22. Nate

22

NATE

For the first time in maybe ever, I have no reason to be out of bed in the morning. There are a million things I need to take care of in terms of paperwork, but I don't have a job site to get to. I don't have a girlfriend to dote on. I have no close family.

I'm just wallowing in the semi-darkness of my room in a bed that still smells like Eden's shampoo from the last time she slept here. I feel pathetic, burying my face in her pillow and inhaling, but I've been pathetic before.

My mind plays Eden's words, Kenneth the Jagoff's words on repeat, a visual of Chris's disappointed face as he drove from the Morningside house for the last time accompanying the soundtrack.

I'm going to have to stop going to my grief group. It'll be too hard to drive by the physical representation of my failure.

The sound of my phone ringing startles me; I thought I turned it off. Honestly, I thought I smashed it last night when I got home from Eden's place. When I answer, Chris yells at me before I can even say hello.

"Are you coming out here, or do I have to come in there and drag you?"

I sit up. "What are you talking about?"

"The game, Donovan. The Black Sox? We're going to go drink shitty beer and have a good wallow while the Sox lose, remember?"

I scratch at my hair, frowning. "Did we say we were doing that?"

Chris grumbles, and then I hear a pounding on my front door. "Come on," he yells, both in real life and through the phone, assaulting my ears with a double bellow.

"All right, give me a minute to pee."

I stumble into some jeans and manage to find a Sox shirt. When I open the front door, Chris thrusts a greasy paper bag in my face. "Donuts," he grunts. "Let's go."

I open the bag and inhale the cinnamon scent of a fresh cake donut. "This was my dad's favorite," I mumble, filled with nostalgia and grief and fondness as I bite into the pastry.

"He ate too many of the damn things, rest his soul." Chris pulls his hand off the gearshift to cross himself as he navigates his truck toward the baseball stadium. "First pitch is at one. We probably won't make it."

I talk around a mouth full of sugar. "Sorry I held us up."

He waves a hand and then snaps on the radio, listening to the pre-game commentary. The Sox haven't had a winning season in decades, but it is nice to go to the games. The stadium sits right along the Allegheny River, near where it merges with the Monongahela to become the Ohio. No matter where you sit, you can see something spectacular, whether it's the skyscrapers downtown or all the bridges on either side of the stadium, connecting all the neighborhoods together despite the massive waterways that would otherwise divide the city.

Chris finds a free parking spot along the river trail, and we walk to the stadium, grabbing cheap bleacher seats along the third baseline and settling in just in time for the first pitch. I nudge him with my shoulder. "Want me to grab us some drinks?"

He shakes his head and hooks his thumb at a guy selling beer in the stands. "Cold IC Lite! Cold beer here," he yells.

I beckon the guy over, grabbing a few cans as Chris smiles approvingly.

We sit in silence for a few minutes, and it really does feel better, watching the Sox get struck out with a cold drink in the warm sun. Between innings, Chris turns sideways in the bleachers to face me.

"So…" he says, then he waits.

I sigh. "I'm sorry, man. I tried really hard to run things like my dad did, but I am not cut out to run the business. I shouldn't have strung the crew along like I did when I knew it was a sinking ship."

Chris frowns. "Is that what you think? That you sunk us?" He swallows. "You were never late with a paycheck. And you aren't the first person to have some out-of-state asshole throw a tantrum and cancel a job. The number of times your old man called me to bitch about that exact thing…" He crumples his empty can and sets it on the stands between his legs. "It's not that you're bad at it, kid. We can see you hate it."

I let that sink in for a bit, wincing. "Is it that obvious?"

"I knew from the moment you showed up drunk at that Squirrel Hill reno that you were not living your best life, Donny."

I know he's bringing up a major mistake I made, but it feels so good to hear him use his nickname for my father… on me.

"I really do like doing the work, though," I say. "I'm good at building things. Just not…" I wave my hands around. "Payroll and insurance and union dues. Who likes that kind of stuff? It's awful. You know, my girlfriend applied for an entire USDA grant in the time it took me to reconcile my books? I had to learn the word reconcile."

Chris shoots an arm out toward a food vendor and soon hands me half of a cold, salty pretzel. He takes a huge bite of his, talking around it. "Donny would never want you to be miserable, kid."

I take a tentative bite of my pretzel, aware I've only eaten junk food so far today, which is apparently the recipe for soothing big feelings. "Who says I'm miserable?"

Chris ruffles my hair like I'm still a teenager. "Nate, I knew your old man my whole life." His eyes are wet as he chews another bite of the terrible pretzel. "You were his whole world. The business? He built it for you."

I throw the rest of my pretzel on the ground between my feet. "I know that. Why do you think I'm twisting myself around trying to fix it?"

He shakes his head. "You're missing my point. He built it for you, so you'd have something if you need it. But you've got your own things. Maybe what you really need is space." He shrugs. "I'm just saying, Donny wouldn't want you to be miserable, and it's plain to see you are. I said what I said."

I watch the game in silence for a few pitches to let it sink in. He's right. They've all been right—my group, Eden, Chris… It's my own damn head that's been so stubborn.

"What do I do instead?" I ask him.

He guffaws and gestures around the stadium, toward the river. "Buy a boat. Drive a school bus. Whatever the hell you want, kid."

I cross my arms, elbows touching Chris and the guy sitting on my other side. "I like building shit, Chris. I'm just not cut out to be in charge."

He shakes his head at the umpire, or maybe me, or maybe both. By the third inning, we've agreed that Sparky would be a great candidate to run the show. I hope he'll agree to hire me on his crew, since I'm going out of business and need to find a job.

We drink a second round of lite beer and are waiting for the Sox to take the field when we hear terrified screams from the outfield fence a few hundred feet to our left. Chris takes a swig of his drink, watching as people flee the stands. "What the hell is all that about?" He points with his can, and I squint just as the cameras pan on the situation, putting the scene on the jumbotron.

It's a familiar sight—a formation Eden calls a beard. Thousands of bees have swarmed on the wall that display the scores of the other games being played around the league. The backup pitchers hustle out of the nearby bullpen. Stadium staff doesn't seem to know what to do.

"Is that a bee nest?" Chris squints at the wall on the riverside of the outfield.

We head down the bleachers to the rail above the field. Most of the people in our section have left, and I lean forward just in time to see the ground crew sprint onto the grass.

"Hey!" I shout to one of the guys before I can think better of the idea. He turns his head, and I wave him over. "I know someone who can fix this," I tell him. "I know a beekeeper."