Dylan arrived in the driveway of his dad's house a little after nine o'clock on Friday night, after eight hours of driving from Arizona with a four-year-old. Talk about hell.

His dad came out first, going right to the back door of his Subaru and getting Talia out of her car seat. She forgot what she had been whining about and screamed, "Gwampa!" and he held her close and kissed her hair over and over again. Then his dad brought Talia over to his side of the car and gave him a side hug, right as Ellie walked out the front door.

Dylan felt himself suck in a quick breath as he saw her, because she looked as beautiful as ever, even with her mom-worthy outfit. A thousand frozen memories of her zoomed into his vision like pictures on a rotating film reel, and before he could settle on one to hone in on, she came over and hugged him, and he held onto her for a good minute, smelling her hair, scented like sea salts. He could tell it was the same shampoo she'd always used, officially scented of "sea minerals," but the two of them always abbreviated "minerals" and called it "sea min. shampoo" as in semen shampoo. Dylan's mom used to roll her eyes and try not to smile when they did that, and they'd laugh until their stomachs hurt, because at fourteen everything sex-related was humorous. Even now, he laughed, remembering a younger Ellie saying, "Smell my semen shampoo!"

His dad handed Talia to Ellie, and Ellie and Talia kissed before Talia asked her, "Where's Avery?"

Brushing Talia's hair out of her face, Ellie told her, "In bed, sweetheart. His bedtime is at seven-thirty."

Talia crinkled her nose at the mention of bedtime. "I don't have a bedtime."

Her words stung slightly, if only because they exhibited one of many of Dylan's failures as a single dad: he'd given Talia no structure in her life. Some nights she went to bed at eight o'clock, others at midnight. Some nights they ate chicken breast and sweet potatoes, others cereal and chocolate bars. Some nights they read, others they zoned out to an animated DVD while Dylan tried to hold his shit together.

He shrugged it off, and Ellie gave him a sympathetic look, a look that seemed to say things would be better for the two of them from that point onward. Their lives would be structured, their struggles would diminish. He could only hope it was true.

Ellie put Talia down, and the four of them began to walk inside, leaving all of his and Talia's shit out in the car. Right when Dylan entered the house, he spotted the picture of him and Ellie in their green graduation gowns, from the night of their high school graduation ceremony. He hated that night, and he hated that his dad was displaying that picture right there in the front entrance. Looking away, he walked in another direction.

The house felt warm and smelled like firewood and pine oil, and as soon as Dylan looked toward the kitchen, he felt his stomach rumble. On cue, Talia said, "I'm hungry!"

Smacking her palm to her forehead, Ellie said, "Fudgsicles! I never went to the grocery store today. And we have like...nothing in the fridge. You came on the worst day; it was the last day of the Fall Book Fair, and I didn't get home until really late. I mean, I'm glad you came, of course, I'm just... sorry." By the tone of her voice, you might have thought she killed a puppy.

"Fudgsicles?" Dylan repeated. "Talia's heard the 'fuck' word before. And you know not to repeat it, right Angel Hair?"

Talia smiled and nodded.

"And don't worry Elle, we'll go to the store tomorrow." Dylan went to the kitchen, opened the pantry to view its contents, and shouted, "There's lots in here. Crackers, popcorn, fruit leather...we're set."

His dad and Ellie had two guest rooms at their house, so after Talia had eaten her fair share of crackers, his dad went to tuck her in for the night. Dylan made his way onto the back deck, where he would finally get to have a cigarette. Since he refused to smoke in the car with Talia because of the second-hand smoke, he'd been craving one for hours.

Ellie followed him out, shutting the screen door behind them; her close presence brought him a kind of comfort he hadn't felt in a long time. She came and stood next to him. "Still doing that?"

"Hey, it's better than heroin."

"Don't let any of the moms I hang out with see you doing that." She sounded suddenly serious. "They think smoking cigarettes is like...criminal and immoral."

"And why would I care what those moms think of me?" Ellie had been talking shit about those moms since Avery had started preschool, so Dylan didn't understand why impressing them seemed so important to her.

