An Accidental Family

This is the first story that I've written since high school, which was ... a while ago. I have about half a dozen other stories that are somewhere between mostly written and hopelessly writer blocked (thanks ADHD) but this is the first one that I have gotten over the finish line. It is long (25k+ words), has a slow-build and little to no sex but I hope that some of you will give it a shot and enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it.

Note: On the recommendation of many thoughtful commenters, I copy-edited and re-submitted this story after it was first published.

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Affable. "Characterized by ease and friendliness," according to the Merriam-Webster dictionary. You can look it up if you'd like and, when you do, don't be surprised to see my face smiling back at you.

Need help moving your sofa? I have a truck, just give me a call.

Need a wingman for a double date? I dress alright and can make small talk with just about anyone.

Stuck at the bar and need a ride home? I got your back (but try not to puke on the seats!)

I accepted long ago that I am not the main character in the game of life. I'm the guy you meet on a side quest, the one who makes you smile and advances the plot while cracking jokes and busting out some bad dance moves. You won't regret spending time with me for a while but, in the end, you will move on with the rest of your game and I will be nothing but a nice memory.

And that's alright. Or at least it was for the first 29 years of my life until I met Jason and Jen.

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I was born and raised just outside a small city in the Northeastern corner of Georgia. My parents had me quite late in life. They had always wanted a large family but had been unable to conceive and were too poor to try any of the fancy treatments for infertility that were just coming into vogue in the early eighties.

I was their miracle baby, and I was deeply loved.

My dad was a mechanic and a darn good one at that. He ran his own shop with three bays and two gas pumps out front. He was fair and honest, and treated everyone with kindness and humility. He never charged more than his customers could pay, and in our neighbourhood, people couldn't pay very much. But they repaid his kindness the best way they could and that was enough.

Every winter our freezer was full of venison from local hunters whose mufflers would not make it through to spring. When our roof needed replacing, Frank and his boys did the work for free and took twice as long as they might have, stopping every hour or two for a fresh lemonade or a homemade sandwich made by my mom.

My mother was a homemaker, looking after me and keeping up with the endless maintenance and chores that are part of life on an acreage. When things got busy, she would come and help in the shop, bringing me along, at first to play with my toy cars on the floor of the office and then, as I got older, to help the mechanics by doing odd jobs and just generally learning the trade. By the time I was in my teens I was working evenings and weekends with my dad in the garage and pumping gas.

My dad loved his customers and treated them all like part of a giant extended family. Every customer who stopped by had their windows cleaned and their oil checked, regardless of how much gas they purchased. Folks who arrived as customers left as friends. My most cherished childhood memories are all from that garage—the smell of gas and grease, the mixture of curses and laughter as the men worked and my dad, at the center of it all, always ready with a smile or a helping hand.

Outside of my dad's shop, I did well enough in school and had dreams of going to State in engineering and earning a spot on the football team as a walk on. My coaches told me that I had a God-given gift for catching footballs and that I could probably earn a football scholarship if I just put in the effort. I respected my coaches and loved my teammates, but I enjoyed hanging out with my friends or working with my dad more than I did running endless routes and hitting the weights. At one point my dad even set up a gym behind the shop to encourage me to train, but I just preferred to hang out with him under a car instead.

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When I was about 12, my dad came home one day overflowing with excitement. His warm smile stretched across his weathered face. He told my mom and I that he had a surprise, and he couldn't wait to share it with us. So, after dinner we all piled into his truck and headed down to the shop.

When we arrived, he enthusiastically showed us what could best be described as a bent pile of rusted metal. If you looked closely, I guess you could tell that the pile had once been a car, but it had been in a horrendous accident and now looked more like a work of modern art than a vehicle.

"Well, what do you think?"

"It's um, its ... it's really something dad, really something," I replied.

Honestly, I couldn't have told you the make or model of the car that this pile of metal had been in its previous life. Hell, I could barely have told you what color it was except for the cherry red paint that showed through on a couple of pieces of the twisted steel.

