The Pick Up

by Allison Tempe

  It was late, but he stripped out of his clothes and hopped into the shower. He took the longest, hottest shower he could remember. He made a point of not remembering the shower at Adam’s, the night after their first date, and besides, that had been a different kind of hot, the kind of hot he was not going to think about. He let the water pour over him until he was pink and flushed, amazed when little fists didn’t bang on the bathroom door, and a little voice didn’t ask if she could watch a movie or play a game or have a snack.

  He stayed up later than he should have, considering he had a job interview in the morning. The idea of enforcing a bedtime seemed cruel, so instead he sat, propped up by the pillows from both beds, watching an action movie that he would have been nervous to watch at home, even if Caroline was supposed to be asleep, because he never knew when she’d come tumbling down the stairs to tell him she’d had a bad dream.

  It was well after midnight by the time he turned the TV off. He slid down under the sheets, and spread out until he star-fished across the mattress. He pointed his toes, just to claim that extra inch. He closed his eyes and sighed, snug and relaxed.

  An hour later, he was still awake, staring at the small light of a smoke alarm on the hotel room ceiling. The blankets were scratchy and if he didn’t cover his head he was freezing in bed, but if he did cover his head, then he couldn’t breathe. This was Adam’s fault too, he decided. If they’d come together, then Kyle could have used Adam’s body heat to stay comfortable.

  He sighed, watching the little red light, wondering if it ever blinked. He wondered if Caroline was asleep. He wondered if his dad had stuck to the three-story limit.

  He wondered why Rebecca hadn’t called.

  She must know that the relationship was over, and yet she hadn’t come through on her promise if Kyle broke her brother’s heart. He was prepared to debate who was the heartbreaker in this case, but the fact remained that there had been not a single call from Rebecca, not a single ambush in a public space. He had the uneasy idea that she might be lurking outside his hotel window, waiting for him to fall asleep so she could launch her devious revenge plan.

  He rolled over and, despite the relative darkness, stared at the empty space in the bed beside him. Adam should have been there. If he’d simply listened to Kyle and seen it from his perspective, he would have been there. Kyle had been honest. There had been no false pretenses. Adam knew all the baggage he came with. Kyle hadn’t led him on with promises of domestic bliss and picket fences, while plotting to abandon him once things were getting good.

  And things had been getting good. Really good. He even found Adam’s emotional constipation endearing, most of the time. The way Adam touched him, the way he crowded into Kyle’s space at the slightest invitation, they said Adam felt a lot more than he was able to say. Kyle wondered if, maybe, in their little private hot mess club with its membership of two, Adam wasn’t the bigger mess after all, as well as the hotter party. It seemed unfair that he would get all the accolades, but Kyle liked having a goal to work toward.

  He reached for his phone on the bedside table, since apparently he wasn’t sleeping. The light from the screen as he turned it on made him squint in the dark of the room. He stared at his unanswered calls to Adam again, then flipped through their text messages, both the ones that Kyle had sent in the last week, and the ones they had traded before.

  They were so very bad at words. Kyle used too many and Adam too few, and so much of their relationship seemed to hang on poorly punctuated digital banter with a character limit. Kyle missed the way Adam’s nose scrunched up when he was trying to put the words together to explain his emotions.

  Can’t sleep. You should have come. I miss you.

  Kyle reviewed the words he had typed on the phone and then deleted them. Sending that now, six hours away and in the middle of the night, wouldn’t resolve anything. He thought of the night he’d lost his job, of the way he’d hesitated to call Adam, and how much it had helped when he had. Maybe Adam wouldn’t mind so much if he called. Maybe Kyle would wake him up, and Adam would be too close to sleep to remember he wasn’t taking Kyle’s calls.

  He held the phone for a minute longer, and his nerve failed him. Maybe he’d try in the morning.

  He didn’t feel rested when his alarm went off in the morning. There was a new text message from his dad, showing a picture of Caroline in her pajamas at the table in the kitchen, with strawberry yogurt smeared across her face.

