Second Chances in New Port Stephen free digital audiobook - Chapter 6

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Second chances in new port stephen


CHAPTER 6


The river contained a lot less wildlife and a lot more trash than Eli remembered.


He stood where the cement boat launch met the murky brown water and watched as a Doritos bag floated by, just missing a flotilla of bobbing soda bottles. What had happened to all those childhood lessons they’d been quizzed on at school? Reduce, reuse, etc.? Maybe society really was going to hell in a handbasket. Or maybe the local river had always been kind of trashy, and it was Eli’s memory that was faulty.


“Excuse me a second.” Nick squeezed past him, then stooped to fish the trash out of the water with his bare hands.


“Whoa! Don’t touch that stuff.” Eli shrank back, fearing river water splatter. “You could get some weird garbage disease.” He could see the headline now: Florida Man Discovers, Dies from Rare Bacterium.


Nick looked over his shoulder with the same air as someone who meant to tidy up a house before guests came over, chagrined but determined to fix the misstep. “I’ll be fine. There are wet wipes in the car. I’ve got a four-year-old, remember?” He held the various pieces of dripping refuse away from himself and walked off toward a trash barrel.


Zoe, who had been poking a stick into the dirt in the gravel parking lot, gave up on that and skipped over to Eli. Her shoes had purple flowers on the toes, and the backs lit up in bright fuchsia every time she took a step.


“Cool shoes,” Eli said.


“Thanks.” She pushed her hair out of her face and peered up at him expectantly.


How were you supposed to make conversation with a little kid? Eli had no experience in this arena. “Did, uh, your dad buy them for you?”


Zoe nodded gravely.


“Yeah. That makes sense. I mean, it was either your mom or your dad. Unless you, like, found them. Or stole them.” Eli winced. “Not that you would steal anything! I’m sure you’re a good kid.”


She stared at him some more, her eyebrows knitting together in bewilderment. Eli started to wonder if this was a good idea after all. He knew basically nothing about children. And it had been ages since he’d been in the great outdoors. This outing would have him dealing with both, possibly for hours. Why had he ever agreed to this?


Oh, right. Because he was a loser who couldn’t say no when Nick offered to spend more time together.


That morning at the beach—it had felt so familiar, whiling the time away with Nick. He could still make Eli laugh better than anyone else in the world, even Margo. Nick had always been a magnet for Eli; when they were kids, all he wanted to do was spend time with him. He could remember inhaling his dinner so he and Nick would have more time to play in the woods before sundown.


Nostalgia was a hell of a drug. That was all this was. Memories gone mad. Reminiscing gone rampant. The past gone—


“Or my grandma,” Zoe said out of nowhere, breaking Eli from his thoughts.


He blinked down at her. “Huh?”


“Grammy Kay. I have two grandmas. Ah Ma is gone, but Dad says she loves me no matter where she is. Grammy Kay is still here. She could have bought these for me.”


“Oh.” Right. They were discussing Zoe’s footwear. “I didn’t think about that.”


“That’s okay. Grammy is kind of—” Zoe looked back at where Nick was scrubbing his hands with a wet wipe. She turned back to Eli and dropped her voice to a whisper. “A pill.”


Eli’s eyes almost bugged out of his skull. Yaaaas, drama. More of this, please. “She is?”


Zoe nodded some more. “Mommy says not to say so out loud, though. You won’t tell on me, will you?”


“I would never.” It wasn’t a lie. Eli loved to gossip, but he also knew the importance of keeping a secret. “What makes her a pill?”


“She hates fun. When she saw these”—she marched in place to set off another light show—“she said I looked like I was from the red-light district.”


Eli choked on his own spit. He bent at the waist, trying to catch his breath. “Uh, you know what a red-light district is?” he struggled to say once his pipes were clear.


Zoe shrugged. “Someplace where they keep lights on all the time, I guess.”


“Right. That’s—yep, that is exactly correct.”


“I don’t know why that’s such a bad thing. Do you?”


“Well.” Eli thought fast. “I live in a city where they keep the lights on all the time. Some people don’t like it. They think we’re all hoity-toity types.”


“What’s hoity-toity?”


“Like when someone is fancy and kind of a”—don’t fucking curse in front of the small child—“silly Billy about it?”


Zoe chewed on her lip in thought as she gave Eli another once-over. “Yeah,” she finally said, “Grammy probably would call you hoity-toity.”


