Justin

I sat on the edge of a countertop, a wooden drawer resting across my thigh as I sanded away its imperfections. I’d already finished scraping the finish off the desk. Once I was done with these final little bits, I’d wipe everything down and then apply a fresh coat of stain.

Cam was running the shop today so that I could get this done. You really didn’t ever need two people on premises to run such a little place, but I started to miss him whenever we got too practical about it. Today was no different, but at least I had Flynn to keep me entertained. That was why I was perched awkwardly on the edge of the countertop. He was playing on the gymnastics rings again, and I could see him through the window.

He had about two moves and neither of them were very impressive, but let’s be real, the only part of the show I cared about was the flex of his biceps and the sweat sticking his shirt to his chest. I’d expected him to mess around on them for a few minutes, get bored, and wander off, but he was out there long enough that I started to get thirsty. I went inside, got a glass of cold water for myself, and brought one back out for Flynn.

“Thanks!” Flynn said as he dropped to the ground. He accepted the glass and took a deep gulp. “Unlimited ice water is amazing. I can’t believe you just have that in your house.”

“I’ll make a note to appreciate it more,” I said. “You like… gymnastics?”

“Oh, yeah, I guess,” Flynn said, swinging one of the rings self-consciously. “I took classes as a kid for a tiny bit. You know, Cam said that the thing about nostalgia is that you don’t really miss the thing, you just miss that time in your life, but I dunno. I definitely don’t miss being in foster care, and gymnastics still seems like a bit of fun to me.”

“Well, you can still do gymnastics, right?”

“Yeah, maybe? I guess I miss kid gymnastics, and they wouldn’t let me do that. Adults take shit so seriously.”

“I’m sure there are beginner classes. How seriously you took it would be up to you.”

“I guess. Either way, not exactly in my budget right now. But that’s not a problem, because—” He bounced off, sloshing water over his hand, and retrieved a nearby plank of wood from the ground. “I can just make my own gymnastics. This could be, like, a balance bar if I had something to prop it on.”

That sounded extremely dangerous. Also—”Is that from the fence?”

A pause. “It might have been laying next to a spot where a plank was missing from the fence.” Another pause, as we stared at one another in silence. “We should put it back. Do you have nails?”

“I’ll get my drill.”

I hadn’t intended for Flynn to be involved, but he trailed me back to the shed and only stopped at the door because the plank he was still carrying wouldn’t easily fit through the doorway. I grabbed my drill and a pack of screws and he led the way back to where he’d found the plank.

In truth, I’d already known where the gap was. That plank had been barely hanging on for weeks. I just got lazy with it because it felt like every time I fixed one loose plank, there’d be another within a few days. Whoever owned this house before us had fixed the fence with the tiniest, shittiest, most rustable nails. If I had any sense, I’d have replaced them all in one swoop years ago, but instead I just did them in small batches as the whole thing slowly fell apart.

Flynn held the plank in place while I drove in the first two screws. When I went to finish at the bottom, he asked. “Can I try?”

“Sure,” I said as I handed over screw and drill. 

I could tell from the lack of confidence in his grip and the number of times he adjusted the position of the screw that he’d never done this before. He finally pressed the trigger and drove the screw home in awkward, jerky bursts. 

“Want to do another?” I asked. “The top of that plank there’s loose as well.”

“Yeah!” he said and grabbed another screw from the box, which was quite possibly the most enthusiastic anyone had ever been to fix a fence. After he’d secured that one back in place, he started wobbling palings to search for any more in need of mending.

“I’ll leave you to that, then,” I said, and headed back towards the shed to continue my work.

Well, that’d been the plan, anyway, but as I watched Flynn slowly move along the fence, quickly gaining confidence as he secured each loose paling, I found myself calling Cam instead.

“We’re not charging that boy rent,” I said in lieu of a greeting.

Cam laughed. “Hello to you too. Why have we decided that?”

“He wants to take gymnastics but he can’t afford classes.”

“Did he ask for more off the rent?”

“He didn’t ask, no.”

“Ah, let me guess. You’ve been watching him play on those rings again and you’re thinking we might get more benefit from Flynn in a gymnastics class than we will a bit of extra money in our pockets.”

I moved closer to the window so that I could keep Flynn in my sights as he continued moving along the fenceline, checking for loose planks. “That’s just close enough to the truth to make me feel like a pervert, so thanks for that. But no. I know it’s fair to pay rent for the place that you live in, but I just don’t want to take anything from him. Not even something that he rightfully owes us.”

“I’ll admit, I’m not exactly looking forward to shaking him down either, but don’t you think there’s a kind of dignity in paying your own way? He worked hard for his independence.”

I grunted. “Fine. Some, if you want—if he wants—but if he wants to take a gymnastics class, I’m not going to be any part of the reason he can’t. I’m just not going to—”

“Okay,” Cam said, voice gentling, before I could work myself up. “We’ll let him settle in a bit before we bring it up. I’ll also ask around about adult gymnastics classes. I know a guy who knows a guy who works at the community centre. They seem to have classes for everything there.”

“Mmhm,” I said, too distracted by watching Flynn to give a proper response. He seemed to have run into a problem. Drill wasn’t drilling. He put the screw in place and attempted to drive it in, didn’t work. He pulled it away and looked at it, confused, as he made it whir in place.