"This is a 1967 Shelby Mustang GT500," my dad explained in an almost reverential tone. "Only 2,000 were made ... it's the most beautiful car that was ever built."

"Maybe it was before the accident,' I joked. "Now it's more like an oversized paper weight or a cautionary tale about the dangers of driving too fast in a sports car."

My dad thought for a minute and then replied.

"Son, true beauty is rare. Anyone with enough money can go and buy a pristine Shelby at auction. Don't get me wrong, that car is still beautiful, but it is a superficial kind of beauty. That beauty is bought, not earned. It takes time and patience to look at a wreck like this and see both the beauty that it once was and, with patience, love and a little luck, could be again."

"But dad, you could work for years to restore this thing only find out that it is broken beyond repair. Aren't you worried you'll waste your time and have nothing to show for it?"

"Very little is ever broken beyond repair," my dad said with his gentle smile. "Maybe it is broken beyond the work you're willing to put in to fix it. Maybe it will never return to the same beauty that it had before it was broken. Or maybe, just maybe, we can reveal a new kind of beauty in it—one that is unique."

He paused for a moment before looking at me and asking, "what do you say? Are you willing to do the work?"

He didn't need to ask.

From that day on, that Shelby became a touchstone of my life. It took us more than three months just to assess the damage. By some miracle, the frame was largely intact but just about everything else was bent, twisted, rusted or broken. It took us almost a year to fully disassemble it, document the damage and develop a restoration plan. It took three more years of weekends and evenings to strip the body, and source replacements for the original parts that were destroyed in the crash. By my senior year of high school, though, the most challenging restoration work was done, and we were on the home stretch.

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My life changed late in the Spring of my senior year of high school. I stopped by the shop on my way home from school early on a Thursday evening. I remember thinking that the sky was a beautiful canvas of reds and oranges and I half expected to see dad outside the shop admiring the sunset. Regardless of how busy he was, my dad would always make time to stop and watch the sky burst into color before slipping into darkness saying, "if God took the time to paint the sky like that for us, it would be a sin not to stop and appreciate it."

I found him collapsed under one of the hoists. The doctors said that the massive heart attack likely killed him before he hit the ground. At least he didn't suffer, and his last day was spent doing the thing that he loved.

We buried him on the first day of June in the graveyard beside the church just off the old highway.

My mom ran the shop as best she could, but she struggled. I guess she could have sold it, but she never really considered that as an option. Our employees were like family, and they mourned my father alongside my mom.

Mom tried to convince me to stay in school and to pursue my education like I had planned but I knew that path had closed for me the day that he died. I started full time in the shop when I graduated. Within a year, I got my credentials and took over running the day-to-day from my mom. By then it was clear that we couldn't keep the garage afloat and maintain the acreage, so my mom sold the house and the land where I grew up and moved into a small apartment in town. Between my father's life insurance and the money from the sale she had just enough money to retire and so she did.

I got my own apartment near to the shop and life went on. I worked long hours, dated a bit, and looked in on my mom. In my free time, I gamed or hung out with my friends. My sedentary lifestyle and questionable culinary choices led to a gentle decline in my physique. The lean and muscular build I maintained throughout high school gave way to what could generously be described as a dadbod ... or bachelor-bod if you will.

And that was my life.

Saturday, January 3rd, 2014

How much gaming is too much? It was an important scientific question and one that I was going to answer come hell or high water. The shop was unusually quiet over the Christmas holidays, so I had taken a few days off to relax and play way more Call of Duty than was healthy. I had made a grievous error in my planning, however, and underestimated the volume of snacks that I would consume during my festival of gaming so, just before noon, I pulled up my track pants, found a clean pair of socks and set out for the store to re-stock.

The apartment complex that I lived in was typical for my area—a two story cinderblock rectangle with a central staircase, two apartments on either side of the stairs, four per floor and eight in total. The apartments at the front of the building had one larger bedroom while those at the back had two smaller ones. Other than that, they were identical. Luxury they were not.

