Rocky Mountain H--oly crap!

In less than a week, I will leave to take my first solo vacation that does not involved visiting family.  Technically, I am still visiting family for the first few days, but after that, it is just me, a backpack, an REI guide, and about 8 women I have never met before hiking through Rocky Mountain National Park.  Oh, you didn't know I was this adventurous? Believe me, neither did I.

Last summer, I got wistful thinking about the boy graduating and the bulk of parenting behind me. (never over, but those formative years are done).  I thought that if I was this sad about it a year in advance that I would be a mess come actual graduation.  What could I do to change this narrative?  A friend suggested that I do something I have never done, something for just me, and the solo vacation idea was born.

I love to hike, so make it about hiking!  I have no natural sense of direction and a completely irrational fear of bears, so it had to be a guided hike.  Plus, as a woman, I have a healthy fear of hiking on my own due to serial killers, rapists, and misogyny.  Hello, REI guided tours!  I also flatter myself thinking if I was in a co-ed group of hikers that I would have to fend off the tiresome advances of my fellow hikers, so an all-woman group it was.  

I know this fat bastard is just waiting for me.

At first, I chose and paid for the REI trip through Yellowstone.  I couldn’t wait.  It was rated Difficult.  I know difficult; no problem.  I started buying supplies, thinking about how to get in shape, eating right during soccer season because I figured the less I weighed, the less I would have to haul through the mountains.  I, um, got a map of Yellowstone and plotted out my hike.  I watched the news from Yellowstone about bear attacks.  I was prepared.  However, two months before my trip, REI emailed to say that they could not get backcountry permits and the trip was off.  This news came at the end of the school year and I was beyond fragile at this point, so I wept my sinuses out.  The bitter disappointment!  What had I logged all those calories for?  I have to say that REI was great about reaching out, listening, and then helping me pick another trip to take within days of the cancellation announcement.  With some time to reflect, I really think it was the world watching out for me.  Have you seen what a terrible mess Yellowstone is right now?  Also, I don’t think they were lying about the difficult rating and while I have prepared and trained, I have a feeling that their difficult might be more difficult than my difficult.  

Me, my backpack, and a group of women set to take on Rocky Mountain National Park.  I can’t wait!  I also can’t believe it!  And is it grows near and I have packed and repacked my backpack 82 times trying to see what I need, what I don’t, necessity vs luxury, I am getting very, very anxious.  I love to hike but do I love to hike with a 45 lb pack on my back for four days?  I have camped twice in my life: once was terrible and prevented me from camping for another twenty years, but the last time was great!  But, even great, my body was really sore from being on the ground over night.  Will I be able to move after three nights on the ground?  What if all the women in my group hate me?  What if I hate all of them?  What if I am too scared to get out of my tent to pee at night and get a raging UTI from holding it in and then have to hike with a raging UTI?  What if I have seriously overestimated my physical condition to do this?  What if, what if, what if.  

What if I am stronger than I think?  What if I see things I have never seen before?  What if my kids step up and take care of themselves and each other while I am gone?  What if I find purpose, a sense of self, and the room to breathe in this busy world?  What if this is my “Eat, Pray, Love” (minus the love) meets “The Wild” moment?  What if my legs and lungs burn with every step, but I keep stepping?  What if, what if, what if?

The last time I was this adventurous, my friend Amy and I got into her Plymouth Laser with AAA maps and drove from Buffalo to Dallas.  No cell phones, no GPS.  Two dumb teenagers in a car pointed south.  We made it there and back and only got a little lost in Indiana for about an hour or so.  We made it then and I will make it now.  I don’t need to lead or be at the front of the group, I am happy somewhere in the middle.  I don’t need to make friends because I like my own company.  I don’t need to be a rockstar backpacker, I just need to do it.

I will continue to worry just a little because that is how I am wired.  I will lie awake and worry about small things and big things and google “bear attacks RMNP”.  However, I will also let myself stop to think about how amazing this will be.  How I have waited a very long time to do something as adventurous as this and how I deserve it.  All this will happen as I pack and repack my backpack another 82 times.  The one thing I never waiver on taking?  A journal to record it all.