Eli couldn’t help it. He threw his head back and laughed. This kid was funnier than most of the professional comedians he had worked with, no contest. “How am I hoity-toity?”


“Your hair,” she said matter-of-factly. “It’s fancy. Like, too fancy.”


Eli gasped, his hand flying to the back of his head. “I’ll have you know—okay, yes, I did pay way too much for this haircut.” His barber was on the Lower East Side and charged about four times the going rate, but the staff went out of their way to never misgender him. Eli had been willing to spend the money for that alone.


“My mom cuts mine,” Zoe said reasonably.


Eli examined the careful line of her bangs with a critical eye. “It looks good.”


“Do you want her to cut yours?”


He propped his hands on his hips, delighted with her moxie. “How did we get onto this topic?”


“My shoes.” Zoe stomped one tiny foot. Her heel flashed. “Good memory.”


Nick finally returned, waving his hands like fans through the air to dry them. He lit up just like his kid’s shoes. “I bought her those,” he said with naked pride.


Zoe huffed. “I already said that, Daddy. You were over by the trash, so you didn’t hear.”


“Well, thank you for bringing me up to speed.” Nick turned. Eli could see himself reflected in Nick’s mirrored sunglasses. “Want to give me a hand?”


Right. They were here to kayak, not banter with a four-year-old with better comedic timing than most. He helped Nick unlash the bungee cords that held the kayak to the roof of his van, and together they carted it and the oars to the water.


It was a three-person kayak—an artifact from his marriage, Eli guessed—with two deep seats molded in blue plastic and a smaller space up front for Zoe. As Nick got her settled, Eli fumbled his way into his own seat, consoling himself with the idea that surely no one looked cool trying to get into or out of a tiny boat. Eli took up the middle position and put his feet in the footwells ahead of him. As he did so, it became clear to him that he would essentially be sitting in the V of Nick’s legs. So that was happening.


Zoe turned around and waved frantically at him. He waved back weakly. In addition to being in closer quarters with Nick than he’d initially expected, it dawned on Eli that if Zoe tried to lean out of the kayak, he was the closest adult. Mental drills went through his head as he pictured just how fast he’d need to grab the back of her life jacket. Holy shit, how did parents handle this on a daily basis? They hadn’t even left the dock and Eli was already sweating with the responsibility.


“Okay, Zoe, stay low,” Nick said as he stepped smoothly into the kayak. Eli twisted his head around to watch in consternation. Apparently, there was a way to do it like a suave motherfucker, and Nick had perfected it. Annoying.


Eli faced forward again and tried to ignore Nick’s sandals coming into view as his feet settled on either side of Eli’s thighs. He swallowed hard. If his mind would heft itself out of the gutter, that would be ideal. It wasn’t like they were squished together or anything; there were several inches of space between them.


But it was still hard to ignore the fact that, if Eli leaned back just a little, his head would be resting against Nick’s chest.


Nick tapped Eli on the shoulder, making him almost jump out of his skin. “Ready to get going?”


“Y—” Eli cleared his throat. “Yep!” He took the dual-lightsaber-style paddle that Nick handed to him. “Zoe, you ready to be our lookout up there?” he said.


Zoe turned around and gave him a very serious salute. Dear Lord, this kid was the funniest person on the planet. Eli saluted her back.


Nick gave a gentle push with his own oar on the side of the dock, and off they went. It took Eli a few minutes of Nick’s patient coaching to understand paddling in tandem, but he soon got the hang of it. He just hoped his arms held out; his lats were already burning. Not to mention the heat of Nick’s legs snug against his hips was driving him to distraction.


The river was a brackish vein that snaked its way through black mud, lined with tangles of mangroves and bunched clusters of cabbage palms. Here and there a scraggly pine or a stately cypress poked out from the tree line. The huge blue of the sky and its puffy white clouds were reflected almost perfectly in the river water, disrupted only by the occasional flop of a fish or skim of a white egret.


They paddled along quietly, the silence thickening as they got farther away from the park and the traffic on the bridge.


Zoe twisted around to face Eli. “Have you ever seen an alligator?”


“Sure. Tons.” It was hard not to when they got into every canal, lake, and deepish ditch.


“Have you ever seen one eat someone?”