  Good morning

  Kyle texted back a reply. He frowned at the screen, reconsidering his plan to text Adam. In the light of day, he couldn’t think of a decent opening line.

  Kyle decided to skip the free hotel breakfast in favor of stopping to eat downtown, closer to where his interview would be. The coffee shop he found was big and spacious, with stainless steel chairs and tables. A far cry from the homey feel at Rebecca’s, or the well-worn hipster vibe at that shoe store/ice cream place where he and Adam had gone, but it would do.

  Kyle sat with his coffee and muffin and tried to picture that this might be his coffee shop, if he moved to Richmond. There were two girls working behind the counter, young enough to be working a summer job. They chatted with each other, but didn’t acknowledge the customers beyond taking and filling their orders. No regular customers then, at least not at this time of the morning. He wondered where locals got their breakfast. Was there an area with small businesses who needed community events to remind shoppers that they were still there?

  As he sipped his coffee and flipped through his phone, a woman burst through the front door. She hurried through the shop and made her way behind the counter.

  “I’m so sorry I’m late,” she said to the girls as she disappeared into a back room, returning a few seconds later, an apron tied around her waist. “Daycare sent Nathan home yesterday afternoon. They said he had a fever and they won’t let him come back until it’s been down for twenty-four hours, and then I couldn’t find anyone to take him this morning. I called everyone I know.” She smoothed a hand over her hair, which frizzed out of its elastic.

  The two other girls appeared uninterested. Kyle was interested though. Was that something daycares did? Would he have to worry about that if he and Caroline lived here? He wanted to know what had happened, but the woman didn’t elaborate. She just tightened her apron strings and collected empty mugs. Kyle smiled as she approached. She frowned a little, then smiled too, before she collected another mug from the table beside him and went behind the counter. Kyle waited for her to return so he could ask her what had happened next, but she didn’t reappear.

  Once he’d finished his breakfast, Kyle went for a walk toward the beach, still thinking about the woman and her son.

  “I called everyone I know.”

  He knew no one. If he had been in that situation, he would have had no one to call in Richmond. That would change; few people were immune to the Fenton charm. He’d build a new network of friends who would look after each other. It would be harder though. A lot of his friends in Seattle were people he knew from school, or Olivia’s friends that she’d known before they’d met. In Red Creek, that famous community his dad had mentioned had been there for them, whether Kyle wanted to admit it or not. Here, he’d have to start from scratch, and he’d still be an anomaly, the young single dad who made people stare and wonder in a way that made him itch.

  “I’m your family.” His dad had said that. Kyle had a sinking feeling that it, like so many things in his life, was one of those little nuggets of wisdom that would later turn out to be so important.

  “You’re so scared of realizing that this town is where you need to be that you’d pack up everything and move to a place where you have nothing and you’re completely alone.”

  By the time Adam had said that, Kyle had hardly been listening anymore. All he’d been able to see was the angry hurt on Adam’s face that had fired his own confusion over how the conversation had gone so wrong. He’d heard it as an accusation, and had focused
on defending what he felt he had to do. But what if Adam had been right?

  Kyle tried not to be discouraged as he took the long route back to the van. The city was pretty. There was a playground near the waterfront that Caroline would like. He had another moment of anxiety when the van struggled to cough back to life, but they got rolling eventually.

  He was a little early for his appointment, and sat in his car, considering his options. He didn’t have to go in. He could turn the van around, and he’d be back in Red Creek by midafternoon. He could spend the afternoon going cross-eyed while watching Princess Amazonia with Caroline for the millionth time, while he composed a letter-perfect apology to Adam for not understanding what he’d been trying to say. Then Adam would stumble through his own apology for overreacting, and it would all be okay again.

  Except Kyle would still be unemployed. Still relying on his father for everything, with no solution in sight. Would cuddles with the Bean and make-up sex with Adam be enough when the cobwebs started gathering in his bank account? And how would he explain that he’d walked away from the most prospective of jobs, one he’d already driven six hours to get to?