As I left my place, I noticed that the door of the two-bedroom apartment across the way was propped open by a moving box. I was not surprised as the previous tenants had departed somewhat precipitously more than a month earlier. They were a young couple who seemed to fight and fuck with equal enthusiasm. Over time, the fighting seemed to win out more and more until the police were called one too many times and their tenancy came to an abrupt end.

As I started down the stairs, I saw a boy in his early teens making his way up with a box of kitchen utensils. He was tall and lean, his body all bones and awkward angles as is so often the case for boys that age. He had a mop of sandy blonde hair and kept his eyes down as he went up the stairs.

"Morning," I said with a friendly smile. He didn't reply and kept moving. As I headed towards the parking lot, I saw what I guessed to be his mother unloading an older model Honda with a small rental trailer full of boxes and furniture.

"Hey there," I said as I walked up. "You must be my new neighbour, I'm JT."

The woman looked up at me and I was struck by two things simultaneously. First, she looked exhausted—the kind of weary that comes from living with years of stress and worry. The kind that burrows into your bones and seeps out when you sweat. The kind that dulls your dreams and leeches the joy from your life.

Second, she was beautiful. Not pretty, not cute, not even hot. She was beautiful. I would have described her as the woman of my dreams but that would have been a lie. I wasn't creative enough to imagine someone with eyes that big and piercingly blue, hair that blonde, cheeks that soft (although slightly flushed with exertion), lips that full ... well, you get the idea. And the hints of her figure under her baggy moving clothes were enough to make my heart race.

She was easily the most beautiful woman I had ever met, and I felt my breath catch in my throat as she made eye contact with me without saying a word. After an awkward pause I said, "here, let me help you with those," as I picked up a box from the trailer and started up the stairs.

As I helped her with her boxes a third thing became apparent. Jen, her name as I came to find out, was almost comically out of my league. I think I have a pretty realistic understanding of who I am and what I have to offer the world. I meet two of the three stipulations of the 6-6-6 rule (the lone exception being that I was never going to make a six-figure income, at least not the way that I ran the shop) with enough residual muscles from my football playing days to still be considered handsome, at least in the right light. Women like Jen, however, were just not interested in 29-year-old mechanics no matter how charming we might be.

Regardless, I was now regretting my decision not to change into a fresh set of clothes before leaving the house—my day-old gaming sweats, and t-shirt were probably not the best choice for making a good first impression. But frankly, I could have been wearing a tailored tux and a top hat and she still would have been way out of my league, so I wasn't overly concerned.

I couldn't help but notice that Jen wasn't wearing a wedding ring and that there didn't seem to be any sign of a partner's things amongst the boxes and furniture. Perfect, she was destined to be mine I said to myself sarcastically as I brought her last box up the stairs. All I needed was to lose 30 pounds, upgrade my wardrobe and housing, get a college degree, and get a better paying job. Oh, and convince Jen to fall in love with me.

I saw a PS3 in one of the moving boxes and mentioned to Jen's son Jason that I had just gotten the new PS4 and invited him to stop by to play if he wanted. This seemed to break through his taciturn shell, and he said, with a hint of enthusiasm, that he might stop by later.

When we finished, I wished Jen and Jason a good day and headed on to the store to restock my gaming provisions. In the snack aisle, I took a surreptitious look at my belly and, for a moment, considered forgoing the bag of Doritos I had planned to get for something healthier. The moment passed, however, and I grabbed a big bag of Doritos and a Coke, and I headed home. Maybe dating beautiful women was out of reach for a guy like me, but beautiful snacking was not.

Later that evening, I was surprised to hear a knock on the door. It turned out that the lure of the PS4 was stronger than Jason's social anxiety, so I invited him in to play. It also turned out that he was pretty good at Call of Duty ... but I still kicked his ass. Wouldn't want him to think that I would go easy on him just because he was a kid.