“Uh. No.” Eli twisted around to give Nick a look. He hoped Nick could interpret the what the fuck? raise of his brows.


Nick rolled his eyes. “Zoe wanted to swim in the river last year, so we had to explain to her why that’s dangerous. She’s been kind of obsessed with the idea ever since.”


Eli stared straight ahead and paddled faster. “Hey, speaking of deadly local wildlife, remember when we were taught to do the stingray shuffle?” he said in a loud voice. Anything to get them off the topic of alligator attacks.


“I know about the stingray shuffle!” Zoe turned almost completely around, abandoning her post as lookout. “I learned it at the nature center. ‘Keep your feet on the sand,’ ” she recited, “ ‘and rays will swim away as planned.’ ” She shuffled her shoes against the bottom of the kayak.


Eli shot Zoe a smile. “Your dad and I would get yelled at when we ran through the shallows with our knees up. Man, we got in so much trouble at summer camp.”


Zoe’s mouth fell open. “Daddy got in trouble?”


“Only because Eli tossed hermit crabs in my hair,” Nick muttered.


Eli laughed at the memory. “The camp counselors ended up dividing our group into boys and girls just to keep us from horsing around.”


Zoe’s face scrunched. “But you’re both boys.”


Eli nearly lost his grip on his paddle. He rowed faster to cover it, mind racing. How was he supposed to explain so a little kid would understand? He turned around to face Nick. “Uh, do you want to take this one?”


Nick spoke to Zoe over Eli’s head, his steady, smooth voice filling the quiet of the river. “When we were younger, people thought Eli was a girl. When he got older, he realized he’s actually a boy. We call that being transgender. It’s a medical condition, like Grandma’s diabetes. Some transgender people need medicine to manage it, just like Grammy does. Make sense?”


“Mm-hmm.” Zoe sounded bored, or maybe just unimpressed. “Can I have a fruit snack?”


Eli turned around to boggle at Nick, who just gave him a what? shrug of his shoulders. Like he didn’t know how amazing he was. An age-appropriate discussion of gender and fruit snacks? Was Nick even real?


“Yes, you can have a fruit snack.” Nick produced a tiny purple packet from his pocket like a magician and handed it to her over Eli’s shoulder.


Zoe ripped open her packet and chewed on a brightly colored cherry. “Will any of my friends be transgender when they get older?” she asked.


“They could. It’s pretty rare, but it happens.” Nick paddled along placidly. Eli faced forward and got back to work too. “If it does, your mom and I will help you learn any new names they pick out.”


Zoe stared open-mouthed at Eli. “You got to pick a new name?” Then, not waiting for the answer, she pummeled him with follow-up questions. “Did you know right away which one to pick? Why’d you pick Eli? Is it short for something?”


“Yes, actually,” he said, deciding to focus on the last question. “It’s short for Elijah. My best friend, Margo, she just calls me E.”


He could feel Nick perk up behind him. “Wait, seriously? Elijah?” An edge of amusement was already in his voice. He must have made the connection. “You gigantic nerd.”


Eli closed his eyes with a sigh. “Look, early aughts Elijah Wood was trans masc culture. When Lord of the Rings-colon-The Fellowship of the Ring came out, it was the first time a short dude with great lashes got to be the hero in something, okay?” He’d been… more than obsessed with the film back in the day. For reasons which only became clear later in life.


“You named yourself after a hobbit,” Nick crowed. His oar faltered in the water, apparently because he couldn’t handle it while laughing his ass off. “Oh my god, that’s perfect.”


“I would name myself after Skye if I wanted to change my name. She’s my favorite Paw Patrol,” Zoe said. “But I like Zoe for now.” Then: “Oooooh, a bird!” She thrust her finger in the direction of a gray-and-white osprey in flight with a wriggling fish in its talons. “It’s got something!”


“Whoa, pretty cool.” Nick started talking all about birds of prey and how they caught fish, and Zoe asked a million questions, and Eli sat motionless with his oar resting across his lap in a daze.


He wasn’t sure whether he was about to laugh or cry. Were there seriously parents like Nick out in the world, telling their kids that being trans was fine? That was… so bizarre. Not that he expected Nick to be a jerk about it, but he also hadn’t expected him to be absolutely perfect. He’d just explained things calmly in a way Zoe would understand. Eli couldn’t help but think of his own coming out five years ago, when he’d taken his parents to Central Park, sat them down on a bench near the bandshell, and told them he was going to start going by Eli, that he’d been taking T for months. His mom had sat in stunned silence, and his dad had picked up his hand and said, “We’ll love you no matter what.”


