The first Jeff heard of Jumpz Trampoline Sports was from his son’s friend’s birthday party e-vite, forwarded to him by his ex-wife Liz, who appended one word—yours—due to the weekend it fell on. He didn’t think about Jumpz again until Liz mentioned it, making a face from behind the wheel, when she pulled up to drop off Ben.

“Well, good luck because those places are total germ pits. And you have to buy their socks.”

Buy socks? “I’ll make him wear a mask.” Five-year-old Ben was so good about wearing a mask, that tiny scrap of fabric printed with Ninja Turtles. It could break your heart.

“I don’t mean Covid, but yeah, obviously mask.” Liz flipped down the rearview to check her teeth, a reflexive move that hadn’t changed in the four years since their divorce. “Google ‘vomit in a ball pit.’”

He didn’t do that, obviously. Liz had been nutty about germs even before the pandemic. That night he and Ben watched Bluey, worked on the Lego spaceship, and made noodles with two “sauces” (jarred tomato, butter and cheese). Then bath and teeth and books and bed.

After Ben was asleep Jeff got a Stella and scrolled his phone in front of the hockey game. He opened a few work emails, got the gist, and then marked them Unread. He tapped on Hinge and for a while did a few requisite waves and replies. On the birthday e-vite there was a link for the Jumpz waiver, but when he clicked it a junky all-bolded four screener unspooled and froze when he tried to “sign” it. Jeff fell asleep in the last few minutes of the game, phone on his stomach.

Jumpz was in Brookfield, about 20 minutes from where they lived in Danbury. Slightly late, Jeff hurried them into the thunderous lobby, holding Ben’s hand and the gift bag. Noise and lights assaulted them.

“Daddy,” Ben whispered, pulling back.

“It’s okay, bud. Let’s find Aidan and the party.” Which was so much harder than you’d think. The place was the size of an indoor mega-arena, with multitudes of hyper kids taken into curtained-off areas filled with foam objects. Once he navigated wrist bracelets and personal item cubbies—shoes off!—they were rejected on entry by the teenage gate agent who merely pointed to his feet and Benny’s feet.

Sweaty and fuming, Jeff led Ben back to the ticket area to purchase two pairs of non-skid neon-blue acrylic socks, $4.99 each. Ben recoiled: “I don’t want those on my feet.” It took some finagling, but Jeff convinced him to wear the things over his own socks. Finally they were allowed, both double-socked, into a dark bouncy room where big kids were pegging dodge balls at each other. Christ. He gripped Ben’s hand and wobbled through the middle, slapping away a ball. The next room was a little easier. Kids flopped on giant cubes and bounced off cushioned walls.

“Which one’s Aidan? Is that him?” Ben pressed in so close against his leg he nearly capsized them both. “Do you see anyone from your—”

“Zara! There’s Zara and Bradley from my school!”

Hugely relieved, Jeff bounce-walked over to the kids and soon Ben was making some tentative jumps. With the two girls was a mom who had a halo of staticky hair and a nauseated expression. She and Jeff greeted each other in the resigned way of parents at parties. Over the next hour he followed her and their combined three from one bouncing room to another. At some point there was a hiatus for cake and boxes of milk. Jeff wiped Ben’s hands and made small talk with the moms. Nine times out of ten he was the only guy, but he was used to it. He and Liz had divorced shortly after Ben’s first birthday, which was unusual, he knew—or was reminded, every time someone’s eyebrows went right up when they heard. But Jeff couldn’t remember parent life as anything other than solo.

It was in the second to last room, which featured giant slides pouring down onto concentric trampolines, where things got interesting. Here you slid down, launched up and attempted to land on foam shelves sticking out of the walls at various heights. Ben hung back, which Jeff understood. Both speed and scale increased toward the end of the experience. He handed Ben his phone and wallet and bear-climbed up to the top of a slide. He gave Ben a wave and then—whoosh—flopped onto his ass and went for it. He hit the tramp mat and flung up higher than he’d expected. A mid-air moment stretched out in his arc from mat to shelf—there was all this time to really feel, in his legs and belly and chest, the sensation of lofting.

