30 Feet Strong

by Hannah Paige

  “April, I’m not asking for advice.”

  She leaned back against the seat and tucked her phone between her shoulder and her ear, “Oh, really? Then why on earth would you be calling me? I haven’t talked to you in like a month. I thought for sure my pasta salad must have scared you off.”

  “April it’s you. I’m calling to ask you out on a date.”

  She fluttered her feet like a kid who had finally got on the ride at Disney World after standing in the sweltering June heat in a four- hour line with no snow cone because the ice machine was broken. “I know, I just wanted to hear you say it. The advice still applies, just so you know. I honestly do hate those mariachi bands.”

  His low laugh plucked at her heart, “Are you free tonight?”

  She cringed, “Tonight? I can’t. I offered to pick up an extra shift at the shelter.”

  “Shelter?” he asked and it occurred to April that Rick didn’t really know her all that well and she didn’t know him either. Recently, she’d indulged in reigniting the crush that she’d developed for him on their first meeting. She’d been twenty, he was twenty-three, and he bought her a drink at her dad’s birthday party that year. April and Darin had put it together as a last bash before their dad shipped out on tour again. It was going to be Rick’s first and April’s dad invited him to the celebration. They’d been so young, and she’d found his uniform unquestionably attractive. He used to smile often back then, and his eyes resembled those of an unbroken colt. They’d spent the evening together, really doing nothing other than being cordial to one another, exchanging pleasantries and maneuvering through the proper customs that one performs at a social gathering. But that was it for April.

  It was pathetic, this much she knew, to still have even a kindling of a feeling for someone who barely resembled the young man—boy, if she was being honest—that she’d met over a decade ago. Sitting in the taxi cab with a diabetic-sweet smile on her face, she didn’t care. If success was possible for anyone in the prospect of getting to know someone, it would be April.

  “I work at a battered women’s shelter on the island, have been for about four years now. Anyway, I told one of my coworkers, Bonnie, that I would take her shift tonight, because her son got the flu, poor kid. And Bonnie’s such a kind soul that I couldn’t let her stay at work while she left her kid home alone—”

  “April,” he cut in.

  She felt heat flush through her cheeks, “Sorry, I was talking too much, wasn’t I? I tend to do that, my dad says it’s because I have a big mouth, but actually, according to my doctor, my mouth—” She stopped herself, took a breath. “You wanted to say something.”

  “How about tomorrow night?”

  April had considered taking Elma’s (a volunteer at the shelter) time slot for tomorrow night, but she had decided against it at the last minute and right about now she was feeling the gratification that accompanied that decision.

  “Tomorrow night works great! And you know, actually there’s this amazing little pizzeria down the street from my house—”

  “I should have known you were going to offer suggestions.”

  April made a note of his amusement. He sounded like someone who’s choice had just been ratified, “Sorry, only trying to—”

  “To help, yeah I get the feeling you do that a lot.”

  April didn’t need to glance up into the rearview mirror to know her cheeks had turned a deep crimson, “I may have an inclination towards assisting others.”

  “I’ll remember that. I’ll pick you up at seven?”

  She frowned, hoping to chat a little more over the phone, “Sure, yeah! Tomorrow at seven, I’ll see you at my place!” She was about to hang up when her mind cleared, leaving only the practical thoughts that are unreachable in times of great excitement. “Oh, Rick!” She hadn’t meant to shout so loud and saw the cab driver glare at her through the mirror. “Do you have my address?”

  “Yeah, I’ve still got it from the last time I was there. I’ll see you tomorrow night, April,” and he hung up.

  He sounded so casual, so calm, two things that April most certainly was not. And she didn’t know whether that should worry or encourage her: the theory of ‘chasing people that are your opposite’, and all that. She went with the positive alternative and gave into her excitement.

  The taxi pulled onto April’s street about half an hour later. She leaned inside the window, paying the grouchy driver—she had yet to meet a friendly one—and was turning around to head inside when she heard a child’s piercing cry, “Help! Please, help me!”

  The taxi took off down the street, the driver most likely not wanting to get involved with the sobbing child running down the sidewalk. Apartment tenants, regretting their exposed positions outside their houses, suppressed groans as the boy stopped by them. He was asking each of them something, but April was too far away to hear what he was saying. He couldn’t have been more than eight or nine, judging by his height, frail frame, and his cheeks still bright and flushed. In April’s experience, only the youngest of children still had those qualities. His eyes caught on April and as he ran closer to her she felt her breath escape her. His eyes were gorgeous, translucent, almost. April had met a few people with that beautifully rare light blue eye color but she’d never seen someone with eyes like this boy’s. His were so unclouded she swore it was like looking into pools of crystal-clear water, like she could see all the way into his soul.

  “Please, you have to help me! I lost my mom,” he gripped her arm and she felt her knees buckle at his dire request. “I can’t—” he started heaving, hiccupping on his own tears in his hysteria.

  April knelt down to his level, “Okay, okay, let’s take a breath, alright, buddy? In.”

  He copied her deep inhale.

  “Out.”

