The Real Deal

April’s dad holds the trophy high over his head and says, “This means so much to me only because it means you’re all here. With all of us. And that’s all I want.”

He takes a few steps away from the wooden box-turned-podium, stops, and says, “Oh, should I announce the individual winner?”

“Yes!”

The shouts come from Emma and Libby, and Huey, Louie, and Dewey. For a brief moment, a flicker of hope ignites in me. Maybe I’ll win.

But ten seconds later, Josh’s voice booms. “And thanks to amazing work in Junk in the Trunk, lawn bowling, and watermelon eating, I hereby pronounce Emma the victor.”

The teen shrieks and dances for joy.

That flicker of hope in me morphs into happiness for her as I watch the sixteen-year-old dance a victory jig. Josh and Carol place the paper boat crown on her head. Everyone cheers for her, including April, Heath, Lacey, and Dean.

As I watch April’s prom date clap, an idea occurs to me. I excuse myself, swallow my pride, and head over to Dean.

“Hey, man. I was hoping I could chat with you about something.”

“Sure, have at it,” he says with a cheery smile.

We walk away from the crowd as I say, “You mentioned a talking toaster that needed to go deeper, and that got me to thinking.…”





Chapter Forty-four

April

Saying goodbye is harder than I expect.

Maybe I do like being home.

Maybe a part of me will always be in Wistful. That evening I hug everyone a million times, it seems, before Aunt Jeanie pulls me aside on the back deck.

She takes a deep breath, as though she’s about to say something big. “I was a little pushy when I first saw you the other morning. Pushy about Linus, and I’m sorry about that.”

“Aunt Jeanie, it’s totally fine. Don’t even think twice.”

She raises a hand to silence me. “But I have thought twice about it, and about a lot of other things, too. And I hope this isn’t too pushy either, but it might be fun for me to come into the city, maybe take you out to lunch, go to a museum, see more of what you do.”

I blink. I wasn’t expecting that. But then, maybe this offer does jibe with Katie’s observation the other evening that Aunt Jeanie wants a little more excitement now and then. More than her chicken ladies are giving her on the egg farm. And if she’s not getting the action yet in a grandkid either, perhaps she’ll take it by venturing into the strange metropolis of the city.

That more than works for me.

“I would love to be your host,” I say.

“It’s a date, then.”

As we make our way to the snarling leopard so Theo can drive me to the train station—hello, I’m not riding two hours on the back of a bike—Tess throws her arms around me one more time.

“I’ll miss you,” she says softly.

“Oh, stop it. You have no time for missing.”

“I will absolutely miss you,” she says, her tone serious.

“Hey, are you okay?” I ask, pulling apart to roam my eyes over her. “Also, where’s your koala baby? Is she in your pouch?”

“Cory and I are going to counseling,” she blurts out.

My jaw drops. “What?”

She nods, her expression both sad and hopeful at the same time.

“But I thought,” I begin, furrowing my brow. “I thought things were better after the car.”

“They were. They are,” Tess says reassuringly. “That’s why we’re going. To keep them that way. We’ve both been so overwhelmed with the kids, but especially me. And it wasn’t until we sneaked away for an hour that we realized we were drifting apart. We need more than one hour now and then to make things better. So, Mom is going to watch the kids while we go to counseling on a regular basis.”

“This is a good thing?” I ask, just to make sure.

She nods and smiles. “It’s a good thing. It’ll take work for us to find that spark again. We found it that night in the car, and now we want to make sure we don’t lose it again.”

A lump rises in my throat. “I love you.”

“I love you, and I’m still annoyed that you turned out to be so awesome, since I’m stuck being the middle child and you’re the cool baby of the family.”

I laugh. “I am pretty cool.”





Epilogue

One year later

“We’re going to be late,” I call out to April, who’s stuffing a bikini in her black suitcase.

“We’ll catch the next train,” she says, as carefree as she’s always been about travel.

I shake my head. “No. We’re catching this train.”

“I’ve barely been home. I’ve hardly had any time to breathe.” She recently returned from an assignment in Los Angeles, working on a movie, painting space creatures gold.

“You can breathe in Connecticut,” I say, since we’re on our way to Wistful for the weekend. I promised her parents I’d take her there as much as I could, and I’ve honored that commitment. I kneel down to help her zip her suitcase.

We’ve been back to see her parents more than a half dozen times since the reunion. There was Thanksgiving, Christmas, a few long weekends, and my birthday. Heath and Lacey met us there for that occasion, and Lacey gave April’s mom a hostess gift—a new necklace she made herself. April’s mom even wore it the next time I saw her. On that visit, Cory wore a T-shirt I gave him for Christmas—it had the word FOR above an illustration of a fox, above the word SAKE. I’d picked it up at the hipster T-shirt shop in Brooklyn, and that was all it took for him to think it was the height of cool. Fortunately, Cory doesn’t seem so enamored of my single life anymore, and that’s not only because I have a girlfriend. It’s also because he and Tess are happier now.

April and I live together, since I moved out of the tiny studio in Brooklyn and into her bigger pad. We split all the bills. Yes, my girlfriend does quite well for herself, and the Sporting World swimsuit edition was such a hit that she was invited back for the next one. But I’m not doing too badly myself. I still tend bar, since you just never know when the work will come in as an actor.

That’s the funny thing. I wasn’t an actor, but now I am. That recent network commercial featuring a new pickup truck that speaks in a Southern drawl? That was me. The box of Tiger Puffs breakfast cereal with a talking tiger that roars? Yours truly. I also have picked up a voice-over gig as a recurring character on a late-night naughty cartoon about a superhero who delivers orgasms to women deeply in need. That’s a fine show. My character is a talking vibrator. Look, all things considered, there are worse gigs than giving voice to a pleasure device for the ladies.

A lot worse things.

Dean helped me break into the voice-over business, since his agency cast me in my first commercial doing a French accent for a French roast coffee brand. But it was April who deserves the credit for planting the seed. Little did she know that her comment about me reading the phone book was the flame that lit the match. I suppose I’ve had a special talent all along, right in plain sight. I just needed someone to hear it, and to give me a nudge. I don’t miss the boyfriend-for-hire gig. Being her real boyfriend pays much better, and I don’t mean money.

As for April’s fee for my services, she tried to pay me again. She tried many, many times. I refused every single time. She said she was never going to use the money, and she dug her little heels in. Until I figured out how to get her to stop asking. I took the fee and donated it to the arts program where she volunteers, the one she said she’d donate to if she won the all-around at the reunion.

When she found out, she wrapped her arms around me, smothered me in kisses, and said, “I knew you weren’t a doucheberry.”

But I will be if we miss the train, so I scurry her out of our apartment, down to the waiting Lyft, and off to the train station. We rush through the terminal and make our way to the train. She heads onto the first car she sees, a coach cabin.

I tsk her. “First class, cupcake.”