You & Me

Sunday morning, and the house was empty. Emmet had haunted his room on Saturday, emerged to inhale the contents of the refrigerator and blend a protein shake, and then went to bed early. When I woke up Sunday, he was gone. I’d toyed with the idea of making breakfast for us both, but I wasn’t entirely sure the Bisquick mix was still good. The decision was made for me, though. I was on my own.

An hour later, my phone buzzed.

I’d been fiddling around at the dining room table, not working but not doing much of anything else. I was supposed to be reviewing the pool numbers for a new potential client, but I kept scribbling little uprights and footballs in the margins of the report.

Scenes from the football game on Friday night kept coming back. The touchdown pass. Emmet lining up for his first play. Landon holding his breath as he watched his son.

I dragged my phone across the table and dropped my pen. I was desperate for a distraction.

Landon had texted. Your son is at my house.

Is he behaving?

Emmet always behaves. He’s a good kid.

Does he smell all right? I hadn’t heard a shower happen yesterday.

To be honest, I haven’t dared get close enough to check. But, good news. My phone buzzed again, this time with a picture. I saw a window overlooking a backyard, palm trees, patio furniture, and a large lagoon-shaped pool.

In the center of the pool, Bowen and Emmet were flopping around like dolphins.

They’re bathing. Sort of.

There was more water splashed on the pool deck than in the pool, it seemed. I hope they don’t run you dry.

I hope the neighbors don’t phone the police to report feral animals are on the loose in my backyard.

I laughed and tried to come up with something witty and wonderful to say in reply.

What are you doing? Landon texted before I could respond.

I stared at my abandoned work. My empty living room. My empty kitchen. Nothing.

Want to meet up?

Yes. Yes, I wanted that very much. The desire seized me, like something had grabbed hold of my soul. Definitely. Where to?

Landon dropped a pin on a sports bar near downtown. It was a local place, kind of divey, very laid-back. They ran game-day drink specials and bottomless mimosa brunches, trying to cater to both the suburban mom and dad crowds. I pulled on jeans and tried four different shirts before I settled on one that didn’t scream I’ve given up so completely as the rest of my wardrobe.

Who was I kidding? I was going to be with Landon. He was cool without trying. No one was going to be looking at me.

He waited for me outside the bar, and, as predicted, he looked amazing. Snug jeans—which if I tried to wear, I’d look like an anorexic grasshopper—a dark fitted Henley that clung to his physique, and a faded ball cap. He held the door for me when we walked in.

Three football games were playing on the big screens on the far wall. All the booths were taken, as were most of the tables, aside from the crappy ones by the kitchen doors. Landon pointed to the bar, and we squeezed into a space made for one by facing each other and kicking away the barstool.

I ordered a Shiner. He ordered a Diet Coke. “Sorry,” he said when I raised my eyebrows at him. “I don’t drink any alcohol other than red wine, and that’s not the kind of thing you order in a sports bar.”

“Sports bars aren’t my scene, either.” The whole place was alien to me. All those people staring at the screens and watching games I barely understood. I’d tried to watch an hour of football yesterday, but I got lost in between the commentary and my lack of interest. I couldn’t keep up with the replays and the penalties. And, more importantly, I just didn’t care about the game if my son wasn’t playing in it.

“What is your scene?”

“Art galleries. Museums. Off-the-beaten-path kind of places. I liked the barbecue place you took me to. I like finding places like that.”

“What about theater?”

“I love theater. I wish I went to more shows but it’s hard to get into Dallas these days. After a week of fighting traffic, the last thing I want to do is fight it again to go back into the city.”

“How about community theater or local productions?”

“I should look into that. I don’t know why I haven’t.”

“My firm sponsors the community playhouse. They put on a couple different shows a season. Check out the website and let me know if there’s anything you want to see. We get complimentary tickets.”

“I will.” I sipped my beer and leaned against the bar. “What about you? I’m going to go out on a limb here and guess your scene is more… wine bars and cheese boards?”

“Nailed it.” He grinned. “I don’t have many vices, but the ones I do have, I revel in.”

“You do wine tastings and visit vineyards and things like that?”

He nodded. “There’s a few tasting rooms in Fort Worth, and I took myself on a week-long tour of the Hill Country a few years ago. Drank my way from winery to winery on a gorgeous summer week.” Another grin. His eyes sparkled. “I had a great time.”

“Did you go with anyone?”

Landon twirled his soda. “No. I don’t date much.”

“No? A guy like you? I figured you’d be beating the men off with sticks in both hands.”

A flush curled up the sides of his neck as he played with his straw. “That’s kind of you to say. Believe it or not, there aren’t a lot of guys out there who go for middle-aged, ex-Mormon, single dads. I’ve got a bad combination I’m working with, too. I’m boring and I’m picky.”

“You’re not boring.” I laughed as his flush deepened. “How are you picky? What’s your type?”