  He puffed out air unevenly, like the ‘put, put’ sound an old car makes as it pulls from a stop sign. She patted his back, “Better. Now, tell me where you last saw her.”

  “We—we were at a store, downtown.”

  She nodded her head, “Alright, which—” A young woman bumped into her before ducking inside one of the apartment buildings. April guided the boy off the sidewalk and onto her gravel driveway. “Which store? When?”

  He shrugged and dragged his sleeve over his dripping nose. “I don’t know. Clothes. My mom was looking at clothes. I wanted to go look at books, the store was just down the street. I wanted to go look at new books.”

  April hoped that her surprise didn’t show in her voice, “Books? You went by yourself to go look at books?”

  He nodded, “And then, and then I found a book I wanted and so I went back to get my mom and she wasn’t there.”

  “Did you tell her where you were going? Maybe she’s still in the bookstore looking for you.”

  His lip trembled and he shook his head, “I said I wanted to go look at books, but I didn’t tell her that I wanted to look at them bad enough to leave.”

  “Okay, that’s alright. We’ll find her, don’t you worry. Let’s just go back to the store and see if she’s there, that sound okay?”

  He nodded and April held out her hand, “Alright. We’re on a mission, then. I guess I should ask your name, shouldn’t I?”

  He sniffled. “It’s William Thomas Clark,” he recited.

  “It’s nice to meet you, William Thomas Clark. I’m April May June.”

  He giggled, wiping his nose once more.

  She lifted her nose in mocking defiance, planting her free hand on her hip, “What, you don’t believe that’s my name?”

  He shook his head, giving her a bashful smile.

  “Well, I guess you’re pretty smart, then. My name is April, that much is right.” She positioned his hand in hers in a more suitable position for walking. “Let’s go on an adventure.”

  She led him the couple blocks out of the main residential area into downtown. His eyes were alert, now; having been given a mission, his spirits seemed to have lifted. She pointed to ‘Some
thing Old Something New’ (one of her personal favorite clothing stores).

  “Is that where your mom was?”

  He shook his head, looking down the street at the variety of storefronts. He scanned across the street and jerked his head. “Wait! Wait, over there! Mom! Mom!”

  April—looking both ways; she didn’t need the kid to get hit by a car on her watch—led him across the street to the blonde woman he was pointing to. He snagged the woman’s blue sweater and she turned around with a ‘how dare you!’ look of disgust on her face,

  “Excuse m—” her face softened at William Thomas Clark, who must have realized at the same second she did, that he had tugged on the wrong blue sweater. The boy let go of the strange woman and turned back to April.

  “That wasn’t my mom,” he scrunched up his lips, nose, and mouth in an obvious attempt to keep the tears inside his head. April gently took the boy’s arm and guided him up against one of the buildings, out of the way of foot traffic.

  “Hey, it’s going to—” she started in her best cooing, motherly voice. She didn’t have any experience with it but was going to give it her best shot.

  “She’s going to be so mad that I ran away. She always tells me to stay close by to her and she was—she was going to buy me ice cream later. I don’t deserve ice cream!” he wailed.

  April gripped both of the boy’s shoulders and knelt back down to look at him, “She will not be mad.”

  She stroked the boy’s bleach blonde hair—a tad bit sweaty from his stressful frame of mind—out of his eyes and pressed it away from his forehead. “That’s the great thing about moms. They always forgive you, no matter how bad you were. She won’t be mad at you, William Thomas Clark, I promise.” April’s words were empty, hollow in her heart. She had never actually put them to the test. In her opinion, the rule carried over for when you were eight years old and when you did something as ‘bad’ as straying away from your mother’s side due to boredom. But in April’s case…she truly didn’t believe her own words.

  Two hours—and a sympathy slurpee—later, they found the right blonde woman. Her eyes were bloated red potatoes around her irises, blue like her sons, but not nearly as clear. She spotted them before April and William Thomas Clark saw her, and came sprinting across the street, out of breath.

  “William! I told you to wait in the car! What are you doing downtown?”

  April frowned at the boy, “The car? He said you two were—”

  “Eight blocks? You wandered eight blocks to come all the way downtown! Why on earth would you do that!”

  William Thomas Clark shot a mischievous look of pure satisfaction up at April, then back at his mother, “Sorry, Mom, it won’t happen again.”

  The mother was taking his hand when April couldn’t resist her own curiosity and reached out, “I’m sorry, but could you clear this up for me? I just spent the past two and a half hours helping him look for you. I’m not angry about the time, I didn’t mind at all, but I don’t understand. He said you two were already downtown.”

  His mom looked at April, confused for a second, then down at William Thomas Clark, “We were in the residential area. I told him to wait in the car, I got out for only a second to pick up a package from a friend, when I came back he was gone. I only came down here to look for him.”

  April looked at William Thomas Clark, whose hysteria had been replaced with sublime pleasure, “You saw me, didn’t you? From the car, you saw me.”

  He tugged on his mother’s hand, leading her back down the street, “Bye, April May June.”

  “I’m telling you, there was something off about this kid. It was like he came looking for me. Dragged me on this wild goose chase for absolutely no reason. Then I was late to work last night, because I didn’t get back home in time to change and head out.” There was a long pause on the other line. “Dad?”

