Page 8 of The Weight of Your Wishes

He turns the radio on to a classic rock station. Pink Floyd starts playing softly in the background. I can definitely get down with this. He shifts it into gear, and we’re off. It’s awkwardly silent for about an hour. It’s all I can take before I blurt out, “Can I smoke in here?”

I finally allow myself to look at him. His dark brown hair is tied back in a bun, and he scratches his short beard, keeping one hand on the wheel. I wonder if it’s a nervous habit of his.

“You smoke now?”

Call it instinct, but I decide to keep my pot smoking activities to myself. “Yup.”

He sighs. “Sure. Just open the window.” So, I do, but since we’re flying down the highway, wind billows into the truck obnoxiously, efficiently eliminating the awkward silence.

“So, how’s life been treating you?” I shout over the cutting wind.

The crease between his brow lets me know that he’s annoyed already, but he takes a moment and responds, “It’s been alright, I guess.”

I nod slowly, waiting for him to continue, but he doesn’t.

Alrighty then.

“You own a bar, right?”

“Yeah.”

More silence. If the wind wasn’t so loud, surely there’d be crickets chirping.

I sort of expected us to fall back into the ease of our old relationship, but I’m starting to realize it’s skewed. Childhood memories aren’t usually what they seem. Either that, or he just needs time to warm up to me again.

After finishing my cigarette, I roll the window up and open my phone to aimlessly scroll through social media. I don’t really have anyone to talk to other than Marina. That fact always barrels into me every summer. Sure, I hang around people all the time. I’d even call them my friends, but when I’m not right in front of them, they don’t want anything to do with me. Circumstantial friendship. Can’t really blame them.

Suddenly, Grant’s low timber infiltrates the silence. “I own the only bar in our small town. It was given to me by the owner when he passed a few years back.”

I tilt my head to the side, wondering how to respond to that. They must’ve been close if he left his business to him, but there was no inflection in Grant’s tone of voice. “I… I’m sorry to hear that. If I remember correctly, you used to work for your dad as a construction worker, right? I imagine you must be happy to not work out in the sun anymore.”

“Yeah, you could say that. Happy to not be working for that piece of shit in general,” he grates.

My eyebrows fly up at the clear resentment in his tone. It catches me off guard.

Offhandedly, I wonder if I had a dad, would he be a piece of shit too? It's pointless to question things like that because I’ll literally never know, but for some reason, my brain won’t allow me to forget that I’m fatherless. Probably because it’s innately wrong.

“So… you work and come home and what else? Do you have a girlfriend?” I can almost see his hackles rise before I finish the question—the slight stiffening of his spine and his fingers tensing around the steering wheel.

He scratches at his dark beard idly. “Yeah, her name’s Veronica. You’ll meet her soon enough. I think you’d like her; you both have that outgoing type of personality.”

I chuckle at that. “How would you even know that? It's been years since we last saw each other.”

I didn’t mean it in a negative way at all, but as soon as the words left my mouth, I realized how they’d come off that way.Shit.I need a better brain-to-mouth filter.

Grant heaves a sigh. “I know, Hendrix, and I’m sorry for that,” he starts. The way he says my name, with that deep, gravely, slightly southern accented voice has me melting. Even though people are usually caught off guard by my name, it rolls off his tongue so smoothly. I always have to explain that my mom was young and obsessed with rockstars when she had me.

“It’s okay,” I cut in. “I wasn’t trying to give you shit. I was just saying a lot of things have changed since you’ve been gone.”

He keeps his eyes fixed on the road. “I’ve kept in contact with your mother the entire time, and she kept me updated on you. It’s just that I’ve been so busy ever since taking on the bar. Can’t ever get away from the damn place.”

I take a longer look at him. He does seem exhausted—the lines on his face, the way his shoulders slouch low. I feel a pang in my gut. I wish I could help him take some of that weight off his shoulders. It seemsVeronicahasn’t been doing a good job at that.

“Do you and Veronica live together?” I ask. It bothers me to imagine him having a domesticated life with someone, even though I know it shouldn’t.

“No, we don’t, although I was debating asking her to move in this summer. I’ll hold off on that now; there’s no rush.”

The way he talks about it makes it seem like a chore. I’m no expert on love and relationships, but I expected a bit more excitement than that. Then again, Grant was never the type of guy to be giddy with joy over anything. Never. It’s almost comical to think of him that way.

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