Chapter 3
Alex is having dinner with them. Alex is having dinner with them?
In all of Maru’s memory she can’t draw up a single recollection of this ever happening in the past. Has he ever even been in this house before? She watches him suspiciously from behind her seafood Shepard’s pie. Her parents hadn’t even mentioned to her he was coming. He was just… there.
And it clearly wasn’t the first time.
They’re all comfortable around each other. Her mom is saying things like how’s the new metal band saw working out for you? like she actually cares, and her dad is discussing tool upgrade possibilities that they’ve clearly fledged out previously. And Alex doesn’t even balk for a second at the weirdo Shepard’s pie, just eats it like it’s entirely normal, like his grandma served this thing up all the time.
For the most part Maru doesn’t speak. Nods here and there, volunteers this or that phrase, but she finds herself observing almost the entire meal. She’s good at making observations, though she’s not used to focusing these skills on people. Maybe this behaviour between them was normal? And she’d never noticed before?
After the meal Demetrius has to quickly run back into the lab and Robin gets a late night call from Lewis. Maru and Alex are left to the dishes on their own. She doesn’t try to say anything to him, because why would she?
He’s the first to speak, drying a plate that looks miniature in his massive hands, focusing on it instead of her. “Sorry I didn’t come say hi at the beach the other day. It’s just… well…” He’s got this thoughtful quasi-embarrassed look on his face. Maru can’t get over how different he is.
“It’s fine.” She says blandly, confused why he would apologize for this. They’ve never, ever, spoken and that’s never been a problem in the past.
He starts to say something but whatever it is can’t seem to make it all the way up his vocal chords. He puts the plate in the dish rack and takes another. Is he uncomfortable with the silence? She wonders, not caring to break it.
“What were you reading?” He asks, politely. Or is he actually interested?
“Gravity’s Rainbow.”
“Oh. Kinda above my level.”
“I didn’t know you read at all.” Is that a rude thing to say?
He pauses a second in his drying before shrugging. His answer comes out composed, “there’s not much else to do around here.” As a somewhat calculated sounding afterthought, “since Haley left.”
“You must miss her.” Maru is starting to hate this conversation. Saying things she doesn’t mean, or doesn’t care about, just for the sake of social niceties makes her feel trapped, makes her insides feel like their itching to escape her body.
“She’s following her dream.” It doesn’t answer the question, but her mom comes back in the kitchen and saves Maru from having to talk more about it. She says bye to Alex and escapes to her room soon after.
He didn’t have the grades to make it to a school that could have propelled him on to go pro, and without his audience he lost his motivation. He told people from his high school days that it was because his grandpa was sick and his grandma needed his help. He signed up for a trades school he could commute to from Pelican Town.
His grandpa died before he could show anything for himself. Evelyn was devastated. The house, already quiet, was even more so. It rarely smelled like cookies anymore. Alex bumbled his way through college as the flowers in the town gardens wilted and died, without even noticing he was excelling.
He got offered a job in the same town as the school and started working right after graduation. The commute was a drag, but most things were. He didn’t have any close friends without gridball and without Haley. He only knew his grandma was struggling. The house began to feel oppressive without him understanding what that feeling was.
It was her idea to move into a seniors home.
“I’m not putting you in a home.” Alex said firmly.
“Well, it’s not your decision young man.” She chided, as he pulled a casserole Demetrius had supplied them with out of the oven. She’s sitting at the table, watching him.
“I don’t see why that’s better for you than being here.”
“Well, for one, I’ll be around people my own age. No offense to you but a woman sometimes needs more mature conversation.”
Alex frowned.
“And I don’t think you need some old lady holding you back from life.”
“You don’t hold me back.” He said forcefully, putting the casserole on the table a little too heavily, accidental emphasis.
She startles but doesn’t flinch from her point. “I think you hold yourself back and use me as an excuse.” She gave him a sad look.
“Grandma!”
“Well, it’s true. You’ve changed. Now I’m not saying for the worse, you’re a charming young man in my opinion… But Alex, dear, are you happy?”
Alex couldn’t answer, just slumped down at the table and sat there opening and closing his mouth like a fish.
She patted his hand. “I’ve picked it out already. They say I can come visit the room this week, would you be so kind as to drive me?”
She moved in to Seaside Gardens a month later. Alex visited her every week, sometimes twice.
The commuting got to be a lot. The town where he worked and the town where his grandma now lived were in opposite directions of Pelican town. He’d sometimes be on the road for seven hours in a single day.
The towns people noticed. Vibrant young jock turns sullen mechanic. It wasn’t until Robin’s truck broke down that anyone realized how adept Alex was.
“Wow, you got that fixed quickly.”
“It’s no trouble.”
Looking at the pile of tools permanently being bussed around in the back of Alex’s vehicle she started thinking.