It wasn’t an affair that ended their marriage. Neither he nor Liz cheated, though sometimes Jeff wished they had, because it would be so much easier to explain. People always assumed an affair. The real story was simpler, and sadder: they hadn’t been right for each other. So many mean little arguments, from the start—so many shrugs, whatevers, unanswered texts, silent restaurant meals. Then Liz got pregnant less than six months after the wedding. When Jeff called his mother with the news, his mother, her first response had been “oh, boy.” When Ben arrived he and Liz agreed on his total baby perfection, and they’d staved off the inevitable for a little while, until about the time Ben started on solid food. After that, they mediated fairly smoothly through the most depressing series of events: Jeff moving out, an even-split custody, buying a second set of nursery furnishings for his condo in Danbury. Still-married friends thought he and Liz were the model divorced parents, because they did things like take Ben trick-or-treating together or posed all three for preschool family picture day. The usual joke was some version of “You guys get along better than we do, ha ha, maybe we should try this arrangement.” Ha ha.

Jeff thudded sideways onto a foam ledge alongside a barrage of middle schoolers doing the same. He rose up on an elbow. “Ben, did you see that?!” Ben gave him a happy wave, then twirled around on one foot. Jeff sat up, dizzied by elation. He’d fucking flown.

A few days later when Jeff was at work he received an email in his personal in-box and would have ignored it except for the subject line: FWD: Aidan—Jumpz!!! He clicked it open and scrolled past Aidan’s mom thanking the whole class for a blah blah blah and down to the clip video from the party package. Sound off, he watched the whole four minutes and forty seconds. Twice. Grainy jerky smash cuts of kids he vaguely recognized. No Ben, though that wasn’t a surprise. Jeff knew there was no chance the videographer would have filmed, or included, his own amazing flight on that last obstacle, but he wished it were so. He watched the bodies bounce and fling and slide again, and again, with a strange longing.

The past few months had been rough. His father had suffered a stroke earlier in the year, and the restructure of the company where he worked meant he now reported to a micromanaging asshole. His friends urged him to come out more often; they were always trying to set him up. Liz had moved in with her boyfriend AJ last year. AJ was a good guy, with a teenage daughter of his own, and they both treated Ben with sweetness.

Jeff might have tried to make a return trip to Jumpz sooner, but then norovirus swept through the first grade. He and Ben emerged on the other side, weakened, down a few pounds, and thoroughly sick of every flavor of Pedialyte. His sister texted that their father’s neuropathy seemed worse and could he get out to Ohio in the next month? Also Jeff got put on a project with a woman he’d been out with twice and slept with once—and then ghosted.

It wasn’t until November that he could bring up Jumpz to Benny. They were at Chipotle in Newtown on a Friday.

“Remember that place we went for, uh, your friend’s birthday?”

“Yes,” Ben said confidently. “The candy store. And! The—Adam P put it in his nose, the, the—”

“No, bud, I meant the jumpy place. It’s real close to us, so I—”

“Icing in his nose. Both parts of the nose holes, Daddy.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Then he went like this.” Ben tipped his own little head back and brought it forward, dramatically snorting air across their chips and guacamole.

Jeff laughed. “Gross.”

They ate for a while in companionable silence, Ben swinging his legs back and forth. Then Jeff circled back to Jumpz. He reminded Benny about all the cool stuff to do there, the bouncy rooms and the colorful lights and remember the one with the big balls? And big slippy wall? And those awesome socks? Ben nodded to each.

“So it turns out you can go there at other times, beside birthday parties.”

“Uh huh.”

“And we can get tickets to go together.”

“Uh huh.”

“Yeah? What do you think? Should we go there tomorrow, and get some jumping in?”

Ben chewed and swallowed a bite of quesadilla. “No.”

No, he didn’t want to go to Jumpz. Not that weekend. Not the next one either, and not on a weeknight. He didn’t like the noise. He didn’t like the scary bathroom (a stupid flashing disco light and a loud flush), or the big kids pushing, or the way the foam smelled. He didn’t like the way the socks felt over his regular socks. Totally, I get it. But bud! We can just wear one pair of socks. Those cool Jumpz socks. No. It wasn’t until Benny screwed up his little face and asked, “Dad, do we have to?” that Jeff caught himself and shut the fuck up. “Of course not, bud. We don’t have to.”