I Am Woman, Hear me ROAR

If you know me, you know that I have been passionate about Women’s History since forever.  At first it was probably because I always liked history, it is after all, just a story.  But as I was enjoying history I was always wondering “where are the women?”.  Great about George Washington, but tell me more about Martha.  I had to do a lot of digging and reading on my own to find out where the women were because they didn’t teach that in the classes I was taking.  And I learned that they were there all along, doing all the same things these celebrated men were doing but in voluminous skirts and with a baby attached to them at some point on their body.  Go women!  When I began teaching, I became absolutely passionate about making sure we were not just reading the works of dead, white men.  We were reading Kate Chopin’s “Story of an Hour” and talking about why she was so happy her husband was dead.  But even this wasn’t enough.  I wanted an entire class where we just learned about women and after some patience, some persistence, and um, some departmental debate, Women, Words and Wisdom was born.  This class is my passion, my chance to teach about the women we never learned about, an elective for curious students, and this is a class that I almost lost because I was too tired to fight.

I was told in March that budget cuts, teachers losing jobs, yadda yadda, my elective, my WWW, was being cut for next year.  March is the tail-end of soccer season. I was exhausted physically, mentally, spiritually; just a hollowed-out shell of a human. I was sad, but at the time, it just made me feel more tired.  I could see what they were saying and I nodded and went on with my very long day ahead of me.  The students in my class were livid.  They wanted better answers, they wanted to know if we could form a club, fight a fight.  (This is why working with teenagers is sometimes so rewarding: all that passion and fury!)  But, and I am embarrassed to admit this, it wasn’t until they presented their final exams that I remembered that I wanted to fight for this class too.  Their finals consisted of them writing a children’s book about their life, or some aspect of their life.  These stories were hilarious, they rhymed, they had original art work, and they were so, so personal.  They talked about not having their dads around, being raised mostly by women, about overcoming anxiety, about trying and failing and trying once again.  I sat at my desk laughing and crying and knowing we had created this safe space that they could be so vulnerable in and it shook me out of my exhaustion and reminded me I needed to fight.

And I know we are all exhausted and we run this world at the expense of ourselves.  We have to look at this new ruling of overturning Roe v Wade and we need to be shaken out of our collective stupor, and as always, we need to fight.  We are at this place because we are tired and we don’t go to vote or we forget that things are important outside our own small worlds.  Really, I don’t care if you are prolife or prochoice; I just want us all to be prowomen, and this ruling shows we are not.  This ruling is an attack on women, on their bodies, on their place in society. It is not about babies.  If any of this was about babies, there would be no child left in the foster care system or up for adoption.  This is about reminding women where they stand and forcing them, once again, to be smaller then men.  To be less than.  And this is going to hit women of color and women who are low-income harder than any other group.  Like all of history, really.

No abortion in the case of rape or incest?  What kind of Draconian punishment is that for having a vagina?  For being attacked and violated against your will?  For being held down and abused?  This is not okay!  This makes me want to scream “FUCK” into the void and I want you to scream it with me.  This is rape culture, this is saying boys will be boys and she shouldn’t have worn that shirt.  Fuck that.  Boys shouldn’t be rapists and she can wear whatever the hell she wants.

If you don’t think this ruling applies to your life at all, you are very wrong.  I am not going to have a child or get pregnant any time soon (two dusty eggs left in there and a shell of a uterus), but it affects me because it affects the young women I teach.  The women I teach with.  Women I know and don’t know.  It affects women.  It sets the precedent for changing any rule about women.  Did you know that it was only as recent as the 1970’s that women could own their own home, get a credit card, or a loan?  Maybe that is next.  I keep picturing the episode of “The Handmaid’s Tale” where Moira’s money is all gone because she doesn’t have a spouse to transfer her balance to.  That will be me.  That will be you.

