Page 3 of Lakeside Little
To both their surprise and my own, upon meeting Jack, I was doing better. His playful energy was just what I’d needed to pick me up, especially since I wasn’t even getting a nibble from the fishing rod. Although, I was rusty at it, the last time I went fishing was five years ago, and I’d caught a single fish that slipped off the hook back into the water.
After fixing Jack’s doll, I went back to my cabin a couple minutes away. I laid in my bed with a book I’d grabbed from a gas station on the way up here. It was about fishing in Vermont. The smell of the pages had me drifting off into a slumber, I barely even read the first line.
A thud woke me. The sunlight peeking through the windows had gone, replaced with a darkness. It came again, this time more recognizably a series of knocks.
Grunting as I moved, my body stiffened to the jean shorts and white vest top I’d sweat through. At the door, a surprise awaited me in the form of Jack. His big smile and a covered silver pie tray—at least, I assumed it was pie.
“Hi,” I grumbled, finding a kink in my neck which begged to be massaged.
“I wanted to thank you for what you did earlier,” he said. “I went into town, grabbed a pineberry pie, they’re absolutely divine, if you haven’t had one before.” With his mouth still open,his tongue seemed to suspend itself midair. “Sorry, did I wake you? I didn’t think it was that late.”
“Oh no, it’s fine. It’s only—what—” I turned my wrist to see the watch reveal it was turning 9 PM. “I napped and—at my age, a nap easily turns into sleep once you’ve spent the entire morning out fishing with not even a nibble,” I chuckled and pressed my palm at my neck with my fingers pulsing at my nape, trying to discover where the knot was.
He tried handing me the pie, but I stepped aside to invite him in. “I should turn a light on.”
“I shouldn’t have knocked; I saw the lights off.” And still, he stepped inside at my invite. “I am also going to admit something to you.” He headed to the kitchen area, which was laid out in the same standard as his cabin.
“Hit me with it. Unless it’s to tell me, your doll is destroyed, I feel awful for distracting you.” I kept a hand at my neck, massaging the knot. My pit out, he was looking right at it. I hoped I didn’t smell.
Jack shook his head, placing the pie and peeling back the foil cover. “No, no, Nory will be fine,” he said. “The issue that I’m having now is with something I brought with me and thought I could do myself, but you said you had a background in fixing things and, I figured, you might want to help me.” He batted his lashes like he knew they would get him somewhere. And he was absolutely right, but also, that guilt was still sitting on my stomach uneasy.
I nodded, both to agree and to see what the heck was happening with my neck. “Sure.”
“Usually, I wouldn’t ask anyone but since you’ve seen my doll and stuff, I figured you already know about my collection and stuff.”
Most of what he was saying wasn’t going in, until I saw the bracelet on his wrist. It was pale blue, covered in bear facesand tied together with a fancy metal bear pin. He was a little, it all added together, and from there, as I looked him over, I spotted another piece of jewelry around his neck, the chain dangled out to reveal the pacifier. “I’m happy to help,” I told him. “You wanna help me slice this pie up? I’m starving. I kinda went to bed without dinner.”
He gasped. “You should always eat,” he said. “Didn’t you catch anything?”
Pretending to catch an arrow at my gut, I gasped. “You wound me,” I said. “I told you; I’ve had no luck on the lake; I feel like the fishing license was a total waste.”
“Have you tried going out on a boat?” he asked, giggling. “I see people out on boats all the time when I’m here.”
“Right. I forgot you know this place,” I said. “So, tell me, what’s so special about it to you?”
“We should have pie before we talk about that.”
Slicing the pineberry pie, we sat out on a bench with the fly zapper in full force beating down on all the insects that dared to get too close. We ate and I discovered one of the beauties of this place. Jack told me it was one of the reasons he liked it here, but another reason was the community, and if I hadn’t put it together before the bracelet and necklace, I would’ve figured it out.
The following morning, after finding I was still tired enough to sleep, I woke with a giant smile picking my smile from each corner. My plan for the two weeks I was here were to fish, eat, recoup myself mentally, and get back to Philly where the job search would begin again. I’d been here for two days already, and I could only feel-good things happening for the next twelve.
After a shower, I discovered the kink in my neck completely gone, almost as if it had never been there. I didn’t immediately go to see Jack, but instead, I went back to do some fishing at my spot down from the cabin. Armed with a bucketof maggots, my rod, and the book I’d only managed to skim through the pictures of, I sat on the fold out chair I hadn’t brought back to the cabin.
“You’re gonna catch something,” I told myself as I flicked through the book and stopped on a random page. “A walleye. Ok, let’s see.”
I was at it for about an hour before I heard a twig behind me snap. It was Jack. I shouldn’t have been too surprised. He approached with his doll and that signature smile which made me feel like I was fifteen years younger, and what I would give to be thirty again.
“Any luck?” he asked.
“Not a bite.”
He hummed and smacked his lips. “I can help,” he said. “My mom’s boyfriend used to take me fishing, it was supposed to be a way for us to bond, or maybe just a way for me to not be gay, which failed on both parts because they broke up and I’m still very gay.”
And now he was straight up telling me, which he didn’t need to, the signs were there. “Be my guest,” I said, pulling the fishing pole from the hole I’d perched it inside to keep it upright while I waited.
“Can you look after Nory then?” he asked, placing his doll on my lap, prepositioning her legs so she was sat. “This is the most masculine thing I’ve done in while, by the way, before you ask me why I can’t fix my doll house.”
I almost forgotten that’s what he needed my help with.