He studied me, eyes narrowing. Someone started shouting come on come on come on as the bar held their breath. Everyone was staring past us, gazes glued to the screens. “Kindness,” Landon finally said. “Dedication. A sense of humor. A connection like electricity. Someone who fits so well with me it feels like they’ve always been there. Someone who is good with, and to, Bowen.”

“That doesn’t sound picky. That sounds smart.”

He smiled. Whatever was happening in the game ended in heartbreak. I heard sighs and bitten-off curses, the shuffle of feet and the clatter of glasses on tables and the bar top.

“I can’t imagine dating again,” I said. “If I ever do, I think I’d want the same things.”

I tried to project myself forward and imagine some distant future where I was in love. It was a hazy, indistinct mirage. I felt it more than pictured it: contentment and happiness that saturated my whole world. Certainty and kindness. Someone I found a part of myself in. Someone I could be a home for.

All things I never had with Riley.

Landon slid his soda across the bar and clinked his glass against my beer bottle. “You’ll find a woman as great as you are when you’re ready. I have no doubt about that.”

“Maybe I’ll meet her during wheelchair races at the home Emmet shoves me in when I’m ninety. We can trade dentures and share pureed peas.”

He nearly spat his soda on me, almost hacked up a lung as he curled over the bar. I slapped him on the back as a brunette and her girlfriend, out for an afternoon of cocktails and man-watching, threw dirty looks over their shoulders.

Landon tried to glare at me, but he couldn’t smother his smile.

“I wonder what it’s like to kiss without teeth. All gums.” I rolled my lips over my teeth like I was a little kid doing a bad impression of grandma.

“Stop!” He hid his face in his hand as he tried to keep a snort in. “Luke!”

“Bowen is going to treat you right when you’re old. He’ll keep you with him. Hire a home health aide. Probably a hunky one.” I flicked my eyebrows. “Of course, when I’m ninety and holding hands with my pureed-pea girlfriend, you’re going to look like George Clooney.” I sighed. “It’s not fair.”

He didn’t know which part to argue first, and his face twisted like a gymnast, sprinting from laughter to shock to bemusement and then back to a smothered snort as he shook his head.

I hooked my elbow against the bar. “You’re going to have to teach me about cooking and wine now. Fair warning though, I’m about as hopeless with wine as I am with football.”

He took a fortifying shot of Diet Coke. I’m sure he wished it was a glass of red wine. “I’m up for a challenge. Tell me, what do you know about wine?”

It was the same question he’d asked me about football. I suppressed my smile like I was channeling Emmet. “Wine comes in two colors.”

Landon blinked. I tried to hold it, but I couldn’t, and I sank into him and laughed. We were standing so close together, in that space for one person, and when I straightened, somehow, we were even closer than a moment ago. “Tell me I’m wrong?”

“Wine comes in many colors. Red, white, rose. Cream, peach, raspberry. Buttery yellow—”

“That’s a shade of white wine.”

“Ah-ha! You do know something.”

“Riley drank buttery chardonnay. I’d grab that when I was at the store. Four bottles for twenty bucks. I’m sure it was the good stuff.”

“That wasn’t wine.” He laid his hand on my arm and looked at me like he was explaining to a toddler that the sun would come back in the morning. “That was rubbing alcohol and food coloring.”

“All right, what’s your favorite kind?”

“You’ve never heard of it.”

“Try me. A mer-lot.” I pronounced the t, hitting it hard, clicking my tongue. Landon flinched. “Cabernet.” Again with the hard t. He looked like he was in physical pain.

“Carménère,” he said, laughing. His flush was back, like his Diet Coke was spiked with something and he had the start of a good buzz.

“Carmen San Diego? Emmet had a kids book about her.”

“No.” He pushed against my hip with his palm, and his thumb lingered briefly over the waistband of my jeans. I should have put on a belt. He was wearing a belt. Wasn’t that fashion etiquette? Belt and shoes must match. I’d pulled on my boots—which I dug out of a box in the back of my closet thanks to Landon—but I’d skipped the belt.

I should look nicer. Especially out with Landon.

“Carménère?” I tried again. The word ended in air, and it sounded light, breezy, magical.

Landon nodded. “It’s a full-bodied, intense, flavor-forward wine.”

Not light and breezy, then.

“It’s thick, like you’re eating a handful of ripe berries. But earthy. It’s a complex wine. And—” Landon leaned forward. If he bent his knee, it would be between my legs. “It was a lost vintage. In the 1880s, the vineyards in Bordeaux were almost decimated by a plague of aphids. The carménère grape was believed extinct, but, a hundred years later, someone rediscovered it in Chile. A vine had been transported across the Atlantic, and it grew wild and undiscovered for almost a century. Now we have carménère again.”

“I’d never heard of that.” Who knew grapes and wine could have such interesting histories?