If you have never studied Women’s History, get a book and read it.  You don’t have to start at cave dwellers; find an era that interests you and read about it.  See where the women were and what they did and how they were treated.  Watch Mrs. America on Hulu if you want to see the original fight for Roe v Wade and why the Equal Rights Amendment is still not passed.  Be curious, be open-minded, be purposefully angry.  Be reminded, as I was, that we are never done fighting.  Be educated, be supportive of other women, be committed to being active in a way that helps rather than hurts.  It is okay to be still be exhausted! Be exhausted while you do these things.  I know it is hard to breathe and act with feet on our necks.  RBG has said so nicely that  “all I ask of our brethren is they take their feet off our necks.”  This latest ruling is not only standing on our necks, but stomping.  

Be a feminist.  See if the men in your life are feminists.  All it feminism means is that men and women are equal.  Teach other people this definition of feminism.  One can still be better than the other at different things, but equal in their standing in society, equal in how they are paid, equal in their votes, equal in how they get to live their lives.  Be angry.  Be shaken out of your exhaustion and be ready to find a place to show your voice.  At the very least, take comfort that we don’t have to do all this in a corset or voluminous skirts.  Yet. 

Wanted: Actually Affordable Teacher Affordable Housing

 If the American dream is owning your own home and that house being the symbol of your success and hard work, well, welcome to my nightmare and my current failures. I think that might be an old dream though, and the new American dream is just finding someplace you can afford to live.  But again, welcome to my nightmare and current failures.

I recently got very excited about a news story saying that there was some affordable housing being set aside for teachers.  I am a teacher!  I need affordable housing!  I scurried to find out what to send to who to see what I could do and in the meantime google-stalked this housing and appreciated the neighborhood, the floor plans, the cute exterior of my new home.  I entered a zoom call with 74 other people in the very tight market for these 30 homes.  Still good odds, I thought.  I had about four solid minutes of watching the presentation and thinking I could get one of these homes.  Yes!  I will volunteer 200 hours to Habitat for Humanity and build other people homes!  (ooh! I will need to get a tool belt and a flannel shirt). Yes! I have money for earnest money and closing costs! (look at me! So financially responsible) Yes!  I work for this district and I am a teacher!  Yes!  Until they got to the earnings slide and I gasped and sat open-mouthed as my heart tumbled out of my mouth, splatted on the floor, and lies there still.  Y’all.  I, a teacher, do not make enough money per year to qualify for teacher affordable housing. In order to be considered for one of these houses, a family needs to make 80% of the Median Family Income.   A three-person home, which me and two kids makes three, was over $70,000.  I laugh/cried when I saw that. Then I thought, they are adults, I won’t count them.  A single-person home, the income was $55,000.  I have no trouble telling you I made $51,000 last year; my income is public record.  I make $4000 too little to qualify for teacher affordable housing.  That $51k includes two coaching stipends and a professional pathways and any other hoops offered for a little more money.

I am a college-educated, professional woman who, as a teacher, cannot afford housing set aside specifically for teachers.  How is this possible?  And if it is this bad for me, what is it like for someone who doesn’t have a college degree? Someone who makes minimum wage? Where the hell are people supposed to live? Even if I did make the $55k needed for the teacher house, the mortgage and HOA fees would leave me about $1000 a month to live on. Oh, and don't think I didn't think about how to make that work. Well, if I only eat two meals a day and my Prius lasts another ten years and we never turn the lights on and keep the AC set at 80 and so on and so on.

The kids and I are currently in an apartment that is close to my school.  Even though they are considered adults by the government, they are still very much my responsibility to house.  My lease is up in December and I am holding my breath waiting to see how much rent here will go up.  And if goes up too much, then where do we move to?  When I look at other apartments, they are just as much and more than my current apartment and this current rent is now a stretch.  

