Page 28 of The Problem with Perfect

I chuckle. “Corrupting her? Boyd, we’re gonna go on a few dates, and I’ll rub how awesome she is in this guy’s face. That’s really it.”

“Alright.” His response says it’s not an issue, but his tone says otherwise.

We talk for a few more minutes about nothing important—apparently he and Ruby are moving into a new space soon, and I share the progress on the site for the brewery even though he already knows that information—then get off the phone.

Though not without one final warning shot from Boyd.

“Be careful with my sister, Rus. She deserves someone special, and I don’t want whatever this weird situation is to mess something up for her.”

I sit at my desk for a while after we end the call, trying to shake off the feeling that crept up the back of my spine while we were talking: the idea that Boyd might think I’d have a negative influence on Bellamy’s life.

There’s a small part of me that gets where he’s coming from. I mean, I had similar feelings about Abby and Jackson when I found out about them, and Boyd probably doesn’t really understand just how shitty this Connor guy is or else he’d be shoving me in his sister’s direction. Still, the idea that spending time with me might screw her up in some way or negatively affect her ability to date in the future? That seems a bit much, no?

I click around, sorting emails and staring blankly at our budget spreadsheet, though my mind barely takes in any of the information I’m seeing. Instead, I’m still ruminating on Boyd’s parting words over an hour later. We’ve been best friends since junior high, me, Boyd, and Andy, so to know he thinks I could possibly ruin something for Bellamy—or worse, hurt her in some way—it just sucks.

Eventually I give up trying to make my brain focus on work, and I head into my bedroom and change into a loose pair of shorts and a plain tee. There’s only one thing that comes to mind during periods when I’m angry about something I haven’t fully processed, and that’s heading out on the trails.

Sometimes a bit of sweat goes a long way.

* * *

There are about a dozen different hiking trails scattered around Cedar Point that I tend to hit on a fairly consistent basis, but over the past few months, with my mental energy focused almost entirely on the brewery, I haven’t given myself the time or permission to set the busyness aside and disconnect to be in nature.

For whatever reason, today feels like the right moment to release myself from the guilt of taking a break from work. The stress of the brewery, this thing with Bellamy, my recent conversations with my sister and Boyd…I just need some space to quiet all the noise and think things over.

It doesn’t feel good, knowing my sister and my best friend might see me differently than I thought. Part of me wants to forgive Abby a bit more than Boyd. She’s young and looking at me through the lens of someone who misses her parents. Abby wants me to be the father she lost.

Nobody can replace our dad, though.

God, everyone in town loved Everett Fuller. He was a mechanic at the small garage in town and was one of the most honest, hardworking guys I’ve ever known. He was there for us when we needed him and showed up for everything, whether it mattered or not. Both of our parents were that way, which is why their death felt like such a cruel and pointless tragedy.

I tug on my backpack and slam my car door where I’m parked at the foot of the trail leading to Whistler Peak. It’s a four-hour roundtrip hike up to a lookout that straddles the mountain between Cedar Point and two other neighboring towns, Belleview and Spencer Creek.

I’ve done this particular trail more times than I can count. It’s the perfect length to sort through whatever is on my mind, and it’s rare to come across another person, even during the peak of tourist season. The mixture of fairly flat trails and periods of steep incline are also a good level of intensity to make it interesting.

My mom used to hike this trail with me and Abby when we were younger. She said Whistler Peak was her favorite, and by sharing it with us, she hoped we’d love it, too. I took to it immediately and begged Mom to take us hiking as often as possible. Abby, not so much. She’ll get out here every now and then as long as I pick one of the beginner trails like Sutter View or Washburn Trail, both of which mostly just weave in and out of residential neighborhoods on the western border of town. I’m the one who knows all these paths like the back of my hand.

Fuck, I miss my parents.

It’s rare for me to give myself permission to sit and think about them like this, and after 10 years, you’d think the pain would have eased more. But every time they come to mind, it doesn’t just sting with the pain of a long-ago loss. The agony of losing them rips through me afresh, as if I just found out about their deaths.

Maybe I should have listened to Patty Mitchell when she told me I should go to therapy. Back then, though, I had too much on my plate. I came home after they died, spent the summer trying to take care of everything that needs handling after people pass. For a while, I thought I would go back to school and finish out my senior year. Patty and Mark had agreed to let Abby move in with them for a while until we figured things out.

It only took a week of being back to know Cedar Point was where I needed to be, so I basically dumped my entire life and moved home to take care of Abby, to make sure she had support and be entirely certain she wasn’t shoved into the system as an orphan when I knew I was perfectly capable of being there for her.

I don’t regret it. I don’t, but every once in a while, I’ll allow myself just a moment to think about what my life might have been if my parents hadn’t come to visit me for my birthday, if their love for me wasn’t the reason they died.

Would I have stayed with Hailey? Would we have stayed together if I hadn’t needed to leave college and move home? If I hadn’t had to choose my sister over my girlfriend?

What kind of job would I have if I’d finished my degree instead of dropping out of school? Would I have gone on to graduate school like I’d thought about?

The easy assumption is that I wouldn’t be living in Cedar Point, that I would have pursued my other dreams and found somewhere else in the world that made me happy. I don’t hate this place by any means. I loved the small-town life as I was growing up, knowing my neighbors and having a really connected group of friends, the supportive environment where everyone pitches in.

But I knew it was where I had grown up, not necessarily where I wanted to live forever, so having to return home in the wake of everything I had to give up…in the midst of the pain I was experiencing after my parents’ death and during a time when I was essentially filling a father-like role in my sister’s life…well, I might not have hated this place, but it was hard not to resent it.

Even knowing this was the best place for us to be considering the circumstances. Even while feeling thankful for the love and care that flooded into us from friends and people who loved my parents. Even though I’ve been able to see Abby truly create the life for herself that makes her happy and feel loved and like she has purpose.

In some ways, I’ve done the same, though I can’t help but harbor some anger that I’m still here. It’s a weird place to be mentally, but that’s life, and my options were to either sit in my misery indefinitely or figure out a way to distract myself from it.

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