What I thought would be a one-time visit to game soon became a regular occurrence. When I got home from work or on the weekends Jason would stop by to see if I was free to play. Sunday mornings Jen would take him to church but once they got home it was back to gaming.

Occasionally Jen would stop by to make sure that Jason wasn't being too much of a nuisance, but I didn't see her all that much. She seemed to have her own worries and the last thing I wanted to do was to add to them. I liked Jason, though, and enjoyed our companionable silence as we gamed.

Sunday, January 19th, 2014

The day of the Conference Championships had arrived.

Playoff football was a big deal for my friends and me. Not as big as college game days in the fall but big enough to warrant a gathering and the inevitable bantering that ensued. I invited my best friends Ted and Sue over to watch the games with me while luxuriating on my low-end sofa and watching my overly large and decidedly high-end TV.

Ted and Sue were, at first glance, a strange pair. Ted was a literal mountain of a man standing well over six foot five inches and weighing 300+ pounds. He was the starting left tackle on my high school football team and the biggest factor in our success. Unfortunately, Ted learned in college that he had the back of a much smaller and lighter man so after several painful surgeries he gave up on his dreams of playing in the pros. He did, however, get a degree before moving home to become the largest accountant in the entire state of Georgia. He was also a kind, thoughtful and generous friend.

In contrast, his wife Sue was a pixie of a woman standing barely 5 feet tall and weighing less than Ted's left leg. I had dated Sue for two years into my senior year of high school. If I am entirely honest, she was my first and to-date only love. Sadly, although Sue loved (and loves) me deeply it was never a romantic love, more like what one feels for their little brother. It also became painfully clear to me, and to everyone else with functioning eyes in their head, that Ted and Sue were madly in love with each other and that my relationship with Sue was the only thing keeping them apart.

They both loved me too much to act on what they felt, but their misery at being apart was palpable. They never did anything inappropriate or said anything overt and when we hung out together, they stayed as far apart as they could trying not to even make eye contact. Despite their good intentions, their feelings for each other couldn't help but slip through the cracks.

This love triangle continued for a few months until I couldn't stand it anymore. I broke up with Sue and called Ted while crying my heart out to tell him to ask her out, or I would come over and kick his oversized butt. If she wasn't going to be mine, she better be his.

The next few months were rough for me. I was happy for Ted and Sue, but a combination of jealousy and loneliness ate at me, making it impossible to be around them and to share in their joy. We stopped hanging out entirely and I spent all my spare time at the shop, working on the Shelby which was close to being done. We might have permanently drifted apart if not for my father's passing.

The moment they heard what had happened to my dad they drove out to the acreage and didn't leave my side until after the funeral. They were my rocks, my islands of sanity and love in a sea of devastation. We have been inseparable ever since.

Sue had done her best over the years to find me someone who would love me the way that I loved her. She was a shockingly effective wingwoman and many nights out at the local bar ended with her convincing a pretty young thing to take a chance on me. No one had ever replaced her in my heart, though, and for the longest time I thought that no one ever would. I had made my peace with it. The two best people I knew loved my deeply—they just loved each other more.

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Part way through the first game, I heard a knock on the door. Jason was wondering if we could game together, but I explained to him about the sanctity of the playoffs and invited him in to watch with us instead. I introduced him to Ted and Sue and fetched him a soda from the kitchen. Sue looked over to Jason and asked "so, are you a big football fan?"

Jason closed his eyes and visibly deflated. "Not really," he said. "My dad was a quarterback in high school and dreamed that I would follow in his footsteps. He never really forgave me for being terrible at it. In fact, that's why he left my mom."

"I'm sure that that wasn't the reason," Sue said with a kindly smile, feeling terrible for inadvertently broaching such a painful subject.

"Well, the night he left," Jason continued, "he yelled at my mom calling her a cheating whore because any son of his would be great at football not an uncoordinated r-word. Then he took the car and our savings and left."