I like to play this game of “Where Can I Not Afford to Live” each night and gaze at houses and apartments Zillow says are rentable in my area.  A current find shows a duplex down the street with a back yard!  My aging dog will be so happy!  Only two bedrooms though.  Looks like someone needs to go live with dad.  Oh. And one bathroom.  Well, it can be done. Maybe not with Sophie’s IBS though. Click on price; $2300/month.  This is $500 more than I am paying for my window-deficient, slightly slanted, 3 bedroom, 2 bath apartment.  Last year, I had a realtor friend set up a house search for me to see other options.  I asked her to please stop the search about a week in as the results were depressing.  Many of the options seem to include living among college students and a house that had recently hosted a murder in it.  Last year, I was hopeful and didn’t know that I was a teacher who couldn’t afford affordable teacher housing.  This year, I know who I am, I know what I make and really,  I am thinking that maybe the murder house wouldn’t be so bad. 

Currently selling for about 1.2 million, as is

Figuring it Out

It is my conference period and I am sitting at my desk crying.  For once it is not because of something terrible that happened, or some new data thing we need to do, or some frustration over a student or procedure or this job, and not even just because I am tired and therefore fragile.  I am sitting here crying at my desk because I just sat in the last ARD meeting I will ever have as a mom.  I have cried at many an ARD or pre-ARD meeting, but this time it was again, not out of frustration or procedure, but the fact that the boy has done everything he needs to do and is going to graduate in ten or so days.   William McMahon is going to graduate.

As a baby, Will took forever to hold a spoon and actually bring food to his mouth, and I joked that I would have to go to kindergarten with him just to be sure he ate. But I didn’t, he figured it out.  In kindergarten, he wanted to play tether ball so badly but was so bad at it, the teachers kept him from it for his own safety.  We put a tether ball pole in the backyard and again, he figured it out.  I thought he would always just be friends with the kids of my friends, but in second grade, he figured it out and came home with a friend who brought a mom friend for me with him.  

I thought that neither of us would survive his middle school years.  Kind kids are an easy target for bullies and kind kids with bad eyesight who don’t play a lot of sports are their dream.  It was hard and there was so much sadness and pain.  Eventually, he figured it out.  He found his people, he played his trumpet, and he did all the normal ridiculous things boys in middle school should do: talk about farts and boobs non-stop if I am remembering correctly. 

Onto high school, to team sports, a brand new school away from his people and it was an adjustment.  As he was attending the school I taught at, I definitely did too much the first year or two to make sure he could figure things out.  He got there.  And then COVID.  None of us have any part of that figured out, even now.  He got a job!  He was immersed in a world of customer service and working with people who were not his peers, and he figured out how to do that while going to school and passing his classes.  Not all three at once all the time, but enough of all three to keep going.  Enough to get us to the meeting that showed he has figured it out and has me crying at my desk.

I always joke that this kid will live with me forever and I better move up north and get a house with a basement for him to live in.  But I realize now that he will not.  He will not always live with me.  He has struggled and fought and figured out so much in his life and he is going to do the same as he moves out of high school and into adulthood.  And all the worrying and pushing and fighting for him and holding his hand and moving him forward, well, it’s all but done.  He will always need me to be his mom, but I see my role as advocate diminishing as he grows up and on.  

This kid I thought would never walk or talk or use a spoon, or fall with his hands out to protect his face, or grow top teeth, or remember on his own to use deodorant, this kid is graduating high school with the grades he earned, with the friends he made, with the job he holds, with kindness still in his heart and eyes, and humor that is terrible and funny all at once. I couldn’t be more proud of this kid if I tried.  I asked him if he wanted me to just be a mom at his graduation ceremony and sit in the bleachers with his dad, or if he wanted me to be a teacher mom and sit on his row. He didn’t even think about it and answered quickly “On my row, Mom” while giving me a happy smile that went straight to my heart. I think he has me figured out too.

Just Breathe

I've been doing a lot of yoga lately: at-home, on-my-mat, Adriene-on-youTube-type yoga.  I started because I missed going to yoga and after a few days I realized it really helped me handle some of the stress of this life a little better. Also, let me be honest and say I am 100% counting the 32 calories I burn while doing it as exercise.  If you have done yoga, you know how much they make you breathe in and out and in and hold it and out.  It is as important as Warrior II or mountain pose.  Feel your breath do this, feel how it makes your body do that.  Breathe in, breathe out.

