Daylight, page 4
Per our usual arrangement, Alex let me take his car to visit them as long as I promise to bring back a loaf of banana bread from my grandma. The least I could do, truly. Though, sometimes I wonder if just renting a car would be less of a hassle than sticking out like a sore thumb in his giant Lincoln. It makes me look like a member of the Secret Service with its all black exterior and tinted windows.
I’ve made this drive more times than I can count, and as I get closer to Pontiac, a creeping feeling of nostalgia settles over me. I spent a lot of my life in this little town, and being back always makes me happy, even under the circumstances.
My mind wanders back to Alex and the video.
As if on queue, one of my phones begins to vibrate in the cup holder. I realize it’s my work phone, and the caller ID reads ‘Alexander Bradford - Comets’. I let out an audible laugh. Why is he calling me on my work phone, from his work number? I answer the phone through the vehicle’s built-in Bluetooth input.
“Don’t say anything, and hang up,” I laugh. “Try again.”
A few seconds later, my personal phone begins to ring. I answer that one, bringing my phone to my ear. “Rough morning?” I ask, sarcasm lacing my voice.
“We went viral, Elle. I’m thriving,” he says dryly.
“Come on, five million views is nothing for us. How many people watch Sunday Night Football?” I ask, trying to lighten the mood. I don’t think it hits.
“Are you okay?” He asks.
“Oh, I’m fine. Are you?”
“Elle, seriously. Are you?” His voice drones into my ears, and I’ve never been one to win against him.
I shrug. “Honestly, I’ve been better. But, Alex, I’ll get through it, just like I’ve gotten through everything else life has thrown at me.”
His voice softens. “It shouldn’t be that way, though,” he says sadly. “It’s fucked up.” I hear an engine running, he must be done with practice.
“It is, but there’s nothing I can do about it. I’ve been in talks with CBS about covering college basketball in March. Maybe I’ll just start early,” I sigh.
“You shouldn’t have to, though!” He exclaims.
“Alex, I love that you’re so worked up on my behalf. However, I am a big girl. I can fight my own battles. It’s fine, really. I promise,” I assure him, looking over my shoulder to switch lanes. “Thanks for the car, by the way.” His silence agitates me. “What?” I ask, an unintentional bite to my voice.
“You,” he mumbles quietly. “How you can—while living through a literal shitstorm— keep a positive attitude blows my mind. You are just… wow. I admire it. Truly.”
“Whatever, Al,” I shake my head, unsure how to respond. My cheeks undoubtedly grow redder at his admission, but I can’t help that. His words prick at my heart in a way I can’t pinpoint.
“I like that,” he says, and I can practically hear the blush through the phone. “You calling me Al.”
“Well, big serious man must be called Alexander, right?” I shrug, trying to play it off.
“Fair enough,” he laughs. “No one really calls me Alex anymore, just a few people who knew me back at Illinois. And no one ever calls me Al.”
“Well, there’s no one to take my job away if I do it now, so might as well fall back to my old ways,” I shrug again. Sadness creeps in, but I push the feeling away. What’s done is done.
“Well, I don’t like the league dictating what you can call your friends and what you can’t,” he says.
I roll my eyes. As much as I love him, he can entirely miss the point sometimes. A smile falls over my face as I pass an exit for Pontiac, so I know I’m getting close.
“How many aspects of your life does the league control?” I ask, but cut him off before he tries to answer. “Do not answer that question. You couldn’t even begin to count,” I laugh.
“I’m just saying, Elle, you’re a reporter. You’re not a player. They should treat you better,” he tells me.
Just because they should, doesn’t mean that they ever will. In a male-dominated field, I came into this job expecting treatment like this.
We bicker back and forth until I get close to my destination. Eventually, I get through to him. I think he always understood, he just likes being difficult. As I drive through town, I tell him I’ve got to but hopefully, I’ll catch him this afternoon. He responds with, ‘why wouldn’t you’, to which I had no response. And then, I hung up.
He flusters me in ways I don’t know how to explain sometimes. It doesn’t happen often, but when it does, I do not like how it makes me feel. The twisting in my stomach, the fogginess in my brain. It’s weird.
I’m meeting my grandparents at a diner we went to all of the time when I was a kid, one that we always go to when I’m in town. The owners know us well and always make sure we get a booth tucked away in the back of the restaurant. They went to high school with my grandparents, and the camaraderie lasted through the decades.
Growing up in Pontiac, I’ve come to love— and hate— a lot of different things about it. For starters, every single person in this town knows who I am. After last night, they now have intimate knowledge of my friendship with Alex, and if anyone sees me out and about with my grandparents today, they will take that as their invitation to ask me what’s up with that.
People here are nosy to a fault. Your business is their business, their business is everyone’s business. When I started reporting, it was like a phenomenon. People I hadn’t talked to in years— hell, people I’ve never talked to— were friending me, messaging me, just checking in, but always ending their “check-in” with well, if you ever have free tickets…
My grandparents grew up in Pontiac, too. They know everyone, which means everyone knows me. They knew me before I was on their TV during football season, which gave them an even weirder sense of entitlement over me as I started branching out in my career.
