Page 61 of Drilled (Dad Bod Contracting 2)
“No thanks. He scares me a little.”
Franco chuckles. “He should. He is a little scary. You shoulda seen him fifteen, twenty years ago—you think he’s a beast now? He was all-state offensive lineman at Illinois, and even went through an NFL combine.”
“Like, to go pro?”
Franco nods. “Yep.”
“But he didn’t?
“Nope. It was a combination of reasons. He got in a car accident and hurt his knee pretty bad the year he did the combine, which he could have rehabbed. But Renée was against him going pro. While he was in the hospital, she asked him if he really loved football enough to want to do it every single day for the rest of his life until he got too old to play, or got hurt again. He thought about it, and thought some more, and realized he didn’t love it that much. He just enjoyed it. But he had other passions, other things he enjoyed doing—namely, building. He’d been working for a construction company through most of high school, and he really liked it. He’d gotten some pretty big promotions, even in high school, and he saw a viable path forward in the company, so yeah, he let football go and pursued construction.”
I shake my head in awe. “Wow. That’s…I don’t think many men who could have gone pro would have chosen not to.”
He nods. “That’s James. And honestly, that’s Renée, and the effect she had on him. He’d have gone through physical therapy and rehabilitation to get his knee back in playing condition, and then gone pro. I don’t think he ever questioned it until she flat out asked if he was sure that’s what he wanted. That’s how she was. Smart, thoughtful, practical. Always looking at things from a different angle.”
Another long pause, as Franco examines his carving, which seems mostly complete. “James and Renée were just meant for each other. She balanced him out, challenged him, kept him guessing and thinking when he can be kind of a plodder, straight ahead, no stopping for anything kind of guy, and she needed him to keep her grounded. They were together all through high school, got married a year and a half later…and then they just did life. They spent a few years just being married, working, taking vacations, having fun. Then they wanted to start a family, but they had trouble with it.” He pauses again. “That’s part of James’s story, though. Point is, they ended up with Nina and then Ella, and they were just deliriously happy. Quintessential family with a nice house and some land, two sweet kids, enough money to be content…and then Renée got pregnant again and they were even happier. It was all normal and fine, and she went in to have the baby, and…something happened. I’m not really sure what, but something went wrong and she died, and so did the baby.”
“Jesus.”
“Yeah.” He’s quiet again for a minute, sanding the figure he’d carved. “It was hell. He fell apart. All three of us quit our jobs and moved back to town to help him. All four of us lived with him and the girls for the first year and a half, until he was in a place where he could function without us. He’d barely been functioning, on any level, when we got there. Not bathing, not eating, not sleeping, not going to work. He was the general manager of the company then, second only to the owner, who had also lost his wife some years earlier, and he understood where James was at. So he gave him all the time he needed to get his shit together. We forced James to get back to normal, and then we hired a sitter and created a tag-team so the sitter and James’s parents and in-laws could watch the kids for a few days, while we took him out on a three-day bender. Got him hammered, took him to a hotel, and got him to cry it out.”
Franco is silent again.
“Eventually, he was able to deal with being alone with the girls, and we all figured our own shit out. We’d sort of…put our lives on hold, in a way. James needed us, you know? So, we were there. That’s when James started Dad Bod. The owner of the company James had worked for, like, half his life at that point, wanted to retire, so he sold the whole thing to James for a steal.”
He eyes me. “Yeah, I know—where does this tie into my earlier reaction? What happened to James after Renée died really fucked with my head. Like, I already felt like marriage was bullshit, and love was stupid and fake, and then after Renée died and James just completely fell apart, I was like, why the hell would I want to put myself through that, even if love was real? I mean, they had it all, the real deal…and look what happened to James.” He shrugs. “I developed the four-fuck rule not long after that.”