Today, we have a snow/ice day from school and as I woke up and the realization that I did not, nor could not, be anywhere today hit me, I feel like I inhaled for the first time in a very long time.  I inhaled and thought "No school!", I inhaled and thought "No soccer!", I inhaled and thought "Nowhere to be!" and I inhaled and thought about how very long it has been since I felt like I could breathe this deeply.

I do a lot of exhaling.  Breath out in exhaustion.  Breath out in resignation. Breath out in wondering what the hell I am doing.  Breath out as I ask "Why has no one done this assignment even though we had two days to work on it in class?!?" Breaths out as I wonder if I am the only one who can smell the litter box? Warm, fetid breaths of tired, worried, stale air.  (I am in that mask nine hours a day; this is an accurate description, believe me). 

Some days, I have quick little gasps of inhalation.  Gasp in "I forgot that was due!", gasp in "I need to cook fourteen meals for the week so I don't eat only boxed mac and cheese."  Gasp in as my jeans are tight and I know it's because I have only burned 32 calories doing yoga and despite saying I want to go round and wear snap-up house dresses from HEB, I am still very vain and don't want to go round and winter is not the season for snap-up house dresses.  Gasp in, long breath out, gasp in, long breath out.  

Is everyone running like this?  Social media tells me yes.  We are running and we are out of breath and self-care is a phrase thrown about but no one believes in it anymore. Used to be a bubble bath, a face mask, and a glass of wine could hit reset, but they just don't anymore.  If someone had said I needed a face mask night prior to this snow day my only thought would have been "Fuck you and your face mask" as I slowly exhaled and forgot to breathe back in. (for the record, I did do one last night.  Nothing.)

Is my inability to inhale due to the worst teaching year in the history of teaching minus when Laura Ingalls Wilder had to teach in that tiny shack and the woman she was staying with wanted to kill her?  But even then, Almanzo!  Deep breath in!  Is it the teaching/coaching combination?  Yeah, it is a killer load, but there is joy to be found in watching young women do something they love to do and one that is not often found in my classroom.  Also, I believe passionately about two things in my life: sports in high school are purposeful and powerful for young women and need to be supported and that the Bills will one day win a Superbowl.  I can only help with one of those things though, so I do it.  Um, and I need the money because teaching does not pay a livable wage.  

We have been collectively holding our breath for so long waiting for our world to be normal, I guess it is normal that all we do is breathe out and out and out.  Other teachers and I have commented that our students are just broken, but I am starting to recognize that the adults are broken too.  Our world, our pre-COVID world, is gone.  And we are weary of waiting for it to come back.  And we are breathing out only as we realize it is not coming back. Not today, not this school year, maybe not ever.  Long, slow exhale here.

So what do we do to bring back the inhalations?  The joy?  The rest?  The equilibrium?  I have no idea and you now know my thoughts about face masks.  I would love to know what other people are doing or not doing but want to be doing.

Today, I am breathing in and in and in as I wear soft clothes and wool socks and drink hot things in a big mug.  I am breathing in and in and in as I read a book in bed and unleash this torrent of words.  I am breathing in and in and in as I step outside with my reluctant dog and feel my cheeks get cold and that sharp air hit my lungs.  Today, I will just breathe.

C is for Crushing Life Changes

I woke up from a dream the other night with tears streaming down my face and my heart heavy in my chest.  I have no idea what I was dreaming about but the sadness was so real and so very crushing.  I laid there, wiping my eyes, shifting to get comfortable, and failing to remember what it is that made me so sad.  I would have liked to have given it more time and thought, but it was about 2 in the morning, and I am perpetually exhausted, so sleep won out over wonder.

If I am honest, and I truly don’t recall the dream, I know why I would wake up in the middle of the night crying.  But if I am honest, I have to admit things, and if I admit them, I can’t hide behind laughter and jokes, and if I can’t hide behind these things, then I am faced with what is making me so very sad, and if I have to face what is making me so very sad, I can no longer deny it is happening, and if I can’t deny it, well, I guess I just wake up crying.  It is very “if you give a mouse a cookie” where I am the mouse and the cookie is more of a gut-punch.

