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But they are already bubbling under the surface. She hasn’t just shared her body and began to reveal her fantasies. She has let down her walls and has given me a glimpse of the real Dahlia. Her childhood, her fears, her insecurities.
I run harder and harder. Mind over body, mind over heart. It is early days and we have spent most of them having sex which obviously confuses things but I just know the feelings for her are real and have the potential to grow. The fact that I’ve covered 4km already and haven’t stopped the inner Dahlia monologue is testimony to that.
I see the suburbs change into familiar territory. My entire childhood could be summed up on these streets. That is the house where at 15 I kissed a girl called Sophie on the sofa in her living room, and even though I said it wasn’t, it had been my first kiss. Next street, my first ride on a bike without stabilizers. The third house on the left is where my closest middle school friend lived but we barely spoke after we went to different high schools. The Park …oof, the hours I had spent in there running. Nearly every day from my early teens I had run those laps. Round and round; I could do it with my eyes closed. I still could.
I take the left turn and head in to the park. I don’t need to but I’m feeling nostalgic. Even the smell of the trees is familiar, like home. I know I can slow off but I don’t. I run harder and harder, covering the oval in perhaps one of my quickest times.
It is pretty much empty. It usually is. It isn’t a particularly pretty park and others in the area have more for kids to do. It got more popular in January with the new-year-resolution joggers and you might see the odd yoga enthusiast in the summer, but it is mainly a place teenagers hang out in the evening. Even when I had been a teen, there had been petitions to add gates to dissuade the youths at antisocial hours… But then where would they go? And on the back of that question, the unspoken agreement was out of sight, out of mind, and as long as they kept to themselves people generally looked the other way.
Mr. Blakely had been allocated the park pick-up and clean route. Every morning at 6 am he started collecting the bottles and remnants from the night before. I always knew I was early if I got to the park before Mr. Blakely, and he would give me a smile and a wave as I passed him before humming through his picking and binning.
I wouldn’t see him now though. He had retired a few years ago and since then there had been no regular council worker allocated, which meant things were a little less loved and taken care of. It didn’t make much difference to me the path was still the path and the distance the same, but it was always a shame to see it a little less loved.
I run round twice and contemplate a third but my calves are on fire and sweat drips from me so I head home. Well, not to my home but to what feels like home.
The back door is open and the smells of pie are filling up the kitchen. Condensation runs down the panes as pots boil and crusts bubble and bake.
“I saw you in the park, felt like a memory watching you go round. I laid out a towel and some clothes, go shower and change,” Grandmama coos, and I smile to myself as I peel my new and ridiculously expensive running shoes from my feet and make my way upstairs.
Old-fashioned is not really her style though nothing seems to have changed that much in the twenty-odd years I have lived here. No clutter is the number one rule. Everything has a place and if it doesn’t have a place, it doesn’t belong and that is that. There are no terrible floral prints or frilly lace. The furniture is old but the good kind of old that looks classic but sturdy. The bathroom has seen a slight upgrade in my teenage years with the acquisition of a shower, which at the time had felt like a huge deal for my post-run routine.
I strip off and walk straight into the icy cold water. My muscles scream and my heart hammers and then the soothing comes. I stand there a few minutes and just let the water pound at my skin. It feels good, like an unknotting. I smile as I catch sight of my favorite shampoo and conditioner still on the shelf. Restocked and ready for whenever I need them.
It takes longer than normal, but I give my body a long, slow clean. I run the razor over just lathered skin before toweling off and slipping into perfectly pressed clothes and warm socks. I pad down the stairs with my damp hair loose, pulling up a chair at the kitchen table.
“I made us some meat and potato pie and then apple crumble for after. I know it is a little early for the big winter dinners, but I really fancied some. I wasn’t sure about your eating plan at the moment so I did extra veggies and meat just in case you need them rather than too many carbs.”
I smile. “Thanks, Grandmama. I’m not shredding right now so everything sounds great. Thanks for the clothes.” I nod towards the freshly pressed pile. “But I’m not working this week so you get a week off next week from ironing.” I grin before taking a sip of the tea she had just placed in front of me.
“Oh, I thought your race was in a couple of weeks,” she says, confused, as she heads over to the calendar.
“No, it is, it is. I am just taking some time. Training, a break from work. Hanging out with some friends.”
I feel her gaze before I caught it. Looking over her glasses, she half-turns to look at me from the calendar.
“Friends plural. Or friend singular?” she asks as I turn a light shade of pink. “Oh, that color tells me it is singular. Well. Tell me about them, they must be someone special if they have you taking time off work.”
She takes a seat beside me, and although I know I have her full attention, her eyes flick to the oven, pots, and pans behind me. It is an instinct, always aware of what is going on.
“Well, they are a she for starters.” For some families, this may be a bigger talk, a greater reveal, especially with a grandparent. But not for me and mine. She has always been ahead of the curve, trendy before the trend with just a general feeling of right and wrong and acting on those without taking many directions from religion, politics, or other misguided notions.
Maybe if life had been different for her, she would have felt differently about the path her only grandchild took. But I often forget that she too lost more than someone should ever have to lose, a child, her only son, and I think that tilted her world axis to see much more than judging someone based on sexual orientation.
The benefit of being raised by your grandparents is that they had done it once and learned from their own mistakes. Some parents can do that with a second or third child, but usually, the age gap doesn’t offer much in the terms of retrospect.
For me, they had seen how some of their actions had shaped the man my father became. The good they worked hard to ingrain in me, and the bad…well, they ditched those habits. They didn’t make me into a perfect human, not by a long shot, but they did manage to create a nearly perfect home life. There was a balance, love, listening, respect, sharing, caring, and compassion.
I miss my parents. I grieve for them. But if I look at the life my grandparents gave me, I am grateful.
“Okay, well, tell me about her.”
I pull a face. “Actually, this will sound crazy, but I’m not really allowed to tell you about her. I signed a contract …”
I watch her head tilt and her eyes look me over to see if I’m joking with her only for my serious stance to tell her I am not.
“Okay. Well, let us just pretend that I understand what that means for a moment and move on without the details. Do you like her?”
I am hesitant to answer that question. “Yes, I like her. I really like her, but it isn’t a simple situation. Like I said, I can’t even really talk about her but even if I could I would only say that we don’t just live in different worlds, we are on totally different orbits. So, I think it is probably just a short-term thing where I should just appreciate it for what it is and how it feels right now.”
