Page 121 of Soft
"Nice night," he said as he moved up beside me.
"Mmhmm. Very nice. I’ve been enjoying it for a bit now."
He didn’t take the bait. Instead, he asked, "How's Grizzly?"
"Good. Auden has been a huge asset to the team. They’ve got a lot of potential athletes to sign. It’s been kind of chaotic, so he'sgot his notes spread across the whole kitchen table, and Wells is supervising. It’s adorable."
Pops smiled. "Good system."
"It works for them." I paused, then said, "Pops.”
"Paxton," he replied in the same tone.
"You've been away from home a lot lately.”
"I have."
“Any particular reason?”
"You remember," he said finally, "when you were maybe sixteen, and I had that terrible date with the woman from the school board?"
I remembered. She had shown up forty minutes late and spent most of dinner talking about a renovation project in a way that communicated she expected Pops to be fascinated by load-bearing walls. Pops had come home with the declaration he wasn’t going to date anymore.
"I recall said date.”
"I told myself I was done trying after that one. Not because of her specifically. Just because the whole enterprise of it felt—I don't know. Wrong timing. I felt like I was making a fool of myself."
"You weren't though."
"I was a little," he argued. "Anyway. I stopped. And then life did what it does and here we are years later. Moving to Bellport was meant to be a change. I didn’t expect it to go this far.”
“Go far how? What do you mean?”
"I met someone.” The words were plain, yet he spoke them as if a bomb were about to go off.
"Okay. That explains some things.”
He exhaled. "It wasn't planned. I wasn't looking. You know I wasn't looking, Paxton. I thought that part of my life was over. And then I met this person and it changed everything."
I was quiet for a moment. It wasn’t because his words upset me. More about how I needed to handle the next steps. I didn’t want him to think I was judging him. While this was a bit of a shock, I didn’t feel any anger. I was, however, very interested in the details.
"How long?" I asked, since it was the most obvious first question.
"A few months." He looked at me then, directly, for the first time in the conversation. "I wanted to be sure before I said anything. I didn't want to—I didn't want to make it a thing before I knew for sure. You know what I mean?"
"I do. It makes perfect sense."
"And I wasn't sure how you'd—" He stopped.
"Pops. I want you to be happy. That's the only thing I want. Whatever that looks like."
He pressed his lips together and looked away. I gave him the moment because he would have, and had, given me the same. This was the least I could do.
"This person," he said, "makes me feel like the lights came back on. Like I can see everything through a different lens."
The lights came back on.
I thought about what that meant. About the years after my mother died when Pops had moved through his days with love but without that bouncy energy he was known for. About the man who had done everything he could to keep me in the sport I loved, no matter the cost to him.