So, because of that, we’re getting to the diner right as it opens for lunch this morning, and taking our usual spot in the back. Just because something bad happened doesn’t mean I get to stop living my life, I have to keep going. If I hide from the problems, that will only cause them to fester and grow. Sometimes, you just have to face it head-on, even if it means fielding uncomfortable questions from the waitress who you think looks familiar but you can’t quite place, only to realize you went to high school with her.
I prepare for the worst as I pull into the tiny parking lot at Tina’s Spot, but am flooded with relief when I see that besides Alex’s SUV, there’s only one other car in the parking lot; my grandparents.
They must be inside already, their car is empty. Grabbing both of my phones and my purse, I lock the car and head inside. The smell of grease and leather and childhood memories flood my senses, transporting me to a time when everything was so much easier and my job wasn’t on the line and I wasn’t a viral video sensation.
“Eleanor, my sweetheart!” My grandma exclaims, jumping from her seat. The diner isn’t very big, as soon as the door opened I made eye contact with her careening head. Both her and my grandpa stand for hugs, and I graciously return the embrace.
“Hey, how are you guys?” I ask, taking my seat with them. I sit with my back to the door of the diner, facing the wall of the restaurant. If anyone comes in, they’ll just see the top of the back of my head through our booth.
“I think the real question is, how are you, missy?” My grandpa asks, wagging a finger at me.
I let out a deep sigh. “Well, I think I’m up to five million views on that damn video, so that has to count for something right?” I ask.
“Six-point-five million, actually!” My grandma corrects.
“Oh, Jesus Christ,” I shake my head, laughter spilling out of me. “You’re keeping track?”
“We watched it while we were waiting for you to get here. How’s my Alex doing? Attention makes him nervous,” she frowns.
I hold in a snort. My grandma, bless her heart, would take Alex over me in a heartbeat. She thinks he’s this perfect, charming gentleman who could never do wrong. And for the most part, he is, but it just bothers me that she’s so right.
“He’s doing okay. He knows how to compartmentalize this kind of stuff. It comes with the job, whether we like it or not,” I say.
“I made you both treats. They’re in the car,” she smiles.
“Thanks, Grandma. He’ll be excited,” I grin.
They ask me more about how I’m handling the video, the suspension, and the situation in general. I sugarcoat a lot of it, they don’t need to know the nitty-gritty details.
Our order gets taken relatively quickly, and for it being twenty minutes past opening, I’m relieved that we’re still the only ones in here. It makes me feel like the weight on my chest has been lifted, just for a bit.
We chat about things happening in Pontiac— nothing exciting. There never is anything exciting happening here, unfortunately. It’s always the same variation of a different story. Someone is pregnant, someone is getting married, someone is getting a divorce, and someone died. That’s always the same update I get from my grandparents.
It’s depressing in its own right, knowing the people in this town are all destined for the same future. Pregnant. Married. Divorced. Dead. The cycle of suburban America. I got out as quickly as I could, once I was at Urbana-Champaign I never looked back.
When our food comes out, we chat as we pick at each other’s plates. I always order the same thing, but my grandparents switch it up so I can try bites of new things on the menu. As I’m finishing up my waffle with strawberries and a side of hash browns, my grandma offers me a bite of her breakfast scramble.
It was decent, but nothing will ever top the waffles at Tina’s Stop. Out of all the places I’ve ever had a waffle, nothing compares to Tina’s.
My phone vibrates in my pocket. I check to see who it is during a lull in the conversation, and my heart sinks at the texts I’ve neglected since last night. There are quite a few from my best friend, Quinn, who isn’t letting up on helping me forget about what happened yesterday.
Her sleuth of messages put a smile on my face regardless.
Yo. What did I just watch on my TV???
Hello, Elle?? Did u know ur mic was still on??
Earth to Eleanor! YOUR MIC WAS STILL ON!!!!!
Well, if you didn’t know before you do know. You’ve gone viral.
You’re killing me, Elle.
I make a mental note to reply to her messages when I get back out to the car, not wanting to leave her in the dark anymore. We’ve been best friends since our freshman year of college, where we were paired as roommates. The rest is history, and not a day has gone by where she hasn’t been an integral part of my life.
She was an economics major and I was journalism, so we rarely saw eye to eye on things. Our first few months of living together were rough. Once the ice thawed and we warmed up to each other, we became inseparable. The girl who claimed to “hate football and everything associated with it” was quick to go to games with me when my friend from sports marketing turned out to be the starting quarterback for the Illini.
Alex, Quinn, and I quickly became an unbreakable trio. When we weren’t at the apartment— or rather, the shoe box with windows— Quinn and I rented our sophomore year, we were out at any sporting event we could find, just enjoying the atmosphere. Whenever we could find time in our schedules, between football games that Alex played in and I began to shadow Carrie in, we always made sure we had time for recreational activities.
Into our junior year, Quinn and I both found ourselves in relationships. My boyfriend at the time, Jordan, was in a lot of classes with me. We were on the same track, but only one of us got taken under Carrie Manthaw’s wing. We dated for almost two years, and the more I look back on that relationship, I often wonder if he saw me as a way to get close to Carrie. Things ended badly, and I know I let things with him go on for way too long.