Perfect, ten out of ten, no notes, really should have stopped there, but then Wendall Ward had cleared his throat and added, “After all, you’ll always be our daughter.”


Fumbled it right on the ten-yard line. Eli’s therapist had lived off that moment for about a year and a half, all told. His parents were better about that stuff these days, but woof.


He watched Zoe squeal with delight as some tiny green fish flashed by under the surface of the water. She was only four. Would she even remember what her dad had just said? Before coming out, Eli had scoured his own memories for any clues as to how his parents felt about trans people and could find hardly anything. It just wasn’t a topic they’d ever discussed; it was at most a joke. It was sitting in a theater with his parents watching Ace Ventura and hearing everyone, himself included, act grossed out when the villain was revealed to be a trans woman. Yeah, it was a different time, but what a shitty time to be in a body that didn’t fit. Eli would have given his left arm to have heard his parents say onetenth of what Nick had. Not that he blamed his parents. Like Eli himself, they hadn’t had the words for it.


Then Zoe stood up, rocking the kayak as she pointed frantically at something in the water up ahead. “Look! Look!”


Eli fumbled to grab her, though he had no idea what the best course of action was when a four-year-old was seconds away from going headfirst into the water. He ended up catching her by the back of her kiddie life vest and gently tugging her back down. Zoe just gave him a confused look.


“Sorry, I—” He looked back at Nick for confirmation that he’d done the right thing. “Was that an overreaction? I didn’t want you to fall in.”


Zoe huffed. “I wasn’t going to!”


“Zoe,” Nick said with endless patience, “I told you to stay low, right? Good job, Eli. Now, let’s keep our voices down, too, or else you might startle them.”


“Them?” Eli was so preoccupied with his mini heart attack that he hadn’t even noticed what Zoe was so excited about. He craned his neck and looked where she had been pointing.


Up ahead in the teak-colored water, a few gray lumps floated peacefully. One lump rose above the surface, a bristly snout revealing itself to take a puff of air.


“Whoa.” Eli reminded himself not to stand and rock the boat like Zoe had just done. “Manatees.”


“A whole herd of them.” Nick stopped paddling and laid his oar across his lap. Eli followed suit so they could drift alongside the group of sea cows at a safe distance.


Eli couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen a manatee in person. The elementary school he and Nick had attended used to take field trips to the local power plant, where the highlight of the otherwise boring tour was a trip down to the water, where the warm reactor runoff was pumped into the estuary. The manatees, truly nature’s connoisseurs of coziness, would gather in droves to enjoy the bathtub effect. As a kid, Eli had worried they’d get radiation and turn into monsters, but seven-year-old Nick had assured him that a manatee with superpowers would do nothing dangerous. “They’d just be super lazy,” he’d said, which made perfect sense to Eli.


Zoe counted the gigantic bodies floating off their left side. “One… two… there’s three. And—Eli, look! There’s a baby!” She pointed emphatically, and Eli made a bar with his arm along the edge of the kayak just in case she forgot the rule about staying seated.


“Where?” Eli peered into the water until a small, fat shape came into view beside one of the huge ones. “Oh, I see it,” he whisper-screamed.


“It’s so cute,” Zoe said in the same hushed squeal.


Okay, maybe all the heart attacks were worth it if having a kid meant you got to feel a sense of childish delight in something as wholesome as spotting an endangered species in its natural habitat. The baby manatee looked like a puffy gray marshmallow. It stuck its nose into the air and blew a light mist. Zoe was beside herself, and Eli was right there along with her.


“That one’s me,” Eli said, pointing to a sea cow who looked like he’d nodded off in the shallows. He bumped into a bundle of mangrove roots and just kept floating.


“I’m the baby,” Zoe said, like it was obvious. She pointed to the biggest one at the head of the pack. “And that one’s Daddy.” Her grin was wide enough to split her face.


Nick’s laugh was smooth as honey. “It sure is, sweetheart.”


Eli watched all their manatee counterparts floating around like one big happy family, trying to concentrate on the wonders of nature and not on whatever inappropriate non-feelings he was totally not experiencing.