career. “What did your coaches have you do during preseason?”
“I don’t know. Run until I hated running?”
“There you go. We can start there,” he said, winding up for a kick and missing the ball completely.
I laughed. I couldn’t help myself. He didn’t have an athletic bone in his body, but that didn’t stop him from wanting to support me. I didn’t deserve him, but I wasn’t willing to let that get in my way of appreciating him.
“We can look on the internet after dinner,” he suggested. “You can learn anything online.”
“Mmm. What about teaching? I don’t even know what a gym teacher does besides stand around creepily while students change and then make everyone play volleyball from November to May.”
I was by no means in the best shape of my life. Adulthood had taken its toll in the form of happy hours and sodium-laden convenience foods and no time for the gym. I was dehydrated and low on sleep. My shape was soft, round. And I lost my air with a flight of stairs.
“Dad, I don’t think I can do this. It doesn’t make any sense. I’ve been working in health care and data mining. Not sports and fitness.” I kicked the ball back to him.
He tripped over it and face-planted on the grass. I jogged to his side and pulled him up. “Maybe we should continue this discussion over beers. While sitting,” I suggested, picking his glasses off the ground.
“Sounds like a safer plan,” he agreed.
There was a loud, strangled honk from the neighbor’s fence. I yelped. “What the hell was that?” I was already out of breath just from kicking the ball around. Surprises could explode my already over-taxed heart.
“Dang swan,” Dad said without any heat.
“Swan? Did you say ‘swan’?”
The honk sounded again.
“Amie Jo thought their yard needed an exotic touch,” he said, limping toward the back porch.
Oh, no. No no no no no. Not her. Not the monster from my past.
“Amie Jo Armburger?” I asked as nonchalantly as the lump of dread in my throat would allow.
“Hostetter now,” Dad corrected me. “She and her husband, Travis, bought the house next door a few years ago. Tore it down and rebuilt it from the ground up.”
My entire senior year came rushing back to me so quickly I got vertigo. Travis Hostetter. Amie Jo Armburger. And I couldn’t think of either one of them without remembering Jake Freaking Weston.
This was why I moved away. Why I rarely came home. And when I did, I didn’t make it a big thing. I wore a baseball cap out in public. I refused to go to any local bars or Walmart. I pretended to be a stranger.
“Amie Jo and Travis live next door?” I clarified weakly.
Dad, oblivious to my instantaneous panic, jogged up the back steps. “Yep! I’ll grab us a couple of brewskis and check on dinner.”
The back door closed, and suddenly I wanted nothing more than to peer over the fence and see what kind of castle the Prom King and Queen had built. It was stupidity and curiosity that had me running at the seven-foot-tall, peeling-paint barrier. My sneakers scrambled for grip as my biceps screamed. I was able to haul my eyeballs above the fence just long enough to catch a glimpse of a huge kidney-shaped in-ground pool surrounded by what looked like white marble. There was a raised hot tub spewing a waterfall of color-changing water back into the pool. The porch had Roman columns holding up the two-story roof.
“A fucking outdoor kitchen and a tiki bar? Are you kidding me?” I groaned.
“Mom! Some lady is spying on us!” The shout came from the direction of the pool, and I realized there were people in the water. Two of them. Towheaded teens with surfer dude haircuts lounging on rafts the size of small islands.
“Shit. Shit. Shit.”
I dropped to the ground, ducked—for unknown reasons as I was currently blocked from view by the fence—and ran to the gate. I slipped through into my parents’ front yard and stared up at the modern monstrosity McMansion that I’d missed when I’d pulled in the driveway on the other side of the house.
Stately red brick, more white columns, and what looked like a cobblestone driveway. All behind a wrought iron fence that clearly stated that only a certain kind of visitor was welcome. There was a freaking fountain in the front yard. Not just one of those understated cement jobs you could get at Lowe’s or Home Depot.