  He stared across the street at the building he was supposed to be entering soon. The charity was another youth-focused group, like the one he’d worked for with Shannon. This one worked with autistic children, sending them to summer camps and organizing peer-to-peer support events for parents and families. Shannon said she knew the director well and that she was sure Kyle would get along with him too.

  A receptionist greeted him at the office. She was older, maybe fifty. It was a huge relief to Kyle when he gave her his name and she nodded like she was expecting him. He took a seat and waited, trying not to fidget.

  “Is this for an interview?” the receptionist whispered, like that information might be secret. Kyle shrugged.

  “More like a conversation about whether an interview might be possible,” he said. The receptionist nodded in understanding and then stood. She disappeared behind a large unit of shelves, then reappeared with a stack of brochures and papers, and handed them to Kyle.

  “In case you want to study,” she said.

  Kyle leafed through what she’d given him. There were a number of brochures that he’d also found on the charity’s website, but beneath those brochures were newsletters and donor updates that he hadn’t seen. He read the first one. It was a request for donations, and it had words like mission and advocate and outcomes. They tickled a dusty part of his brain, a little area that hadn’t been used in years. He remembered these. Remembered the spin they had used to pitch campaigns to donors and sponsors, the buzzwords that made people feel that sense of immediacy and pull out their checkbooks. Kyle had watched Shannon work the room at party after party, drawing on people’s sympathies until it seemed like their only option was to make a donation. The party circuit had been exhausting, but knowing that the work the charity was doing made a difference had been rewarding from his first day on the job. Night after night, he had stayed up late, proofing another grant application, licking envelopes, or figuring out why the email to past donors had gone to the entire mailing list instead.

  He had done it before. He could do it again.

  As he read, Kyle felt himself slide into the groove. He could be successful with this organization. He knew how to prioritize and how to pitch. This charity was smaller; they would have to go farther with less, including their staff. He came with past experience and a work ethic that had kept his business running for years. With enough hard work, he could make himself indispensable. It would be a lot to take on, but he could do it.

  His phone rang. It was a local number from Red Creek he didn’t recognize. Maybe the café? Rebecca finally calling for payback?

  “Kyle?” An older man in a gray polo shirt stood by the reception desk. Kyle slipped the phone back into his pocket and rose to greet him.

  “Yes?” The word was less confident than he would have liked. He straightened, thinking of the letters and the fundraisers and the reasons he was here. “Yes. Hi. Kyle Fenton.” He walked forward, putting out his hand. The other man took it.

  “Nice to meet you. I’m Robert,” he said. “We spoke on the phone. Thanks for coming down. Shannon had great things to say about you.”

  “Glad to hear it.” Suddenly, Kyle felt decisive, for the first time in months. For the first time since Olivia had died, and maybe even before that, he knew what he was going to do next.

  Incoming call from: Kyle Fenton

  It was the second call from Kyle in as many minutes. Adam’s insides twisted, and he mentally kicked himself for not getting over that response yet. He ignored the phone and queued up another episode of Sherlock. There was an empty carton of takeout Chinese from his earlier dinner, and he walked it to the garbage. A text message blinked across his phone.

  Answer your phone. Please.

  After the graduation, Kyle had called a few times and left a couple voice mails to plead his case. But there hadn’t been anything from him since.

  The text disappeared as another call came in.

  Incoming call from: Kyle Fenton

  Adam ground his teeth. He had done a pretty good job of creating distance between them, and Kyle was not doing him any favors right now as his name flashed on the screen.

  The phone went silent. Another text appeared a few seconds later.

  please it’s about Caroline.

  Adam read the message suspiciously. What about Caroline? The last time he’d fallen for that trick, he’d wound up with Kyle whirling into his apartment with too many snacks and plans for a movie night.

  i’ll phone Rebecca.

  That was a low blow. Rebecca had already called Adam an asshole several times that week. He didn’t need Kyle to give her more ammunition.

  The phone resumed ringing. Adam sighed and thumbed through to the call.