The fact is that in twenty-nine days, I will load my daughter’s car up with her and her things and move her to her dad’s in Dallas.  She will stay there for a month or so and then start at UNT in January.  This is a great thing! I told her she needed to do this great thing! I actually sort of two-hand pushed her into doing this great thing.  I did it because she needs it.  Her life, like so many others, has been on hold since about two months before her high school graduation.  I don’t want to be crass or insensitive and call it a casualty of COVID, but the class of 2020 and their hopes and initial dreams really took a beating.

So while I encourage this change for her, while I support it and nurture it, and help her plan to make it happen, I am so very sad.  This is the end to what was normal for the last almost twenty years.  Until the divorce, I don’t think I ever went more than a night or two without being with her or her brother.  I worry about her on her own, I worry about me without her here, and I worry about her brother who does not know a life without her physically present in it every single day.  They are currently dealing with their own feelings about this by arguing over who gets the PS4 and looking to me like Solomon to decide and I am like “split your own damn baby.”  

This really sums up their relationship.

I know that I have been lucky, so lucky, to have had an extra almost two years with her at home. Enough time to make me be really sick of the fact that she never changes a toilet paper roll.  She will take the time to perch a new one on top of the old one, but never switch it out.  I have had time to try to back away from her day-to-day and let her figure things out.  I have had time to get to see her as the adult she is becoming, while also tripping over her shoes and yelling at her to please bring down the ten coffee cups in her room.  It is a real narrow edge we walk between being very tired of one another and very dependent on the other in our normal lives. And if you know this person, you know she is amazing and full of potential she has never realized and won’t realize if I am still doing laundry for her because she knows if she starts it, I will finish it.  And I know this.  My brain knows this.  My heart, however, is very, very sad. 

When they were little, she and her brother used to snuggle up with me on the couch before bed.  One on my left, one in my lap.  They would smell like babies and bath time and they would giggle and watch shows with wide-eyed wonder and kick their footie-pajama feet and the world would be so good in that time before bed.  I miss this time. I miss innocence and wonder and make-believe and dress-up and her creating worlds to drag her brother through.  I miss nap time and ice cream melting all over their little faces before they even get to the cone.  And there is really no recreating this.  We all recently sat almost this close together on a flight and I did not feel happy and at peace; I felt annoyed and squished.

I miss them being  little and I am scared about her being gone.  Not for her; she will eventually figure it all out. But for me.  I am scared of not being needed, scared of being an obligatory phone call on the weekends, scared of being left behind. Scared of figuring out who and what I am supposed to be when I am down a kid and then another kid right after.  I really should have spaced them out better. 

So, there, I admit it.  I am scared and I am sad and I miss them being little and I don’t know how to plan for a life with just me and this is a whole mess on top of life and I am tired.  Someone please just get me a cookie. 

Chapter Three

 It was hot outside at 3pm.  There was no shade and the sun beat down on the back of the man lying face-down in the parking space.  Sweat stained the back of his shirt and pooled at the top of his grey shorts.  He needed just a minute, just a minute to catch his breath.  His lungs labored and his heart hammered and he thought he might die and wished he might die and wondered if he had died and was this hell.  

“C’mon Chad!” the shrill voice climbed its way into his ears and gave him a shiver down his exhausted spine.  It was hell, he thought.  Definitely hell.

“Just one more set!” she chirped.

He would stand up if only to punch her in her fat face.  He didn’t hate her as much when Mark and Lisa were here, but when they weren’t, Lainey’s stupid face and shrill voice and non-stop chatter made him want to go back to spending his afternoons smoking pot and eating Cheetos.

Chad was never really sure why Lainey was there in the first place.  She dressed up in exercise clothes but he wasn’t sure he actually ever saw her move.  She seemed to take pride in holding the jump rope and providing a non-stop stream of boring chatter as she did.  Laying on his stomach and feeling the heat bake the sweat off of his shirt, Chad closed his eyes and prepared to push his aching body up one more time.  This workout had been no joke and every muscle in his legs and upper arms twitched and protested.