In October, he restarted his gym membership, on pause since the beginning of the year. That’s all this is, he told himself. He needed to get back into working out. Whatever feelings he’d had mid-air in some kid trampoline place could only mean it was time to get his ass off the couch. And so, dutifully, he checked in three times a week. Hit the free weights, and went once to a cycle class that had him raining down sweat onto a black plastic mat beneath the bike. This wasn’t a bad idea. He’d certainly prefer a little more ease in buttoning up his work pants in the morning.

But eventually his visits dwindled back down. Going to the gym wasn’t doing it.

So one Sunday afternoon—Liz had Ben—Jeff did what he’d been thinking about for a ridiculous amount of time, and took himself to Jumpz. That is, he’d driven by the place plenty. He’d even pulled into the parking lot a few times. But that Sunday he went in, kept his gaze low, and got in a line for tickets behind about ninety kids and their parents. At the register the spiel he’d planned—yeah I’m thinking of holding my son’s next birthday party here, so can I—went awry when the girl behind the counter interrupted him and called out for a manager, shunting him to the side. Another bored teen showed up, this one wearing a stretchy Jumpz headband, stuck a clipboard in his hands and began fast-talking the party packages. Jeff stumbled through answers to how many kids would be attending and whether he wanted the add-on light saber experience. As he was led back through the foyer and steered to the exit, he got his shit together and asked if he could do a test run.

“What?”

“Is it possible to go through the zones”—by now he knew the Jumpz parlance—“to check it out before signing up?”

“We don’t… uh. You want to—”

“Yeah.” Jeff straightened up. “My son’s a little on the scared side”—sorry, Ben!!—“so if I could just check it out real quick. Before I book the party.”

This caused consternation, a radio query to a different manager, and a bunch of standing around. Finally a senior manager showed up, an older woman. She gave Jeff a once-over and then two options: she could walk him through one area of the gym (no photos allowed) or he could purchase a one-time discounted wrist band and go through the zones like a real customer. The latter, please. Echoing “like a real customer” with as much dignity possible.

Fifteen minutes later he was socked up, wrist banded, and set free into the first zone. For the next forty-five minutes, Jumpz was his.

He launched himself up and through a hoop, the second highest available. He figured out how to bank-shot his own body against the rim of a foam wall to land on an opposite soft platform. There was a diving board room he hadn’t even seen before and he went ham: Greg Louganis into a foam pit, front flips and back twists and—why not—a full-on belly flop. That last earned him a cheer from the other kids in the room. God, it was fun. No, not fun—it was one of the best things he’d ever done.

Sure, there were moments when self-consciousness blunted some of the delight, mostly when he had to wait in line with eight or ten kids, all of them two heads shorter. What worked in those moments was to take on the familiar attitude of a patient parent just doing what parents do. After all, no one asked him to point out his kid. No one challenged his right to be there, and if he was visibly more enthusiastic than the few other adults using the equipment, so what?

The day’s highlight came when Jeff tossed a basketball up in a perfect slow-gliding crescent so that a girl of about twelve, a mid-air magician, could catch and dunk it like Jordan. When she made the shot, he flung up both arms and then high-fived another dad.

Regular life became charged with potential. Coming out of the dentist, he leaped down a short three-step flight, landing softly on the lobby floor. While brushing his teeth he experimented with standing on one leg, testing balance on either side. Ben helped him slide over a short bookcase so they could practice handstands against the living room wall. They got red-faced and light-headed, kicking up over and over again. Ben loved when Jeff would pick him up from a handstand and walk around the apartment pretending that he didn’t notice his son was upside down. Want to put a hat on, Ben? Hey, how about a bite of this apple?

He couldn’t wait to get back to Jumpz.

One night he clicked edit on his Hinge profile and added “wizard on a tramp mat” and then immediately deleted. “Not afraid to go wild at”—no. “Jumps higher than my kid on the trampoline”—true, but wordy, and still dumb. Instead he clicked over to the Q&A section and answered Best place for a third date? with “trampoline park??!,” extra punctuation included. Maybe it would make him seem carefree. Also you were supposed to reference “active” lifestyle elements, to signal you were in decent shape, everyone knew that. But did he really want to take a Hinge date to Jumpz? Jeff tried to picture it. All he could see was Liz, this expression she made, a kind of exaggerated slow nod, when she wanted to signal judgy acceptance tinged with amusement. It was all too possible to match with someone on Hinge who knew Liz—the Danbury area dating pool was small, and Liz was very social.

