Page 6 of Divorced from Number Thirty-Eight
I sit and listen and drink my wine.
And when it’s finally late enough to go inside and make dinner, I push up to my feet and do just that.
Alone.
Three
Gray
Say what you will about my teammates, but they’re funny?—
Most of the time, anyway.
The rest of it, they’re annoying as shit.
The only good thing is after spending the afternoon in a marathon shopping spree at The Baby Emporium we grabbed beers and burgers.
And fries.
It has to be said that I may or may not have consumed my weight in garlic fries.
I can practically smell it coming out of my pores.
Whatever.
I’m going home to rot anyway.
There’s a terrible action movie calling my name.
And entire bag of microwave popcorn.
Maybe if I get crazy, I’ll toss in a handful of M&Ms, get that sweet and salty combination going.
My stomach growls—and seriously, how I can possibly be hungry after the huge burger and shared pitcher of beer and the body weight’s worth of garlic fries is almost unfathomable.
Except that the Pavlovian response of freshly popped popcorn can never be denied.
Mouth twitching, I turn down my street and navigate along the quiet road filled with old-growth trees, but I do it slowly. Carefully. My neighborhood is a well-established one not too far west of where the Grizzlies’ home arena is located, and it’s mostly families and empty nesters.
With those families, sometimes balls roll out into the middle of the street, followed by kids who aren’t playing the closest attention.
Occasionally, the family dog follows them.
Or sometimes it’s a rogue squirrel crossing the road or one of the empty nesters going to a neighbor’s house for a glass of wine.
An adult playdate, if you will.
And the kids have those too, dashing across the street to play hopscotch or four square?—
Both of which they take extremely seriously.
Ask me the difference between skimmies and aces and cherry bombs.
I dare you.
So yeah, my neighborhood is cool.
It’s the right mix of close and not—neighbors who know each other’s names, who look out for my house when I’m out of town with the team (and I do the same when they’re traveling for work or on vacation). We’ll bring in mail or Amazon deliveries, I’ll put Lizzy—my neighbor across the street’s Labrador—back on the rare occasion she escapes her yard, and we’ll share adult beverages on a fairly regular basis. But they also know when to mind their own business.