Quinn spent most of her time at her girlfriend’s apartment, and Jordan and I spent most of our time at the apartment Quinn and I shared. Alex hung out occasionally, though he was usually a third, sometimes fifth, wheel. Jordan drove a wedge between Alex and I one stupid, drunken night nearing the end of our senior year.
I was probably about one drop of alcohol away from blacking out, but I remember Alex hoisting my arm over his shoulder, wrapping a supportive arm around my waist, and carrying me up to Quinn’s room, where Quinn was expecting me.
Jordan claims that Alex tried to make a pass at me while I was drunk. I certainly didn’t believe Jordan, I couldn’t even believe he would make up such accusations to begin with. He never liked Alex, but they always got along. One fight that landed me in the emergency room later, that’s when I finally got out of that relationship.
“Eleanor, what are you doing when you get back to New York?” My grandma asks, pulling me out of my thoughts.
I shrug, stirring around the strawberry residue on my plate. “Not sure. I guess I’ll have to get a better read on the situation with my boss. It sounds like they’ve made up their minds, though. I’m done. They want to review my contract when I’m up for renegotiation in the spring. I’m not sure I’ll get a contract renewal.”
Judging from the look on her face, she doesn’t like that answer. “So, you’ll just be unemployed?” She asks.
“Maybe,” I answer honestly. “The demand for journalists is always there, though. It wouldn’t be hard for me to find something, even if it’s just temporary. You don’t need to worry about me,” I assure her, plastering a smile on my face.
“I’m always going to worry about you,” my grandma frowns.
I sigh, bringing my coffee cup to my lips so I have a beat to form my response.
My grandparents essentially raised me. My parents broke up when I was a baby and my dad had sole custody of me. He died when I was nine. I don’t remember much of my dad, he comes to me in bits and flashes. My mom had the opportunity to take me in, but left it to my grandparents to do the parenting. She would send me cards on major holidays, and we had one supervised visit a year, always the day after my birthday. It stopped after my sixteenth birthday, and I haven’t seen her since.
She still sends cards to my grandparents’ address every year on Christmas and my birthday, the return address of a small city in Florida. I usually discard whatever she sends without much second thought, but sometimes I get thinking about the what-ifs.
“Well, I’ll let you know when you need to start worrying. Right now, everything is alright,” I smile, though I’m not sure how much longer I can keep telling myself that.
Chapter Six
Alex’s Point of View
Elle and I are sitting at the island in the kitchen, sipping on the scotch I poured us. Our stools are close— maybe too close— and our legs rest against each other. We sit in a comfortable silence as Sports Center plays in the background, not getting much attention from me.
She got back from visiting her grandparents in a surprisingly good mood, all things considered. She brought back a loaf of banana bread that her grandma made, and despite my strict meal plan, we’ve been picking at it for the last hour.
I’ve met Elle’s grandparents several times, they remind me of my own grandparents in many ways. I don’t see mine often, that was a bridge my dad burned years ago, but I have fond memories of them.
Absentmindedly, my fingers fall to the cross around my neck. The little pendant and the chain that came with it was a gift from my grandparents when I was a kid. They were religious, they brought my dad up Catholic. Between all of the games and practices I had, my parents didn’t have time for Sunday church. It was something my dad took a lot of flack for.
Ultimately, my grandparents cut off both him and my uncle over it. To them, faith came before everything else. My dad and my uncle did not see it the same way, and ten years later, I haven’t seen my grandparents since.
I wonder what they think of me now. That if missing Sunday church to get to this point was okay, or if I’m headed toward eternal damnation no matter what.
It’s something I struggle with a lot. If faith is that important, something worth cutting out your own sons over, why didn’t my dad make more of an effort?
On the other hand, if they are that deep into an organized religion where they felt like they had no choice but to stop all contact with their children because they quit practicing Catholicism, is it something I even want to be a part of?
I go back and forth a lot. Most days, I decide that I don’t have time for it. I understand where my dad was coming from on that front. Some days, though, I think it would be nice to have something to believe in. To have the ability to have so much blind faith in an institution, living in blissful ignorance.
“What are you thinkin’ about?” Elle asks softly, her head turned to mine. She pulls me from my thoughts, though some still linger at the forefront of my mind. “You look sad.”
I shrug. “Trapped in here,” I tap on my head, smiling. She must not like my joke, because she frowns.
“You okay?” She asks.
I nod. “Just another day.”
She pauses like she is going to say something else, but then changes her mind. Nodding, she takes a sip of her drink. Desperate to change the subject, I ask if she’s heard from her boss at all.
“Nope. What will be, will be. I’m not worrying about it.”
“Are you for real, or is this pretend?” I ask, narrowing my eyes at her.
“For real. I can’t change the outcome. Might as well embrace it,” she chuckles dryly.
I shift in my seat, my knee moving from hers, and bumping back into it. After I’ve settled, she moves her knee for a second and then proceeds to bump it back into mine like I just did. A giant smile overcomes her face as she bumps my leg back. I can’t stop the laugh that escapes me.
“What’s so funny?” She asks, failing miserably at doing a serious face.