Jeff became a lurker on pages devoted to tramp parks and YouTubers who filmed incredible stunts. He found a short but enjoyable AMA from someone who worked at a SkyZone. People asked what were the gnarliest injuries and worst things he’d seen (torn quad, feces on a mat). No one asked what Jeff needed to know so he opened a new sub and typed “Is it weird for me (30M) to go to a trampoline place alone?” Over the next few days, answers trickled in:

Do you bro! Get the training in no excuses.

No you want to go jump on a trampoline you go do that lol! Just don’t knockout some little kid lol!

Eh, kind of. Ngl. You should get some friends who do other stuff not weird things that are meant for the children.

The responses didn’t clarify much. Technically, a single adult was allowed at Jumpz. But that didn’t mean it wasn’t strange.

He did a little more digging and found a place near Darien called XTREME. Billed as an ultrafit ninja warrior bootcamp, the website looked like Jumpz but with angry-faced fitness gurus instead of kids. He registered for a class called Push 4 Progress and knew it was a mistake five minutes in. First of all, they were supposed to keep sneakers on (what?) and the instructor was a bodybuilder. Eminem on the speakers, motivational signs everywhere: things like Pain is just weakness leaving the body. They had to do all these lunges and burpees and jump squats before they were even allowed to go on the obstacles and even then they weren’t left alone. “Hustle, ninja!” the instructor yelled at Jeff suspended from the rings. “What are you waiting for?” But Jeff didn’t want to hustle his way across the rings obstacle. He wanted to swing and sway. On his way out a buff guy in a tiny tank top said any posts tagged XTREMEFITFAM would get ten percent off a next visit.

Winter dragged on and on. Ben started hockey lessons and began bugging both him and Liz for a pet, any kind of pet. “Except not in a box,” he would specify. A goldfish or hamster would not qualify. Jeff caught pinkeye which was annoying and embarrassing. He bailed on a couple Hinge dates for no reason. Just wasn’t feeling it.

A dozen times a week he thought about going back to Jumpz. After work. On weekends. With Ben, without Ben. Every time, qualms overcame him—the fear of looking stupid, the fear of looking weird. The fear of why he was even thinking about any of it.

What was this? So he’d had fun swinging through the air, so what? People had fun doing lots of stuff they didn’t just go do again. Right? Jeff dialed in focus at work. He FaceTimed his father more often. He drove Ben all over the county for hockey scrimmages and discovered there was nothing sweeter than all these little guys careening around rinks in pads and helmets. But still, he seethed. He yearned.

So, fuck it, there was one particularly long Sunday, sleeting and grey. Liz had Ben and Jeff was lonely and before he knew it he was in the car and on his way to Jumpz. He stood in line to buy one bracelet. He’d brought the socks, and when his timed entry arrived he kept his head up and gaze steady even when the teenage clerk did a double-take, scanning him in: Just you?

Yes. Just me.

He was on his way to a triumph, a break-through! This could be part of his life! Six zones into the course and he was sweaty and throat-sore and wild with happiness. In line for his first run of diving boards, he felt a tug on the arm of his t-shirt.

“Jeff?”

The word, in a woman’s voice, full of amazed recognition, sank through his belly like a heavy stone.

“Oh my god, I thought that was you!”

It was Antoinette, Oliver’s mom. Oliver was four inches taller than Benny and had the kind of handsome smirky face Jeff just knew would end up on some cocky popular asshole who wouldn’t give the time of day to a sensitive cautious boy like Ben. But Oliver didn’t know that yet, so he and Ben had play dates. Jeff thought he could hear Oliver’s obnoxious bray from over by a diving board. Antoinette was familiar with both Liz and Jeff from doing drop off and pickup, and she was pretty tight with Liz.

Now her eyes left Jeff but only briefly, to roam around the chaotic room full of brightly colored foam and plastic, the boinging kids. “Where’s Ben? I didn’t know he knew Ivy too!”

There were a hundred things he could have said but he chose the truth. Maybe he wanted to see what would happen to Antoinette’s expression, both of them in their Jumpz socks, bouncing lightly, inadvertently, there amid the clamor. Maybe he was feeling too good after an hour of jumping and twisting. Fuck it.