"For me?"

He sighed. "Fine. Sure." Maybe he didn't need to understand it. Ellie had always been a mystery to him. "I don't think I'll be hanging out with your mom friends much, anyway. At least, not anywhere I'm allowed to smoke. No smoking on the soccer fields, right?"

The moonlight illuminated Ellie's smile. "Right." After stealing his cigarette from him, she took a drag like it was the most pleasurable thing ever, closing her eyes and inhaling deeply.

He laughed. "Hypocrite."

After his cigarette had burned to the filter, he and Ellie went back inside, where his dad had made them popcorn. Ellie put on some new comedy he hadn't heard of. Since she seemed surprised he hadn't heard of it, he reminded her he hadn't been able to afford cable or go to the movies for five years. Then the three of them watched it without much talking, and he felt glad nobody wanted to talk because he felt tired, too tired to even register what was going on. He couldn't recall the name of the movie, what its plot up to that point had entailed, or the name of the main actor he supposedly should've known more about, and he didn't even care. Sleep was winning him over, and he pulled the blanket Ellie had given him up to his chin as his dad told the two of them he was heading to bed. 

***

The sunlight in the living room woke Dylan up around six o' clock, so he drew the curtains to keep it from waking up Ellie, who had slept on the adjacent couch. The sight reminded him of when the two of them were teenagers, when their parents wouldn't let them sleep in the same room, so they'd have to sleep on living room couches. The memory gave him nostalgia, and he wanted to do something childish like hit Elle with a pillow, but she was sleeping so deeply that he resisted the urge.

Not long after, he heard Talia and went to see her, finding Avery had joined her in the guest room. After hugging Avery and telling the two of them to dress themselves in some of Avery's jackets so they could play outside, he brewed a pot of coffee. The smell brought his dad to the kitchen. After handing him a mug, Dylan poured his own, telling his dad to be quiet and leading him onto the back deck where he'd sent the kids to play.

As it was the end of September, the air felt crisp and chilly, but the Colorado sun felt close and intense at this elevation, and Dylan was content with its heat on his back and a steaming cup of coffee in his hands. Seeing how well Talia and Avery were playing made him even more content; it was like they had just seen each other the day before and not nine months prior.

After the caffeine woke him up, he told his dad, "Let's let Ellie sleep in. Why don't we go to the store?"

"We're just gonna wake her up when we go inside."

"We don't have to go inside," he said. "I'm fit as a fiddle." The prospect of wearing his track pants, hoodie, and beanie to the store didn't scare him; he had no one to impress. The kids were donning pajamas and jackets with bedhead, but he didn't care how they looked, either.

"Alright," his dad agreed. "Let me sneak inside and put on some jeans and get my wallet."

Dylan nodded.

When his dad came out a few minutes later, he looked like a model. Even in a casual sweatshirt, worn jeans and boots, and a baseball cap. Even after a divorce, the hell Dylan put him through, and raising another kid. Dylan didn't used to notice it, not until one day sophomore year when one of the girls in his marine biology class had said, "I saw you getting dropped off this morning, Dylan. Your dad's a total dilf."

"Ew," he'd said back, before turning to Ellie. "You don't think that, do you?"

"Uh-uh," she'd said adamantly. Fucking liar.

With his dad looking suave and him looking like a teenager who'd just rolled out of bed, they got into his dad's brand-new Lexus. The kids sat in the back, complaining about their hunger the whole way to the store.

At the store, they headed straight to the café to get Avery and Talia muffins, and then Dylan put Talia in the shopping cart and told Avery he could walk. They began to make their rounds through the aisles.

"I never go shopping anymore," his dad said, probably since Ellie handled all the grocery shopping. "I'm not even sure what to get."

"Worst case, Ellie has to come back here for everything we forget," Dylan said, spotting the Lucky Charms and grabbing a box.

"She won't like those."

"Well, she can suck it." He mouthed the last two words so the kids wouldn't see, and his dad fake frowned at him before smiling.

