Hot Pickle - J.J. Knight Page 0,23
position on the rack.
“Good,” he says. “You know I’m behind you one-hundred percent.”
Sure he is. As long as I leave his sister alone.
I stand to shake out my arms, and we switch positions. I can see why Camryn didn’t tell her brother we met again. I remember his big boast that day at the meet when he talked about the other men who came after her. And how he’d been thrown out of a competition for throwing a punch at one.
My gut tells me there’s more to the story, so for now I’m going to give Franklin the benefit of the doubt. We’ve been friends for a long time, and he wouldn’t be acting this way if he didn’t have his reasons.
I pull the extra weights off the bar to take Franklin down to his warm-up weight.
The two of us make a good team. I won’t jeopardize that.
But like hell will I let him get in the way if I think I have a shot with his sister.
12
Camryn
Waiting for Max in the neighborhood park is like one of those happy dreams where you know something wonderful is about to happen, and you never want to wake up.
I’m on one of the swings, the metal chains in my hands, and I’ve worked my way up to the backside of the arc, looking down at the dirt.
Then, whoosh, I glide forward, past the ground and up toward the sky. The air cools my face, lifting my hair to trail behind me. The entire row of swings is empty, so I don’t feel too guilty snagging one for myself.
Four children congregate on a pyramid-shaped contraption made of ropes. They climb and laugh and hang like monkeys as I drop back toward the ground and up the other side.
It’s glorious.
The sun begins its slide toward the horizon as I reach another apex, my toes stretching toward the trees. Mothers murmur together on a bench near the path. I could be five years old and happily playing while my mother sat among the others.
This old childhood fantasy of mine rushes back to me with sharp familiarity.
In truth, my mother was never clustered with others. She fought depression all her life and spent most of her time in front of the television, mindlessly watching show after show. I don’t know if she tried to get help, or if nothing worked for her. I have never asked. We didn’t acknowledge the problem in my house.
My dad worked, and I didn’t see him a lot. He always had somewhere else to be, something else to do. I had the sense he didn’t quite approve of his kids. Maybe Mom was fine before we came along.
Franklin and I often wandered to a park much like this one. All those times I raced for the swings for this feeling of flying without a care, he’d always been there.
Other kids got brave and learned to jump during the height of the swing to thud into the grass beyond the scraped-out dirt.
But I was cautious. Even though my brother was there, my parents were not. I’d seen more than one kid crash and hurt themselves, running to their mothers for solace.
That wasn’t an option for me, so I played it safe.
A shriek from the pyramid draws everyone’s attention, and two of the mothers stand up to look.
One of the kids is hanging upside down from her knees and can’t reach up for the ropes.
A mother shifts her baby to her hip and heads over to give the little girl a push so she can lift her dangling torso back to safety.
“Try it on the lower ones until your tummy’s strong enough for the higher ones,” the mother says, then heads back to the knot of women.
She’s totally chill. The mothers in my day would have shouted, “You got into it, get yourself out of it!”
I wouldn’t have minded. I wanted my mother to say something, anything. Just be there.
I shift my attention to the sky. A few striated clouds break the blue. I got here early, wanting to think about where I might sit and how I might look when Max approaches.
I wear jeans and an off-the-shoulder top. My hair is down, albeit tangled after my swinging. That’s okay. I have a feeling Max doesn’t go for perfect.
The air whooshes over my skin, and I close my eyes to revel in the sensation of flying.
My childhood was not ideal. But good enough. Most people had it worse. We had a home. Food.