“By yourself?”

Next to him, Liz kept repeating what Antoinette had told her. They were in the pediatrician’s waiting room. Ben’s current ear infection was either the fourth or the fifth of the winter, and the prospect of tubes was growing stronger.

Jeff made a tzzt sound: Ben’s within earshot. Liz responded with a one-shoulder shrug: he’s too absorbed with those MagnaTiles to care.

“But why would you go by yourself?” Liz did in fact lower her voice but he suspected it was because of the other couple nearby, with their infant in a car seat.

“What do you care?”

“I mean, was something wrong?”

“There’s nothing wrong with—”

“Were you like… having an issue? Toni said it was super awkward.”

“I can’t believe this person has nothing better to do.”

“She thought I should know!”

“Oh, what the fuck.” A little louder.

“Jeff.”

“Just forget it. You’re not involved.” Jeff’s heart revved.

“Well, it’s weird.” Liz opened the purse on her lap and rummaged around. Jeff’s heart rate revved. “Frankly it’s not like I love hearing from Toni either, about this sighting of my ex—”

“Oh my god.”

“—Some sort of erratic behavior that—”

“Liz, I swear if you don’t shut up…”

A nurse poked her head around the corner and called the three of them into the exam room.

They continued the fight later that evening by phone, where Jeff shouted that he was allowed to do whatever the fuck he wanted and wasn’t it Antoinette who had forwarded all those BS pandemic “cures” about using Listerine to kill the virus before you swallowed it, so who cared what that dipshit had to say, and Liz countered that whatever he did reflected on Ben and thus was her concern and did he want Ben to be some social pariah with the weird dad, and Jeff scoffed but silently took the hit, and then (as he knew she would) Liz brought it back to her favorite subject: why Jeff hadn’t found someone yet, serious girlfriend or wife, wasn’t even trying. More and more she brought this up, in joking ways and for real. She claimed it was for Ben. That he deserved a real family on both sides of his life, with stability and love and siblings. Didn’t Jeff want that? For their son? Was he going to stay in this limbo forever, like he and Ben were two bros clinging to a frat house? He hung up on her, of course. Threw his phone and cracked its screen.

A dark time followed. Jeff couldn’t help replaying all that Liz had said, in random moments throughout the day, mental sound bites that darted through his gut. Also Antoinette’s face, there on the mat: incredulous, you’re kidding! He hated himself for caring. He felt like a fool. He spent a lot of time on the couch after Ben fell asleep, staying up late and drinking more, got into a stupid argument with his sister.

Why couldn’t somebody, okay, him, just do what he wanted to do? Why was that so hard? How come there wasn’t more room to be different? Was this what it was like to be gay?

In the morning he was embarrassed to have had that thought, but in the long nights he couldn’t help himself.

Jeff stayed away from Jumpz. He avoided Route 19 when driving Ben to soccer scrimmage at Indoor Sports, a nightmare freezing-cold mega-arena that smelled like Doritos and vomit, where Ben cowered on the sideline when he wasn’t goofing off on the field and once skinned both knees and hands on the vicious fake-turf field. He unsubbed from all the Reddit threads and the YouTube channels with names like Ultimate Trampoline Tricks!!!

One day during this time a random guy at work stopped by his desk. “You all right, man?”

Jeff was startled. He couldn’t remember this person’s name. “Yeah, uh—what’s up?”

“No, it’s all good. It’s just, from the hall you looked like you were sort of…” The guy then made this face, dead-eyed and drop-featured.

Jeff forced a laugh. “Tired, I guess.” The guy gave him a knowing nod and went on his way. Jeff waited another minute and then packed up his stuff and left. At 2:40 pm on a Tuesday.

Then one night, pretty late, he was coming back from the bathroom, a little drunk. For whatever reason he took a running start and went to high-jump over the couch’s back, aiming to flop down on its cushions. But he slipped in his socks on the wood floor and went down hard on his side. Blinding pops in his right shoulder and chest. He’d also bitten his tongue, so his mouth flooded with coppery blood. Jeff could barely get to his knees. He gasped in pain, short dog-like barks.

Oh shit. Oh shit oh shit oh shit. Ben was asleep. It was about 1 am. Maybe it would be okay. Using one hand Jeff crawled into the living room. He had his right arm folded against his chest. He tried to extend it but the pain was so bad it made him cry. Okay. Okay, what now?