Still, Dylan decided to make an effort to pick out healthier foods, knowing Ellie was trying to lead a healthier lifestyle, to not let Avery live off of instant ramen and Bagel Bites like they had done when they were kids, back when parents had treated their children like free-range chickens. Unfortunately, Dylan didn't know enough about healthy eating to know what to get. Picking out some random cheeses, meats, pastas, and breads, along with a shit ton of fruits and veggies (some he'd never before dared to try), he hoped his grocery haul would meet Ellie's expectations. It felt nice not having to keep count of all the prices in his head, not having a budget he feared going over. His dad wasn't being helpful at all, messing around on his phone, letting him pick out everything, so if Ellie found fault with the groceries, Dylan could always blame him.

"So, is that it?" Dylan asked as they reached the end of the last aisle, agitated by his dad's distractedness. His dad didn't answer. "Dad!"

Handing Dylan his wallet, he said, "Here. I need to go make a phone call. Work stuff." Then he walked away.

Dylan narrowed his eyes after his dad before deciding to let it go; he couldn't really complain. He and Talia were getting free food. And Talia and Avery had acted surprisingly well-behaved throughout the duration of the grocery trip, even though their breakfast of chocolate chip muffins should have sent them into an uncontrollable sugar high. The evidence of their well-balanced meals covered their faces, and Dylan smiled at them.

In the checkout line, the bagger girl looked around Dylan's age, and with her cinnamon hot red hair, it appeared she wanted to hold on to some of her teen spirit. Noticing Talia, she asked, "How old his she?"

"This is my daughter, Talia," he said. "She's four."

The girl smiled at Talia, then turned to Avery, saying, "You look familiar. Do you go to Lake End?"

Dylan's little brother nodded.

"My son goes there, too."

"Do you like it?" Dylan asked her, wondering if she felt the same way about all the gossiping rich-ass parents at the school as Ellie did.

"Oh." The girl looked down, sighing. "I already had to have a meeting with the principal, the vice principal, the counselor, and the teacher."

"What for?"

"My son jumped some kid the first week."

Dylan didn't know how to respond.

"They're just trying to help, I know, but I keep on telling them that when he gets angry, they need to just let him get it all out in a room by himself. They say that won't work. But they know he used to watch Daddy beat Mommy up, that Daddy used to beat him up too. He doesn't know how to control his anger yet, but they're expecting him to just... do it. I don't know what's gonna happen now, if he doesn't get better."

Wow. This girl was opening herself up to him, in a checkout line at the grocery store, and he didn't even know her. "I'm sorry," he said, touching her hand as she bagged the pineapple. Nothing like hearing someone else's horrible problems to put your own into perspective.

First looking at his hand touching hers, she looked back up into his eyes with a look that showed she knew his pity wasn't faked, and she liked it. "It's fine. We make it to tomorrow."

"Are you okay? What ha—Where's his dad?"

"One hundred sixty two, sixteen," the cashier said, obviously ready to break up their discussion. He'd probably heard this girl's sob story before.

But the girl didn't care. "We got into safe housing here, at first, and now we're on our own. We're lucky. Except even with assistance, I have to work two jobs, so I don't really have much time for him. That's not very lucky."

Dylan swiped his dad's debit card, put in the pin (the month and day of Dylan's birth, as it had been for years), and then got that ridiculous question: Is this amount okay? Yes or No?

This girl was giving him way too much information. She was a walking red flag.

No.

But he could sympathize, so much. Just yesterday, he'd been a single working dad with not enough time to give to Talia. But he'd been offered help and he'd taken it, and he imagined their lives would be much better from then onward.

He pressed "yes" and told her, "Well, I'll be coming here every week. Let me know if I can help, in any way." Then, he looked into her eyes before turning to his daughter. "Can you say goodbye, Talia?"

"Bye!" Talia waved with both hands.

"I forgot!" the bagger said. "Do you two want stickers?"

Talia and Avery shook their heads yes.

He almost said he'd forgotten something, too, because he hadn't gotten her name, but then he noticed she wore a nametag—Leah. "Goodbye, Leah. I'm Dylan, by the way. I really do hope we see you."

Her smile seemed to say she hoped so, too.