“Yes. You are. I just thought that you wouldn’t want to do that forever. You’re wasting your talents. Those notes you made were excellent. I wanted to get your thoughts since I was going to ask you about the position soon enough.”
“Of course you did,” she huffed like he’d had it in mind the entire time to trick her. “I don’t have a Marketing Degree. I’m not qualified.”
“That doesn’t matter. My grandfather never set foot inside a college and somehow, he managed to start this entire thing. Why would you need one to give your opinion and ideas about the products we put out there. You use them daily. Ones just like them. You have ideas about what they should do and how they should function and what they should look like. You’re not thinking about it from a market perspective. You’re not trying to sell people things or ram notions of what they should have down their throat. You reviewed those appliances like someone who would actually use them and that’s what I want. A real, honest opinion.”
“My opinions don’t matter. They’re flawed.”
“You should give yourself a little more credit than that. The position comes with a big pay raise. You’re smart, talented, and a quick learner.”
“Tell me about your grandpa.” Lexi’s voice was soft when she changed the subject. Her eyes glistened with sincerity, but she was also wary. She knew that it was a bittersweet topic for him. “I- I mean, if you want to. Since we’re here- at the cabin you said that he bought. I think you said that.” She glanced over her shoulder at the small log cabin surrounded by a copse of dense trees. The driveway to it from the road was long and winding. They were completely remote. The lake was round and small, with a few even smaller rocky islands dotting its surface. There was only one other cabin on the lake and it was miles away, out of sight. It honestly felt like they were the only people in the world at the moment, like they were part of the earth itself.
It wasn’t that Curtis didn’t like to talk about his grandfather. It hurt, like a scab being ripped off a not yet healed wound, like peeling an orange and accidentally squirting yourself in the eye or getting kicked straight in the spleen. The latter was probably the most apt description. It also felt good to talk about him, which was a massive contradiction. The pleasure was all mixed up wrong with the pain, which was why he usually avoided doing it for anything other than cursory conversation.
“My grandpa…” he let the words linger in the air. He knew she was deflecting, but he was going to let her, for the moment. “I don’t know where to begin. He was the best man I knew. Smart, but not in the textbook way. He could build absolutely anything. He bought this cabin, half finished, and worked on it himself, for him and my grandma, so that they’d have a place to escape to, once they had a little money and things started getting busy. It’s been in the family for years. They didn’t even have any children at the time. My dad used the cabin. His two sisters as well. Now, my aunts just come every couple of years. My dad and I try and get up here at least once a year for a fishing trip. I come more often. I don’t mind being by myself.”
He stared out at the rippling surface of the lake. The breeze was picking up. It cooled the beads of sweat on his forehead and the ones rolling down the back of his neck. Lexi sighed softly beside him. He didn’t look at her. She didn’t look at him. They both faced forward, staring at the lake, the great beauty and keeper of secrets.
“Your grandma is still alive?”
“She is. She talks about my grandfather all the time. They had this love story that’s pretty much unrivaled. They were married for over half a century. My parents are really in love too. Everyone around me seems to be. My sister. My aunts. My mom’s brother is still married to his wife. My cousins are either married or engaged or getting there. I pretty much gave up on having that for myself. Maybe I wanted it too badly. Maybe because I grew up watching it, experiencing it, maybe because I’m too familiar with it. Maybe that’s the reason I’m not built for it. I never met anyone who could just see me without all the bullshit background noise.”
Lexi cleared her throat roughly. “Maybe you’re trying too hard. Or not hard enough.”
“Maybe I never met anyone who wanted to be married to me and not the billions of dollars behind my family name.”