He found his phone and held it in his left hand, thinking. The key thing: don’t wake up Ben. Could he wait? Get to a doctor in the morning? Jeff was cold and sweating. No. He said it out loud: No, can’t wait.

So he called Liz, but she didn’t answer. He sent a text: call me. Nothing. Minutes passed while he tried to figure out who else. It hurt so fucking bad but he somehow still felt ashamed to call someone else, like a friend. What would he say? Eventually he thought to try AJ, Liz’s boyfriend. Maybe he’d still be up. It took a while to find the number.

“Hello?”

The sound of AJ’s voice, the fact that he’d picked up, made Jeff woozy with gratitude. He explained the situation as quickly as he could. Could AJ come over, stay with Ben, while he went to the ER?

Big exhale. “Yeah. Fuck. Dude, yeah of course. It’s just… not sure I can drive right now, to be honest.” AJ had taken a 20 mg edible about an hour ago. But he could try it! The roads would be empty anyway and—

“No, don’t do that.” Jeff’s voice wobbled. “Don’t worry about it.”

“Let me go get Liz up.”

“No!” Jeff shouted. “I’m okay, I’ll figure it out.”

Hang on, AJ said. He had an idea. A long while passed, Jeff pressing the phone to the side of his face. He was feeling light-headed, even sleepy. His arm and shoulder were weirdly numb now anyway. Maybe he would just—

“Okay, we’re good.” AJ was back. “Can you text me the address again?” He’d gone next door to his neighbor’s, a good buddy, who could give him a ride to Jeff’s place.

By dawn, Jeff was back home, one arm in a sling and the other cradling a bag of Dunkin’ Donuts. He’d broken his clavicle and his wrist, and had three stitches put into the side of his tongue. His car was still in the hospital parking lot—he barely remembered driving himself there—and he’d taken a cab ride just now that cost eighty dollars. But Ben had slept through it all. AJ was passed out on the couch, under a throw blanket. For a while Jeff sat there at his feet, high on meds, eating donut holes one by one as the sun came into the windows.

The weather changed from cold and muddy to windy and muddy. The groundskeeper for the condo raked away old plantings and there was the lawn again, where Ben loved to play. Something about the sight of that grass, and the puffs of spring air, and Ben’s new haircut—Liz took him to an actual barber and those sharp edges on his little man, my god—pulled Jeff out of his funk. He brought Ben over to Liz’s mom’s 65^th birthday party with a bouquet of flowers, for which Liz crossed the room and squeezed his hand (the one not immobilized by a sling). One night after that he met up with a buddy from school and they flirted with some girls at the bar and Jeff put one of their numbers in his phone.

Jumpz had receded, finally. Until May, when Ben was invited to Ainsley Park’s 6^th birthday party. After clicking the link Jeff’s breathing quickened even before the red-and-blue page loaded. He was about to click Can’t Attend when Ben whizzed past him in the kitchen. On a whim, Jeff called out and was caught off guard by Ben’s immediate shout: yes.

“It’s going to be at Jumpz, bud.”

“I know.” Ben skidded back into the room on his slippered feet. “Ainsley has a bearded dragon. And it eats… it eats…”

“Bugs? Poop?”

Any surprise mention of poop was guaranteed to derail a conversation into fall-down laughing, more gross-out talk, and a session of tickling and wrestling. Only several minutes later was Jeff able to bring the topic back to the party invite and when he did, Ben’s total lack of concern about Jumpz frankly stunned him.

“You sure? Didn’t you not like going there?”

Ben shrugged, now focusing on pulling a long thread out of the cuff of his pajama top.

“Because it was a little scary?”

“Daddy.” That sharp gaze flashed up. “That was a long ago.”

Three weeks later it was already into the low 70s on the first weekend in June. Jeff turned into the down slope of the parking lot: Joann Fabrics, Stop-Rite Supermarket, and Jumpz. He switched off Kidz Bop and tested himself, probing around inwardly for an emotion. Ben slid out of the car—that was his new thing, unbuckling himself and opening the door, giving Jeff a heart attack every time—and jogged nonchalantly to the doors, wrapped gift under an arm.