“No pain, no gain.”  Lainey cheered from her spot in the shade.  

Oh my God, he would kill her.  Chad opened one eye, looked up at her, and for a minute pictured his fist punching her ample stomach and knocking the breath out of her.  He could actually feel his fist tighten and pictured it sinking into her flesh before knocking her back.  Her eyes would go wide and her mouth would form an O while the breath rushed out of her and for once, just once, she would be quiet.

Chad pushed himself off the mat, nodded to the neighbor pulling in next to him, ignored Lainey, and began his last round of burpees.  Fifteen to go and he would be done.  The key was to count backward.  Fifteen, fourteen.  He got to ten and wanted to stop.  Nine.  Eight.  It was rhythmic at this point: crouch, extend, drop, push, crouch, explode up.  Five.  He heard something but knowing it was Lainey, just focused on his choppy breath, the way the sweat streamed down his face, until three, two, and one.

Chad laid on his mat for a minute trying to remember how to breathe.  He could hear Lainey in the background and made a mental note to kill Mark and Lisa for leaving him alone with her today.  The three of them almost always worked out each afternoon but today they had looked secretive and said they had to go talk something over.  Chad hoped they weren’t breaking up. He liked Lisa the best out of all of Mark’s girlfriends.  She was funny and smart and liked fitness as much as they did.  She made a good roommate too; cleaned up after herself and never ate the last of something in the fridge.  And, if he was being honest, he loved seeing her in the morning with her hair messed up and sleepy-eyed as she reached for coffee in those short-shorts.

Ugh, if they broke up and Chad had to nurse Mark through another heartache.  The last girl who left took Mark’s heart and a lot of his money and to cope Mark kicked a soccer ball against the wall outside their apartment every single day for months.  Months.  Kick, smack, kick, smack, kick, smack.  He wasn’t sure how the neighbors never complained.  Chad was annoyed with the rhythmic slapping of the ball against the wall and he understood why it was happening.  

He pushed himself off of his sweat-soaked mat and stood up.  The sun was brutal and the sound of Lainey’s voice in his ear was also brutal and he was anxious to step away from both.

“Good job today!” Lainey said with a smile.

“Yeah, thanks,” Chad replied.  He busied himself with gathering his equipment and checking that he had picked up everything, started walking to his door.

“Um, would you want to hang out or something?” Lainey asked quickly.  She could see he was hurting to go inside and didn’t want to lose her opportunity. “Maybe get a beer?”

“Oh, no. I am not drinking this month, but thanks.”  Chad lied.  He planned to shower and sit on the couch with some beer as quickly as possible.  He moved to the door, twisted the handle open, and said “See you later” while stepping inside.  He didn’t want to give her room to suggest a show or ice cream or protein shakes.

He locked the door behind him, took a deep breath, and wondered again where Mark and Lisa had gone.  They were all religious about their 3pm workouts, walks with the dog at night, and yoga by the pool on the weekends.  Lisa had been the best thing to happen to Mark, and really, Chad.  She never told them to exercise or eat better, but watching her fueled them both to be better versions of themselves: Mark because he was afraid she would smarten up and leave and Chad because, really, he had nothing else to do.  He had lost fifteen pounds since she moved in and felt better than he had in years.  Mark sometimes teased that Chad got more action when he was fat and stoned than he did now with his trim stomach and tight muscles.  Chad would laugh and agree.  It was true.  He couldn’t remember the last time he had gone on an awkward first date or brought a girl home for the night.  Sure, sex would be nice, and he occasionally flipped through his dating app, but no one really appealed to him.

He stepped into an ice-cold shower and felt the salt, sweat, and stink of his workout sluice off of him.  He stood there and let the water beat on his head and face and wondered again where Mark and Lisa were and if he was going to be helping someone pack tonight or if they would have their usual Friday night of beer, a little weed, and a healthy dinner while watching someone’s movie of choice.  It was just so easy with the three of them, he really hoped Mark wasn’t messing it up right now.

