Page 29 of On the Ropes
Tabitha
Iwoke to the sounds of rustling and a shovel striking concrete. Blinking one eye open, I groaned at the bright sun streaming through the bedroom curtains, which were flimsy and Phillies-themed.
I covered my eyes with my hand, briefly disoriented. That dizzy, where the hell am I sensation was as familiar as the homesickness I battled on the road. Just a consequence of my perpetual motion.
I inhaled slowly, stretching my arms overhead. I was in South Philly, in Aunt Linda’s house. And Dean Knox-Morelli was my neighbor.
My disorientation shifted to curiosity. After seeing him yesterday morning, I’d distracted myself with work all afternoon, following up on potential leads, editing my last few videos, answering stray emails. Even still, I’d spent an awful lot of time gazing dreamily out the window, thinking about the breadth of those shoulders of his. Those intense eyes and that quicksilver smile that transformed his face from ruggedly handsome to charming.
He’d been like that in school too—a little shy, cards close to his chest. But whenever I could get Dean to smile, it would make my day.
The staccato rap-rap-rap of that shovel came again. Then a rough voice yelled out a “Hey, how ya doin’, Dean.”
Yawning, I crawled out from under the covers and glanced in the gaudy, gold-plated mirror to pull my snarled hair into a bun on top of my head. I was bra-less, in a tank top, but you couldn’t see my nipples and my teeth were food-free, which felt like a win to me. I walked to the window without the air-conditioning unit and peeled back the curtain, searching for the source of that sound. I shoved open the window and pushed the screen wide, propping my elbows on the ledge.
“Good morning, Mr. Machine,” I called down.
Dean looked up from the middle of the abandoned lot, squinting against the sun. He wore a sleeveless black shirt and running shorts, revealing every inch of his boxer arms and thick thighs, muscles rippling and flexing.
“Did I wake you?” he asked. My toes curled against the shag carpeting. That voice.
“Not at all,” I lied. “Are you doing what I think you’re doing?”
He appeared slightly sheepish. “I don’t really have a plan. But between my pain-in-the-ass best friend and you—”
“A proud pain in the ass, thank you,” I said.
His lips twitched. “Thought I’d see what we’re working with, at least.”
I arched an eyebrow. “And what’s the verdict?”
He indicated the mountain of garbage behind him. “Not great.”
I had a fuller view from up here, so I could agree with his initial assessment. “I know I’ve been gone a bit, but I’m guessing the city isn’t investing in sanitation and trash collection, right?”
He nodded. “Or street maintenance.”
I sighed, dropping more heavily onto my elbows. My hometown had a reputation for being, literally, trashy. It was unfair, horribly untrue, and painted whole communities of people as not caring about their surroundings. But having an accumulation of trash happened all the time in a city with an underfunded sanitation department and narrow, three-hundred-year-old streets that complicated pickups and sweepings. People dumped their trash illegally because there was often no place—and no one—to take it.
“Well,” I called down, “if there’s any common refrain I hear when I interview folks doing community work like this, it’s that you’ve got to start with the first small step even if you don’t know what you’re doing.”
Dean picked up an old Wawa hoagie wrapper with a wry expression and dropped it neatly into a trash bag. “Like this?”
I grinned. “Smart-ass. Have you had coffee yet, neighbor?”
He shook his head.
“Give me a sec.” I slammed the window closed, tossed on a bra, and brushed my teeth, skipping down the stairs to turn on Linda’s ancient coffee pot. While it hissed and brewed, I pulled on a newly-clean tank top and a pair of shorts from the pile of laundry I’d left folded on the couch. My aunt’s house was disorienting for a couple of reasons. I was used to long-term hotel stays or short-term rentals, places where the majority of items I lived around I had only a shallow connection to.
This wasn’t the house I grew up in, but we were a tight-knit family so everything here felt personal—old pictures, dusty Christmas wreaths, faded towels that Alexis and I would wrap around ourselves after running through sprinklers as kids.
For the first time, my beloved hiker’s pack looked sad and lonely, propped against Linda’s bookshelf. But owning too many things made me feel as burdened and uncomfortable as the concept of settling down. Alexis and I spent our teenage years witnessing my mother’s transformation into a manipulative, image-obsessed social climber. Less than six months after divorcing my father, she married the man she’d been seeing behind my dad’s back for a very long time.
She’d been eager to leave us for the life she wanted but complained our dad had never given her: a giant, ostentatious house in the wealthy suburbs outside the city; a husband with multiple degrees and a private practice; two children—my stepbrothers—whom she loved and doted on in a way she never did with me and my sister.
I grabbed two chipped white mugs from the cabinet and filled them with fresh coffee, cream, and sugar. Balancing them both in one arm, I pushed open the door and stepped barefoot into the humid air. The stoop was warm beneath my bare skin as I settled down on the top step and carefully placed the mugs below me.
Dean was currently occupied with two of the kids who lived across the street excitedly showing him something on their phones. They stared up at him with sheer glee while his brow was pinched, body stiff and a little awkward. I propped my chin in my hand and smiled when our eyes met, the connection fleeting.