“You know… Since Seb moved out we’ve got a lot of space in the garage.”
Alex continues putting his tools away, not sure where she’s going with this.
“It would be no trouble if you wanted to use that space.”
“Oh, it’s okay…”
“We know you’re on the road a lot.”
He shrugs, “part of the job, I guess.”
“What if you started working out of Pelican town?”
“What?”
“Set up a small shop in the garage.”
“I couldn’t do that.”
“Why not?”
“It’s your space.”
“It’s a big house with only two people living in it now. We’d be happy to have someone around.”
He kept thinking about it but wasn’t going to bring it up on his own. It took Robin, Lewis, Evelyn and finally Demetrius to convince him to start his own business. He wouldn’t do it out of Robin’s garage though, he’d pay her to renovate his own house. It was nearly empty without George and Evelyn, taking up half the space was no issue to him. It was slow, without a lot of customers around. He still often had to commute to other towns to do jobs on site, just to pay the bills. But it was better.
Alex started eating dinner with Robin and Demetrius once a week. At first it was awkward, Alex had never been in their house before. Not past the front room anyway, when once he’d had to hire Robin for a renovation when their roof had started leaking, back when his grandpa was alive. Him and Seb had never been close, hostile if anything. He felt like he was intruding, moving in on someone else’s territory. But they were all lonely. Abandoned by family members who needed to move on, left in the past.
Something about Alex made Shane insecure. Or not just something, saying that would imply it was a vague unnameable thing, and it was far from that. Alex was younger and handsome and incredibly fit. Alex was like Shane before he’d gone over the edge. Shane had told almost everyone in town to fuck off or something similar but he’d never said anything to Alex. Not because he wouldn’t have, or didn’t want to, but because Alex never gave him any occasion to.
When he was a teenager loitering around town with Haley, he’d been obnoxious and proud, and taken up more than his share of space. Shane could only vaguely remember that person, having only caught a glimpse here and there. Now he was older, he was withdrawn, quiet, melting into the background. Why then, did Shane notice him more than ever?
When Alex shows up Shane’s sitting on his porch, reading. He’s not much of a reader, ever, but for some reason he felt like he should be reading.
Alex nods at him wordlessly when he comes up the path. He’s carrying a panel over his shoulder and a power bank with his other hand. Both look heavy and awkward. Alex is sweating from the effort, his shirt clings to him in certain places. Shane finds that his hands are damp. Probably from the heat.
He lowers the book he hasn’t been reading. “You’re late.” He says stupidly.
“Sorry.” Is all Alex replies, setting down the bank and the panel. “I have to go get my tools.”
“There’s space to drive over.” Shane jerks his head towards his own truck, parked beside the apple tree Ry had planted before the cabin was ever built. In a few weeks, it would be producing its first fruit.
Alex nods, not making eye contact. “Guess I should have done that, then.”
“Yeah.”
Alex leaves to go get his tools and Shane waits there a second, holding his unread book loosely in his hand. It’s Elliott’s first novel, The Song of the Sea. Yoba, he thinks, I must look like such an ass reading this. He gets up and goes inside to put it away. He pours himself a glass of water, swishes some of it around in his dry mouth. Through the window he sees Alex drive his truck up and park it, watches as he gets out, removes his tools, gets ready to work. He takes another gulp.
“So how do you do this?”
Alex doesn’t suppress a look of mild shock. “You want to learn?”
“Uh, didn’t Ry- no, of course not.” He grits his teeth. Leave it to her to make him look like an over eager idiot. She probably called Alex after he’d agreed to get power.
Alex reads the frustration off him and nods, says only “I can show you.”
He shows him how to secure the panel to his roof, how to hook up the wires and run them to the bank. He explains how it works. He installs an outlet in Shane’s cabin, and he’s glad he remembered to clean up inside that morning. He even remembers to offer him water.
Without something to do with his hands, other than hold his cup of water, Alex’s eyes go shifty. He doesn’t look at Shane, seems intent to look anywhere else. Shane wonders how much he hates him, if maybe he’s wrong about not ever saying shit to him, maybe he’d been too drunk to remember.
He gets nervous about it and his nerves make him sour, but before he can go any further on that particular trajectory of misery, Alex interrupts, “you going to the luau?”
Shane shrugs, “I might.”
Alex nods.
“You bringing Evelyn?” He knows the old lady moved out of town about a year ago, but Alex almost always brings her out to the festivals. It feels stupid to even ask.
Alex nods again, “yeah, she likes it.” He sets the empty glass down on his counter. “Maybe see you there,” he says quietly, almost nervously. Alex being nervous around him does something wonky to Shane’s insides.
“Yeah…” Shane says, trying to sort it out. “Probably not."