  “Yeah, yeah, I’m here. I was just trying to remember where this conversation started.”

  She’d been rattling on and on about William Thomas Clark for so long it almost escaped her as well, “Oh, right. Well, since I got to work late, I felt terrible, I’ve never been late to work in my life, I wasn’t even late to school when I was a kid.”

  “I was there.”

  “And so to make up for it, I stayed late and didn’t get home until close to one am and I overslept my alarm so that’s why I missed your call earlier this morning.”

  “Sweet Caroline, you sure like to take the circuitous route when you’re making a point,” her dad grumbled, but let out his deep ‘yip, yip, yip’ that made April’s heart glow. If her curmudgeonly father could laugh, then anyone could.

  A moment passed, he cleared his throat, and returned to his serious, gruff tone, “You know how all this could be avoided if you just took it easy. You do too much, April. I know you want to—”

  “Dad, I’m fine. I—”

  “April!” his growl startled her, made her dig her toes into the small, circular rug underneath her desk, “Dammit, listen to me. I know you haven’t had it easy these past few years. I know I was the cause of most of it. I’m ashamed for how I treated you after Darin died.” April heard him choke out the last word and knew how hard it still was for him to say it. “I know you were on your own for a long time, too long, and you learned to pull your weight. And everybody else’s. But, I’m here. You’re not alone anymore. You got friends, you got family. You don’t have to do everything, April. You don’t have to help everyone. Listen, I don’t mean to harp on you, because I know you hate it when I do that. But I just want you to be careful, don’t wear yourself too thin. I’m worried about you. Always putting everyone before you, don’t forget about yourself.”

  She knew he was right, in her heart, she knew. But she had a habit of diverging from hard, unhappy truths by way of cheerful news or humor, “I will have you know that tonight I am taking some time for myself.”

  “Really?”

  She tried to ignore the apparent shock in her dad’s voice. “Yes. Yes I am. I’m going on a date tonight.”

  Something broke, maybe glass, on her dad’s side of the phone. “You’re what! Who? I want a name.”

  “Dad, relax. You know him, he’s a good man.”

  “I want a name, April.”

  She sighed and stood up from her chair, after blowing a kiss to the cedar box on her desk in front of her, and shuffled into the kitchen. “Rick. Rick Gri—”

  “I know which Rick! And April…” he cautioned without finishing his sentence.

  “I know, I know.”

  “No, you don’t, April. That’s my point. I know you’ve had the hots for him for quite a while, but I’m just not sure he’s in the right place to be dating. He hasn’t been doing so well, drinking—”

  “He said last month that he’s started going to AA!” she defended.

  “He lost his daughter.”

  That shut April up tighter than a lid on a jam jar.

  “You and I both know how that can destroy a man, losing a kid. I know it firsthand, but you, you watched it happen to me. Are you sure you want to open that can of worms?”

  She pulled in a deep breath, puffing her chest, “I think it makes a man stronger, Dad. He’s obviously made it out the other side and should be commemorated for it, not shunned. You might see a can of worms, but I am choosing to see a bottle of honey.”

  “Honey can be sticky, April. Sticky and messy.”

  Chapter Two

  “Just a sec!” April hollered at the second series of knocks on her door. Under normal circumstances, she would have appreciated Rick’s promptness, no doubt, just not at the moment.

  She stamped her foot. With both arms contorted behind her back, she had been trying to unstick the zipper on her blouse. It was sheer, a deep purple, and zipped all the way down the low back: really sexy, in Ed’s opinion. He had picked it out for April in the first place. This was the first night she’d been able to wear it and of course the zipper chose now to snag halfway up the fabric.
>
  Rick knocked again.

  “I am coming!” she huffed out of her room and to the front door, keeping one hand holding the zipper up in the back. “I have a perfectly good explanation for this,” she said on opening the door to Rick’s look that embodied the word ‘confuzzled’ (one of her favorites, to her Daddy’s utter contempt).

  “I’m sure you do. You need a hand?”

  She sighed, inviting him in, and turned around, “This blows. Totally blows. The first date and I can’t even dress myself. I normally am more coordinated than a two-year-old, I promise.”

  April could feel his fingers trying to separate the fabric from the metal zip track, but she wished she could see his face. She imagined him rolling his eyes at the immature mess he’d asked out. She bet he was flipping through the ways he could blow off a date in under thirty seconds without causing serious emotional damage.

  “That’s alright. It’s not the first time I’ve had to help a girl get dressed.”

  At first, she thought he was making some innuendo that she didn’t get because she hardly dated. Then she remembered Grace.

  “I’ve never heard you mention her before,” she said softly.

  His fingers stilled on her back for a second, then went back to their posts: separating, tugging, trying not to rip anything in the process. “That’s because I haven’t. Not in ten years, not even to your dad. Do you want to just change your shirt? This is really stuck.”

  “No. I’ve been trying to get this thing zipped up for the past ten minutes. I would have been on time, dressed and fabulous, had it not been for this shirt. I can’t let it win.”