“There’s something about being lost and found that appeals to me. It might be part of the reason I like it so much. Probably silly.” His ears were pinking again.

“It’s not. It’s cool. I like it. We’ll have to try it.”

“Carménère is not a wine for beginners.”

“I’ve had wine before.”

“MadDog 20/20 doesn’t count.”

I laughed. “Hey, MadDog is a staple of the high school experience.”

He shot me a worried look. “Do you think our kids are drinking it?”

I couldn’t imagine Emmet unwinding enough to enjoy himself with a drink, but that’s only because I didn’t get to see the fun, happy parts of my son. There was a whole undiscovered country inside Emmet, and maybe that kid I didn’t know did silly things. I shrugged. “Maybe they’re making sangria at your house right now.”

Panic streaked across his eyes. “No,” he said, shaking his head. “Bowen knows the rules. He’s a good kid. And so is Emmet.”

“How old were you when you had your first drink?” I was sixteen, and it was in the back of my friend’s minivan that he’d borrowed from his mom. We were driving to nowhere as fast as we could, blaring hard rock in the Honda Odyssey with the PTA bumper stickers. We howled at the moon and slept in the trunk overlooking a field of cows. Woke up with the worst hangovers and swore off flavored beer for life. I haven’t touched Smirnoff Ice since.

“I was thirty-one.” Landon grinned. “I’m not a good example.”

“You can take the boy out of Utah…”

His head tipped back as he laughed, and the sound rose above the game. The bartender eyed us. I didn’t care.

“You know…” His eyes gleamed. “There are three NFL games and a couple of baseball games playing, and we’re off in our own world talking about wine. And dentures. And pureed peas.”

“Mmhmm.” We were getting more dirty looks from the brunette and her friend. I caught a few stares from the bar crowd, too. We weren’t paying attention to the games. All we were doing was getting lost in each other. I couldn’t have even said who was playing, even though I was facing all those screens.

A cheer rose around us. Something good had happened.

“This sports bar idea was a miss on my part,” Landon said. He took a short, sharp breath. “Do you want to get out of here?”

I tossed a ten on the bar. “Lead the way.”

The bar was close to the river. Walking bridges meandered through Old Town, crisscrossing little creeks that wandered left and right into pocket neighborhoods of original frontier homes that rested beneath groves of cottonwoods and giant oak. Those were the big houses, the historic remodels. Big front porch verandas, sprawling lawns, piles of yellow rosebushes alongside white picket fences. Old vines planted a hundred years ago still sprouted wild strawberries, and honeysuckle wandered across neighboring fences and up the street signs. In summer, bees hummed between the flower beds and butterflies floated over the yards, and deer sneaked in to sip at birdbaths.

“I live that way.” Landon pointed toward a cul-de-sac of homes clustered like eggs nestled in a basket.

“I didn’t know you lived in Old Town.”

“Can’t you hear our boys in my backyard?”

I thought Landon might turn for his house, but he led me instead down to the river and to the walking path that followed the bank. It was quiet by the water. Cooler, too. September was a summer month, and in Texas, everyone felt the heat. Landon shoved the sleeves of his Henley up to his elbows.

“How’s Bowen after the game? You seemed concerned about a few of those hits he took.”

“He’s sore, but nothing is broken or bruised. Some of those hits were hard.” Landon glared at the water tumbling around a boulder in the middle of the river. “Tackles are worse at the start of the season. It’s been eight months since you took a tackle, and after all that time, you’re used to being on your feet. Those first hits are like running into a wall. I’m sure their quarterback is feeling worse than Bowen after that sack from Emmet.”

“I hadn’t expected it to be so…” I still remembered Emmet playing herd ball and chasing a bumblebee into the clover. “Intense.”

“The kid got up. I watched to make sure.” Of course Landon had. “He was collecting his thoughts on the sideline for a few minutes, but he was all right. Just rattled. Which is how it feels to be brought to the ground by an all-star linebacker three seconds off the snap. How was Emmet after the game?”

“He was quiet yesterday. Stayed in his room. Of course, that’s what he always does. He slept, and he scarfed down what I had in the fridge.”

“Bowen does the same. They need to recuperate on Saturdays. I let Bowen be a slug on the couch, and I feed and water him every few hours when the snoring stops. It’s the magic spell for bringing teen boys back to life: food, sleep, and some parental love.”

Well, two out of three wasn’t bad, I supposed.

“Emmet’s on his feet today, so you did good.” Landon squeezed my shoulder, and I grinned at him. Our eyes locked, and we stared at each other until Landon stumbled on a tree root snaking across the trail. I steadied him.

“What else do you like?” I shoved my hands in my jean pockets. “Wine. Football.” I listed the things I knew about him. “Cooking, though I still have to see if you’re any good.”

