”
“He’s not a mechanic,” I say, and I have no idea why.
“He fixed your dad’s car. And he says he does a lot of that at a Shell station out in LA.”
So Wyatt works at a gas station. It tugs on me a little bit to think he’s so far away from where he wanted to be. I never imagined Wyatt doing anything besides playing the guitar. And now here he is, still looking out over the ocean trying to come up with something that will sell. But, whatever. I build productivity graphs, and it’s not like that was my dream. When we were kids, my dream was to be at the beach, with Wyatt, forever.