He wants to hold her hand. To tell her how some nights all he can see is his dad gasping in his hospital bed, that awful fucking tube in his throat. The way his dad lay there, pale with his muscles sagging, in that humiliating gown, loose around his neck, all those tubes and wires trailing from his arm.
He wants to tell her how his dad—the guy who lifted a slab of granite with one hand, the guy who told Luke’s baseball coach who was twice his size he would flatten him if he ever talked to his son that way again—looked like he was drowning with that tube in his mouth. Luke’s sister sobbed, and his mother was silent, and his dad was wasting away. How his dad scribbled on a piece of paper, “Hurts.”
Hurts. How Luke has thought of that word every day for the last ten years. What do you do with hurt? All this hurt.
Luke wants to tell Hannah how it feels to disappoint your tough-bird mother （who has to say he looks tired every damn time she sees him） and your sister who is perfect and did all the right stuff with a cheerleading trophy and a graduate degree and an adorable child—and even disappoint a dead father who meant everything to you. How it feels to be the guy who can barely keep a waiter job, a gig in a band. He wants to tell her, but he doesn’t see the point. She is his sad reflection in the lake, isn’t she? She is just as hurt, drifting by in the same way. Both of them lost and broken for no apparent reason. What’s the point of talking about it?
He realizes he hasn’t responded to her suggestion about going to the toy store. “I’ll figure something out,” he finally says. “I need a shower.” He shrugs, leaving her standing there in that T-shirt, the cars going by below, her pink-tipped hair lifting in the wind, the church bell ringing faintly （maybe a wedding, maybe a funeral） in the distance.
* * *
It is noon, and he stands in the toy shop holding a Bozo the Clown Bop Bag and a wind-up scuba diver toy Lizzie can play with in the bath. Hannah was right about this place. He should have brought her. Now he regrets ignoring her attempts to help him out. God, he regrets everything these days.
He hopes no one else got Lizzie these things; he hopes they’re the type of stuff a four-year-old would play with. He hopes his credit card will go through. There is nothing worse than when that shit happens: the irritated look on the clerk’s face, what he imagines the people behind him think. He looks like a guy whose credit card gets rejected, doesn’t he? Even today in his green-and-navy-striped polo shirt and one pair of jeans that isn’t ripped. This is as close to presentable as he can get. He thinks—thinks—he paid the minimum a week ago. Forty dollars or something. He got the rent in at least.
The store is busy this Saturday. One hippie mother with too-long wavy hair is letting her kids run around freely, pulling pink rubber balls out of the plastic bin and giggling madly as they bounce. A divorced dad （he thinks） is guilt-buying a mechanical robot for his small son who barely answers his questions. The cash register is an old-fashioned one, and the gears inside ring and the drawer thuds open. “Have a fun day,” the cashier repeats over and over. She wears one of those multicolored propeller hats and a purple vest. Every so often she puts on an oversized foam hand to wave at kids and parents coming in.
It’s too crowded. He feels hot in this six-person line, and he wishes the hippie’s kids would stop screaming. He scratches the four-day scruff on his face and regrets not shaving. Why is everything so hard? Some days, he barely does two things and it’s already four in the afternoon. He means to scribble song lyrics in the notebook he bought. He means to try to book some solo gigs. He has to get clean. He sleeps too much, regrets it all the next day. He looks down at his shirt and jeans. He reaches into his pocket and puts a Lifesaver into his mouth.
When the door chimes again, he looks absently over to see what chaos is now coming through, and he recognizes the face right away. He is stunned, and his heart somersaults. Older but still as gorgeous: Ginger Lord, his girlfriend in his early twenties. Is he really seeing her? It feels surreal. It feels like he’s not standing there and she won’t see him. He wants her to see him. He has thought about her so many times. He has even looked at the online reviews of her vet clinic （Dr. Lord is patient and sweet; The vet is the saving grace of this place; She held our old cockapoo and said he was a handsome fella, which made us feel instantly comforted）。 Her light auburn hair is shorter, and she wears less makeup, dressed in a denim jacket, long sweater, and boots. She always looked Ivy League but never overdone. She notices him right away.