“Got to go,” I told Cam as Flynn started heading for the shed, a half-grimace frown fixed firmly on his face. “I need to teach a man how to drill.”

“Phrasing!” Cam chided before hanging up.

I met Flynn at the door, took the drill from him as he said “I think I broke—”, pressed the button on the side, and handed it back.

He blinked at it, bemused.

“You put it in reverse. That unscrews the screws.”

“Ohhh,” Flynn said. He pressed the button a few times. “Ah, yeah. I was fiddling with that. But, uh, maybe I should stop playing with it before I break it for real.”

“You’re not playing with it. You’re fixing the fence.”

“Right, right,” he said with a nod that lacked certainty. “But this thing,” he poked the end of the drill, “fell out before, and it’s kinda scrubby back there, so I might lose it.”

“Phillips drill bit,” I informed him. “You might, or you might strip it. There are spares in the case if you do. Just make sure you use the right size.”

He considered that for a long moment before he finally said, in a very worried tone that suggested he felt I wasn’t quite understanding him, “I’m going to break something.”

I wanted to break something just to prove I didn’t care, but somehow I doubted it would quite get the right message across if I started smashing things up.

“It doesn’t matter if you do, okay? I told you. Cam’s the only thing I care about. Anything else is replaceable. If you don’t want to finish fixing the fence, fine, but that just means I’ll have to do it later.”

“Nah, nah, I’ll do it,” Flynn said, visibly drawing himself up. “Just got all in my head about it when I thought I broke it, y’know? And I know, what you just said—I know. But sometimes it feels like the more shits all together, the more it all starts to fall apart.”

“Are we talking about drills falling apart, or…?”

Flynn laughed. “Don’t worry about it, I’m just being silly. I’ll finish the fence. It’s pretty fun, actually. You just—” He pressed the trigger, making the drill whir. “It’s cool. Satisfying.” He whirred the drill again. “Anyway. Fence. I’ll get back to it.”

He did, and when his work took him beyond the point where I could get an angle on him through the window, I went back to mine properly. By the time he returned with the drill and a slightly emptier box of fence screws, I was just preparing to stain the desk.

“All done,” Flynn announced. “I was thinking. Maybe this could be my thing? And like, the lawns, if you show me how to use the mower. Whatever yard stuff you need me to do, I guess. Everything inside, I’d just—I’d actually break something, you know? And it would be something really expensive, something Cam loved, and I know you say stuff is stuff and it’s all right, but that’d be hurting Cam anyway, in a way.”

“Suits me. Cam likes fussing about the housework, so you’re wise not to step in there.”

“Maybe I could even do a little gardening, since—oh, wait.” He pulled out his phone and glanced at the screen. “Ah, shit. I’ve got to—nope, I’ve actually missed my bus. Fuck.”

“I’ll give you a ride.”

“Nah, I couldn’t. It’s way far out. Or—wait, actually, could you drop me at the shopping centre? I’m not sure when exactly the bus stops there, but it weaves all through the suburbs first, so I bet we could beat it there if we hurry.”

“Let’s go.”

If I hadn’t reminded him, Flynn would have forgotten his wallet and his shoes. I dropped him off at the bus stop in front of the shopping centre and he dashed off with a quick, “Thanks, bye!”

He was still waiting at the bus stop by the time I’d parked and walked back over.

“Oh. Hey,” he said when he saw me.

I sat down next to him on the long metal bus stop bench. “What’s the verdict? Did we miss it?”

“I checked the times. It was either two minutes early and got here before I did, or it’s about four minutes late and counting. Late’s way more common, but every now and then they do come early.”

“Well, we’ll see. If you’ve missed it, I’ll drive you.”

“Ah, nah, I couldn’t ask you to do that. It’s a long way. I’m on with Connor this afternoon, so it’s not a big deal. It’d be my first time being late to this job, if you can believe that.”

“Why wouldn’t I believe it?”

Flynn shrugged. “Just the way that I am, y’know? Head in the clouds. They had a million different polite ways of saying that in my report cards. Easily distracted, doesn’t apply himself, performance does not reflect ability. Bleh. But with this job, it was always easy, because it was where I wanted to be. It was always the whole thing I was waiting for. Guess I can’t rely on that any more.”

“I’d apologise, but making you not hate being in your own home seems like a good thing.”

“Oh, yeah. For sure. And I’m grateful. I hope it doesn’t seem like I’m not. It’s just, this whole thing—nice people in a nice house. It’s foster care, right? That’s the only thing that’s ever been like that for me. It never lasted.”

“Sometimes the good things do last. That’s my experience. It’s hard to believe it until you live it, though.”

“Unfortunately,” he said, flashing me a tired grin. “Talk is cheap. I had foster parents who’d ask me to call them Mum and Dad, then I’d be moved on somewhere else two weeks later. Reality’s what’s right in front of you, and the future never is. It keeps on moving forward, even when you feel like you’re stuck in place. But like, in your head, you know?”

“Yeah, I know.”

Flynn snorted. “Do you? I don’t know what the fuck I’m saying. I should probably leave the metaphors or whatever that was to the poets. Oh—” he hopped to his feet, “there’s my bus. Thanks, man. Really.”

And just like that, he was off with a bounce in his step and a smile on his face like he hadn’t just bared his soul to me.