“It’s Libby’s birthday,” I said, eyes trained on the pattern of salt and sand pooled by the worn and saturated welcome mat. If you squinted, it formed a rough constellation like the Big Dipper. I followed the path with my eyes.
I didn’t talk about my sister often. We’d been so busy with getting the company going the last few years, I thought I was handling her absence better, but I was just getting better at hiding it. I wasn’t sure I’d said her name out loud to anyone besides Mom in years.
“Shit,” Cord said, his voice barely audible over the Billy Joel song piping through crackling speakers. “Was it sophomore year she left?”
I picked at the label on my beer. “I never knew what else was going on, but she and Mom fought constantly, and she’d developed what I know now was an eating disorder. One day she answered the phone, and the next, she was gone.” I’d spent years fearing the worst and searching as best I could. I’d all but given up when I got a text from an unknown number on her birthday, saying she was okay and she missed me. Since then, I’d get those kinds of messages a few times a year, always guarded and careful, but it was something. I’d keep texting that number until it didn’t work anymore and then I’d wait for her again. “I haven’t heard from her since June.”
Eight months was a long time, and work wasn’t the welcome distraction it had been in the past.
“Shit, Wes. I’m sorry.”
I kept following the pattern in the sand and took a pull from my beer without looking at him. “And then my mom is—well, you know, my mom.”
Neither of us spoke. I didn’t have to return his gaze to know his brow was knit, trying to figure out the right thing to say.
Cord broke the silence, his voice low again but without a trace of pity. I loved that about the guy. “What do you need?”
“Distraction.” I could shake this. I didn’t need help or condolences; I just needed to focus on a problem I could fix, and Cord understood.
He leaned one elbow on the table, pivoting on a dime. “Tell me more about this high school thing Pearl said you wanted to talk about.”
“Yeah.” My shoulders relaxed, and I realized how tense I’d been. “You know my buddy Aaron?”
“Yeah, the one you play basketball with, right?” Cord sat back in his chair, eyeing the small group of trendy twentysomethings who’d stumbled through the front door. I knew they wouldn’t stay.
“They wanted to do this peer education thing where older kids lead workshops on fitness for the younger kids who want to learn.” Aaron had sent me more information, and the program was a great idea, giving kids a chance to learn and be leaders. Libby had always hated gym class—she’d complain, and I never got it. Eventually, she confessed she hated that she felt judged and forced to focus on her body, when she didn’t want to in this very public way. I’d never thought about it like that. The program Aaron described sounded better. “Sort of like a mini version of what our coaches do.”
Cord took a pull from his drink, expression unchanged. “Sounds cool. Where would we come in?”
“I’m not sure yet. It’s all still coming together, but what would you think of us partnering with them? We could hire someone who would work with the school and train the kids using some of our existing training program. I don’t know . . . maybe if it works, it’s a service we could provide to schools to do something similar.” I was talking faster, motioning with my hands. “You know how often our coaching boils down to undoing shit people have been holding on to since they were kids.”
Cord nodded, and I knew what was in that acknowledgment. When we first met, he gave me the cold shoulder, and I figured he was another spoiled, rich asshole like so many of my new classmates. The first semester we lived together, we just tried to stay out of each other’s way until he stumbled in drunk one night and thanked me for not being an asshole like the athletes who bullied him in high school. I’d never thought much about what people dealt with until that night. After Libby ran away, I’d thought about it a lot.
“Yeah, and it’s not like we’re going to expand FitMi to serve minors, so this could be good. We’re doing well. You want to do this for free, at least for this school?”
“That’s what I was thinking.” I was in way over my head. We’d have a thousand details to work out with the school—our insurance, the finances—and that was all before hiring someone to head it up. It would be a ton of work for me in the months ahead, and that was exactly what I wanted.