Page 11 of The Single Dad Grump Next Door

I smirk at the tenderness in my dad’s voice, which is palpable even through the phone.

Whenever he’s referring to his granddaughter, he has a softness in his tone that he never used with me or my brother Michael growing up. Our mom was always the gentle one while he was the master of tough love. But as my parents have aged, I’ve noticed a reversal of roles in that regard. My mom has become stereotypically cranky as she’s aged, and my dad has somehow morphed into a pile of fluff.

To their absolute joy, they have plenty of grandchildren to spoil. Michael and his wife have two kids, and a third on the way. Wren is the eldest, though, so she has a special place in their hearts.

“She’s good, Dad. You know her. She loves the beach.”

“You best be signing her up for swimming classes, Gabe. No matter how fancy that beach town is, there are riptides to worry about and—”

“Dad, it’s fine. Wren is a very strong swimmer for her age, and she’s never down near the water without my supervision anyway.”

For the past couple years during the school year, Wren has been taking weekly swimming lessons, purely because she enjoys it. Her teacher has praised her constantly, and even though it’ll still be a few years until she’s in middle school, she’s already suggested that Wren can compete if she wants to.

Unlike me, my daughter is a jack-of-all-trades. For most of my life, I was only good at one thing. And, in the end, I still failed at it.

In fact, the reminder of that failure is now apparently staying in the apartment next door. Haunting my memories wasn’t good enough. She had to emerge into my present and deliver a cruel reminder of all that I’ve lost.

“Gabe? You still there?”

I snap back to attention, vaguely aware that my dad had been saying something to me, and I was completely failing to pay attention. Suffice to say, I’ve been pretty distracted since yesterday afternoon.

“Yeah, sorry,” I answer. “What did you say?”

“I was asking if you still want us to plan on driving out there for the Fourth. Your mom’s not been feeling well, so I’m not sure if she’ll be up for it.”

“Mom’s not feeling well? What do you mean?”

“She’ll be just fine. We’re aging, bud. It happens.”

I frown to myself, making a mental note to check in with my mom directly. It’s Monday afternoon, which means that she’s at her weekly knitting circle right now. I’ll send her a text later. Despite her apparent aging, she can be quite the chatterbox when you get her going in a text conversation. She used to be a secretary, so I think she’s developed a preference for typing over talking in the many decades prior to her retirement.

“Well, if she’s not feeling like coming out to the Cape, Wren and I will come to you.”

Which is exactly what my dad is hoping I’ll say.

Both him and my mom are perpetual homebodies, and the bulk of their time nowadays is spent, first and foremost, spoiling their grandchildren and, secondly, harmlessly manipulating situations so that Michael and I are always the ones coming to them—rather than them dragging themselves out of the deep woods of New Hampshire. It’s easier for Michael and his family to see our parents, since they live right over the border in Maine, but with me and Wren bouncing between Boston and Los Angeles in recent years, it’s been hard to find the time to return to my hometown.

If I’m being completely honest, I’ve enjoyed having an excuse to avoid that place. After everything I’ve been through since moving to New York City at the age of eighteen, the place where I grew up feels so… small. Too small. And too quiet. Too full of reminders of the dreams I had as a kid, and the reality that none of them came true.

Satisfied with the turn the conversation has taken, my dad chuckles. “Well, that’d be great! We’ll be happy to have you here. I’ll do a barbecue. Mike got me that grill for Christmas and I haven’t had a chance to use it yet…”

What follows is a rambling discussion about the integrity of certain brands of grills, which I really can’t contribute much to, so I end up offering a lot ofokays andalrights until my dad gets tired of my quiet personality and says his goodbyes.

“Tell my Wrennie I say hello, will you?”

“Sure thing, Dad.”

When the call ends, I set my phone down and lean back in the creaky wooden chair that I dragged upstairs from the kitchen to sit in front of my electric piano.

Instantly, my thoughts drift back to the same topic they’ve been stuck on for the past twenty-four hours.

Alina Sokolov.

Ali, as I used to mockingly call her, simply because I could tell that the childish nickname irked her.

I hated her from the moment I met her. Hated her and respected her in equal measure, actually, which only added to my overall frustration. Add to that the fact that Alina is, factually speaking, one of the prettiest people I’ve ever seen, and it’s no wonder that I spent my four years at Juilliard trying to avoid her at all costs.

Unfortunately, we were the two best violinists in our year, which meant that we were constantly together. Constantly battling. Constantly bickering.

---