Inside, Jeff was distracted by getting Ben set up with his wristband, with first finding Ben, that is, who’d raced off to join a pile of shrieking classmates. He nodded to parents he recognized and barely had time to register that Ben had already scooted through the entrance, no looking back, before finding himself alone, a pair of small damp socks in hand.

“See you in there?”

He turned to find two moms on the bench changing out of their shoes. One was Aditi, whose Josh had played indoor soccer with Ben. The other he couldn’t place. And it was that one who had a funny little smile when she said “Because I hear you’re a big fan of this place.”

Jeff tried to find a good-natured vibe. “No, I—”

“Maybe you can show the kids some tricks, huh?” The woman elbowed Aditi, who had no idea.

“Next time,” Jeff said. He held up his hand in its new air cast, green with white velcro strips, a graduation from the sling. Both women winced, expressed a decent amount of sympathy, and he made his escape.

Outside—he had to be outside, it was a gorgeous Saturday in June for Christ’s sake—Jeff walked up and back, past the other stores. He scraped gum off his shoe against a concrete wheel stop. After a while he ended up in the front seat of his car, windows down.

Liz had texted. Did he want to do the parent-teacher conference or should she just go. As he began to type back—now able to hold the phone more normally—the three dots appeared.

I’m at a baby shower for one of the Ianniello twins. Three skull emojis followed.

Again, as he typed—I can go—Liz interrupted with another text.

Remember them?

Jeff paused, trying to figure out how this might relate to Ben. Of course he remembered the Ianniellos. Sheila was once suspended for setting a fire in the trunk of the assistant principal’s car, and Jen had had an older boyfriend in New Jersey who sold illegal pets like pythons and baby monkeys. He responded with a few snake emojis. Liz LOLed. He was about to switch over to the ESPN app when the screen changed: Liz calling.

“Uh, hey. What’s up?”

“Oh my fucking god.” She was muffled, hand over the phone. “There’s legit an open bar here. Like, people are drinking Stoli and guava juice. And tequila and shit!”

“Doesn’t sound too bad.” Liz herself sounded like she’d had some Stoli.

“Well, Sheila’s already cried and stormed out, and then their mom told everyone on our side of the table that Sheila got caught cheating and blew up her marriage—wait a sec—yeah, hi! Okay I will!—” Jeff listened to the change in her voice, upbeat, girly, the one he knew from how she talked with her girlfriends. Then her tone dropped again, gossipy, close to his ear. “Anyway, it is a scene here.”

“I bet.”

Through the windshield, in the middle of the parking lot, two women with short grey hair and matching windbreakers operated a drone using a remote control. It took tentative flight and then picked up speed, moving diagonally into the windy blue.

For a few minutes, he and Liz talked about the women at the shower they both knew from high school. She updated him on families with names that were as familiar as an old song: the Grazianos, the Petersons, the Costas. Who had divorced, retired, remarried, moved away. Jeff cranked his seat back and listened. Sometimes he filled in on an anecdote and Liz would say, oh my god that’s right. Their shared history went way back, and used to be a source of hot irritation—like, would he ever be free of these people, these same stories? Not as long as he lived here, and so did Liz, and of course the two of them would be forever connected. 

Well, there were worse things. Jeff rolled his shoulder gently, imagining the newly knitted bones in his clavicle. The two older women playing with that drone were having a great time, whooping and jogging underneath its orbit.

When Liz finally ran out of gossip, he broke in to tell her to say thanks, again, to AJ. For coming over and spending the night on his couch. She didn’t respond to that, though.

Instead, she apologized. It was shitty, what she’d said to him that time. About not getting married. She hadn’t meant it. He was the best dad to their little guy and in the future she would mind her own fucking business.

Jeff held his breath. Tears pressed into the corners of his eyes but didn’t come out. “Thanks,” he managed. The drone was out of sight, somewhere above the windshield. The two women gazed up in awe, held still.

“Wait,” he told Liz. Before she went back to doing shots with the moms, he wanted to tell her about Ben just cruising into Jumpz, no bigs. Not one hesitation, all confidence and cool. He began to describe it and Liz had to have every detail, her voice melty with love. They stayed on the phone that way a little longer, while Jeff propped his wrist in its cast against the steering wheel. When the drone reappeared, glinting in the sun, his own heart lifted. The women cheered in unison, pointing up at the sky.