Chad stepped out onto the rug and towel himself off in quick movements.  He could hear voices downstairs and wanted to see what had transpired.  Lisa had been such an asset in both their lives, he was going to be pissed if she was leaving.  The only thing she had been a little bit of a pain in the ass about was insisting that they get the complex to fix the human-sized hole in their living room wall.  Neither Chad nor Mark could positively say how the hole had gotten there but knew it was the result of too many drinks, too much time on their hands, and a failed sense that they too should be professional wrestlers.  They had laughed the next day as they picked up pieces of drywall from the floor and said they would fix it one day.  Lisa insisted she could smell things coming from the apartment next store. She could smell their trash and their fried food cooking.  She loudly complained every day until Mark finally put in a work order to have it fixed.  Other than being slightly unreasonable about that hole and the “smells”, Lisa had been great.  Mark had been his best friend since college, but it felt like Lisa was also his best friend. Shit.  He wouldn’t be just pissed, he would be sad if she was going.

He stepped into a pair of shorts and hurried down the stairs. Mark and Lisa were sitting on the couch laughing and drinking beer.  Chad felt himself start to relax; this didn’t seem like a breakup at all.

“Do not ever leave me alone with Lainey again,” he said as his way of hello.

Mark and Lisa both laughed and Lisa said “But did she hold the jump rope for you?”

“She talked and held that damn rope the entire time.  I wanted to punch her.”

They laughed again and Chad smiled as he took a sip of his beer.  God, it was just so easy with the three of them.

“Sorry man.  We just needed to figure some things out.  We won’t leave you again.” Mark said 

“Everything okay?” Chad asked.

“Everything is great!” Lisa said and smiled at him.  God, she even managed to smile with her eyes, he thought.  She was so pretty and fun and he really loved when she laughed how she threw her head back to let all the laughter out.  Okay.  Enough, he admonished himself.  Roommate, best friend’s girl, enough.

They settled back and sipped their beers and talked about their weeks.  They finished one beer and then two and the conversation just kept moving.  They talked about Lainey and her jump rope, the things they wanted to do this weekend, and spent a lot of time laughing and discussing the weird people at their pool.

Usually, by this time, someone would start dinner and someone else would pick a movie, but tonight the air in the living room was charged with a sense of something pending. Something big, something that would be both so very natural and so very shocking.  Chad wasn’t sure if it was just him who felt it, so he kept quiet but felt the air around him change and the beating of his heart intensified.

Finally, Lisa stood up and smiled at Mark, and said “We should go upstairs now.”

Mark quickly finished what was left of his beer, set it on the table, and said “It’s definitely time.”  He kissed her on the cheek and headed up.

Chad sighed and started thinking about what he would make to eat.  Maybe just order something instead.  He was scrolling through his phone when he heard movement and noticed Lisa’s feet standing right in front of him.  She reached for his phone and set it aside and he let her.  She pulled him up from his seat and stood so close to him, too close to him, but not close enough to him.  Her hands on his arms were warm and she was so close that he could smell her shampoo and count the freckles on his nose.  He was frozen.  He wanted to touch her, wanted to pull her to him and crush her against him.  He could barely breathe.

Lisa just smiled.  She moved her hands up and down his biceps and smiled when he flexed.  Chad didn’t know what to say or think or do.  He stood there waiting for her to tell him what this was.

Lisa traced her fingers over his chest, down his stomach, and stopped at the waistband of his shorts.  He inhaled sharply as her fingernails traced the outline of his incredibly erect penis through his shorts.  He couldn’t make sense out of any of this and he didn’t want to, he just wanted her to never stop doing that.

Lisa stepped back, smiled, and said “You should come upstairs with us too.”  She moved to the bottom of the stairs and yelled up “Coming!”, but stopped as she stepped onto the first stair.  Chad watched her turn slightly and smile at him once more.  “Coming?” she asked and stretched out her hand.

Chad found that he couldn’t speak.  He had no words, but he didn’t need them. His body took over and he stretched his own hand to meet Lisa’s and clasped together, they began climbing the stairs.