Chapter 6 Jesse

D espite the mountain of responsibilities I'd taken over at Garrett's Hardware, I didn't know that it would ever feel like my store. Maybe it would always be my dad's because I was only inheriting his dream.

And tarnishing its reputation daily , I thought, if I believed my father's grumbling.

I opened the back entrance and disabled the alarm, hoping to get started on some invoices before opening.

I poked my head out of the office when Heather arrived to make sure all was well, and then I went back to the task at hand. Mostly. I also may have checked scores from last night's games to see how my favorite teams were looking. I hadn't tried to watch a game in a long time. It felt like viewing my future in an alternate universe where I'd never get to exist, and I couldn't do it yet. But checking the scores at least made me feel like I had some connection to that world.

When I forced myself to focus on my actual job, I went to check on Heather and our new hire, who was training with her today. There wasn't any worry; Heather had worked there longer than I'd been alive, probably, but it seemed like something a boss should do.

"Hey, Garrett Jr.," Heather said, looking up from where she was working with Bryan at the cash register. She had called me that since I was a kid, so it felt wrong to correct her now, even though it felt un-boss-like.

"Hey, how's it going? Bryan, are you getting the hang of things okay?"

"Yeah, everything seems straightforward. I have to learn the difference between a lot of different sizes of screws." He shrugged, and I laughed a little. He wasn't wrong.

"Well, let me know if I can assist. We have a couple of shipments coming in this afternoon, and you can help me with that. That is, if Heather's done with you."

"Sure thing, kid."

Again, with the ‘kid.' I sighed. I didn't know if it was worth worrying about.

"And before you grab lunch, make sure you stop by the breakroom!" she called after me. I headed toward the back of the store to check on any lacking inventory on the floor.

"Will do." I meandered through the aisles, straightening sale signs and returning misplaced merchandise. I said "hey" to Danny, our resident fix-everything-guy, and decided I'd pop into the breakroom before heading to the cafe for lunch. My eyes widened at the bunches of balloons and a small banner that read "Happy Anniversary!" There was a round cake on the table that said "Happy One Year" with a card next to it signed by all our employees.

"Took you long enough to get over here!" Heather said from behind me, making me jump a little. "We all wanted to show our appreciation for you stepping up for your dad. This store is home for a lot of us, and you've done a great job, Jesse. I know your dad is proud of you, even if he's too grumpy to say it." She shot me a knowing smile. "Cut yourself some cake, kid! I wouldn't let Bryan or Danny have any until you did."

She winked at me and left to go back up to her trainee, and I stared at the cake. I had been essentially running the store for a year . Obviously, my dad and Heather had to help me through almost everything because what the hell did a twenty-four-year-old with a history degree know about running a hardware store? I'd only ever worked there sporadically around my baseball schedule. But I hadn't bankrupted us or lost an employee yet. Was I good at this? Did I want to be good at this? The break room was now oppressively tiny.

I popped off the lid to the cake container and cut a piece for the sake of Bryan and Danny, but I took my plate and the card to the office. My office. I flipped open the card and read through the brief messages from the staff. They were nice; it was validating to be appreciated, I guessed?

Would Dad have sold the business if I hadn't been here? I wondered, still feeling claustrophobic.

I hadn't thought about it at the time because my head was so fucked up from my injury and surgery and PT... and then my dad having a massive heart attack at 55. I did what was asked of me, but I didn't think about what would have happened had I not. Or what would happen if I didn't want to do this forever. Would people like Heather and Danny be out of jobs? That was a bigger weight than I knew I'd been carrying around, and I now felt every ounce of it.

I grabbed my jacket and my Emberwood Dragons hat and headed out.

"Hey, I realized I have some deliveries I need to make, so I won't be able to help with the shipments today. I can do them tomorrow, or Danny can show Bryan the ropes. Sorry, it slipped my mind. Thanks for the cake, Heather. It was unnecessary but appreciated." I nodded as she waved me off, and I hurried out to my truck.

The sun was still warm on my face, and I tried to soak it in, knowing the fall chill would be here soon enough. I started the pickup and pulled out of the lot. There was not a single delivery scheduled that day; I needed to escape.

There wasn't a particular destination in mind, but I ended up parked across from the Little League fields at the Emberwood Park. It was one thing to acknowledge that I wouldn't be playing in the majors. It was another to dedicate my life to my father's hardware store without even realizing it. I sat there for a long time with the windows down, remembering how it felt when I first fell in love with the game. I could forget everything when I was on the diamond. The only thing that mattered was the trajectory of the ball and my ability to anticipate it. Life stress, relationship stress—it never followed me there, and I was excellent at what I did. I really, really missed being excellent at something. Anything. Even in my head, that sounded conceited, but it was the truth. I missed being who I was on that field and knowing that everyone knew I was great at what I did. Being not-terrible at running Garrett's Hardware was not the same. I wished it was, but it wasn't.

Maybe this is how life is, though, for most people. Maybe I should be grateful that I can still walk and have a job and an apartment. My therapist would tell me not to qualify my feelings that way, but it was hard not to. I tried the breathing techniques and even the tapping technique on my pressure points to calm down, though that last one felt like it was a made-up thing. My heart still raced at the thought of this being my forever.

"What the hell am I going to do with my life?" I asked aloud to myself as the sun sank lower in the sky. Unfortunately, no one answered.