He laughed, that big, warm laugh that sank into my chest and made me feel like I was floating. “I like being outdoors. I bought my house because it has a great backyard. Most nights, I’m out there.”

“You do seem like an outdoorsy type.”

“Growing up in Utah, there was always something to do. Camping or hiking or mountain biking. Fishing, kayaking, swimming. Skiing or snowboarding. Snowshoeing. Ice skating.” He rattled off a dizzying list of outdoor adventures. “There’s not as much to do here,” he said, “but I’m older now, and I get just as much joy out of watching the sun set and walking these trails as I used to backpacking the Rockies. Or shredding a double black diamond at Park City.”

“Double black diamond?” I whistled. “I went skiing once in New Mexico. I think you would say what I slid down was a hill. Maybe a lump.”

“Did you like it?”

“I did. I think if I put some effort into it, I could get better.” But, like all things, life took hold, and skiing fell into the past, and the present rolled onward. Work, traffic, routine.

Not that life, in and of itself, was a bad thing. I liked the quiet moments. I didn’t want to go skydiving or thrill seeking. I wanted the stability, the certainty, of routine. I wanted the happy home. But I wanted that home to be infused with love, rich with love, so that all the ordinary moments were made wonderful because I shared them with someone special.

We walked in silence. Landon seemed to sense the shift in me, the way I’d turned inward with my ruminations.

“Do you miss Utah?” I finally asked.

Landon took his time answering. “Parts, yes, and some parts, definitely not. I wish my parents were closer, but they’ll never leave. The whole family is there. Except for me. And—” His shoulders hitched, a shrug half finished. “My life was the church, until it wasn’t. I lost almost all my friends when I came out. It ended up being very lonely.”

“I’m sorry.”

He didn’t answer. He gave me a what can you do smile, half formed, half felt. “It’s better here. It’s more accepting in Texas. Bowen and I have built a great life.”

“What are you going to do when he goes to college?”

“Drink carménère and sob as I look at his baby albums.”

I barked out a laugh.

“Honestly? I’m not ready to face that yet. I know he’s going, and the clock is ticking for me to be ready, but… I get heart palpitations thinking about it.

“I get it. You’re his dad, and you guys are friends. I’m stressing about Emmet leaving—” For different reasons. I didn’t know where Emmet wanted to go or what he wanted to do, but I had a feeling he was getting the hell out of Dodge as soon as he could. “—and I’ve got two years. We’re nowhere near as close as you and Bowen are.”

He twisted to me, face scrunched in pain. “Let’s talk about something else?”

“Sorry.”

Silence spread between us again. Landon turned us on a path that led away from the river, climbed a gentle hill, and emerged behind a row of downtown shops. We’d made a loop around Old Town, and we were only a few blocks from the bar.

Landon spoke again when we arrived at my truck, parked behind the coffee shop off the square. “Hold on to these two years, Luke. Hold on tight to every moment.” He grinned. “Every exasperating, frustrating, eye-rolling, beautiful moment. They’re going to go so fast.”

“I will.”

We hovered by my truck. He looked at the clouds, the sidewalk, the tree branches. I looked at him. I didn’t know what to say. The sun was drooping and the afternoon was over. The laughter from the bar, the ease of the walk by the river, was edging away.

Loneliness clawed at me. The thought of my empty house and my son’s shut bedroom door.

“Are you coming back on Thursday for the next team dinner?”

“Of course. I’m looking forward to it.”

“Great. I’ll see you then.”

“Yeah. Definitely. And this time, we’ll do the ice together. Someone has to make sure you don’t electrocute yourself.”

He laughed as I climbed into my truck. I watched him turn toward his house. Offer him a ride. No. Don’t be weird.

It felt like an ending, like something that day had been opened but was now slamming shut. I didn’t know what to do with this flighty, caged-bird feeling in my chest. Was I so desperate for a friend that I didn’t want to let him out of my sight?

Go home. Don’t be weird.

I shifted into drive and spun the wheel. Pulled out. I waved to Landon as I drove by.

“Luke!”

I slammed my brakes and jerked forward against the seat belt. Rolled down the window, and watched as Landon jogged to my passenger side. “Uh, the boys. They’re at the field. They have this thing on Sunday evenings. They go and throw the ball back and forth. They’ve done it since last year.”

“Sunday evenings? At the stadium?”

He nodded. “Emmet will probably be home in about an hour?” He eyed the setting sun. “They don’t stay long after dark.”

“Thanks for letting me know. I’ll grab a pizza for Em and me.”

He clapped my truck’s windowsill. “Cool. See you Thursday.” He backed away from my truck, eyes locked on mine with every step.

“See you.” Behind me, a mom and daughter in an SUV were getting impatient. She flashed her brights. I waved to the mirror and rolled my eyes at Landon.

The last thing I saw before I drove away was his smile.

It stayed with me the whole way home.