  “What?”

  “Oh, thank god,” Kyle said. His voice was staticky and there was a lot of background noise, like he was outside somewhere. “Adam, I’m sorry.” You should be. “I wouldn’t have called, but I’m running out of options.”

  “What do you want?” Adam tried to toe the line between angry and hurt. He put a chip in his mouth to keep himself from saying anything else that he might regret after he’d heard whatever breathless monologue Kyle had called to give him.

  “My van died.” There was the sound of a car passing near wherever Kyle was.

  “Are you okay?” A dead van was not the opening line Adam had expected.

  “Yeah. I don’t think it’s coming back from this one, but I managed to pull over and I’m okay. I’m still three hours from home though.” Adam’s eyes narrowed. If Kyle had the balls to call him to ask for a lift . . .

  “And?” Three hours so close to Kyle, in the confined space of Adam’s car, wasn’t a solution that would allow him to keep himself on a steady emotional keel.

  “The tow truck’s coming, they can give me a lift into town, and then I should be able to catch a bus in a couple hours. I don’t know what I’m going to do with the van, but they said they’d check it out and call me. I was thinking Ben could come give it a once-over too, but maybe it’d be easier to let them tow it to the scrap yard. Do you think they’d do that? Maybe if I let them keep part of the money? It can’t be worth a lot, but I think—”

  “Kyle, what do you want exactly?” Adam said, more abruptly than he meant to. Every syllable of Kyle’s monologue squeezed tighter at Adam’s insides.

  “Right,” Kyle said. There was the sound of another car passing. “Right. Sorry. No. My dad. It’s my dad. Or my uncle actually. My aunt called from the hospital. They think my uncle had a heart attack and my aunt’s freaking out, and the rest of our family lives out of state so my dad needs to go and—”

  “You need someone to take care of Caroline?” Adam could do that. It would limit the amount of time he had to spend with Kyle. Better than giving him a ride.

  “Could you?” Kyle’s
relief was audible, despite the crappy phone connection. “You wouldn’t have to do much. She’ll be asleep so you only—”

  “It’s fine.” Somehow the longer Kyle talked, the deeper the ache in Adam’s chest settled. It pissed him off that Kyle’s run-on sentences were still endearing.

  “Oh,” Kyle said. “Okay. I’ll call my dad. He said if you could come for nine o’clock, that would be great. Caroline will be in bed.”

  “Sure.”

  There was a pause, filled only by tinny background noises on Kyle’s end of the call.

  “Okay,” Kyle said again. “Good. Thanks.”

  “Yeah,” Adam said. He ate another chip when his brain prompted him to speak again.

  This is the right thing to do, Adam told himself, as he drove over to Kyle’s house. Whatever had happened between them, his own stupid heartache was minor.

  Kyle’s dad greeted him with a tired smile and a thank-you at the door. As Kyle had said, Caroline was asleep.

  “Did you talk to Kyle?” Gord asked as he headed towards the door.

  “I did,” Adam said.

  “I appreciate you helping out. I know the two of you aren’t . . .”

  “We’re both adults,” Adam said. “We can behave ourselves.”

  Gord hesitated, like he wanted to say more, but instead he just nodded and clapped a hand on Adam’s shoulder. “Thanks for watching Caroline.”

  Adam settled himself down in the den, with the next few episodes of Sherlock ready to go. Around ten thirty, he felt a sudden pang of anxiety. Kyle had said after eleven, which meant he’d be arriving soon. He had texted to say he was on the bus, but Adam hadn’t heard from him since. The idea of texting him now to find out where he was only ratcheted up the anxiety further.

  He went to the kitchen and got a glass of water. This was stupid. Over the course of the week, he’d had some time to think, and could admit now that he hadn’t handled Kyle’s announcement well. He’d reacted emotionally to the idea that Kyle was considering leaving. Yelling backstage of the school’s auditorium and then a week of silent treatment had not been the best problem-solving approach. It hurt like hell that a relationship that had felt so promising was over.