Breathe, Annie, Breathe
Page 40

I slowly return my keys to my pocket and gesture for him to lead us to his Jeep. “What did you want to do today?”
“Well, it’s Shuffleboard Sunday.”
“Shuffleboard Sunday? Really?” I ask as he opens my door for me.
“I needed a sport that starts with S. To match Sunday, you know?”
I climb up; he shuts the door behind me and jogs to the driver’s side.
“And you could only come up with shuffleboard?”
He throws me a wicked smile. “I figured you’d prefer that to skydiving or Sumo Wrestling Sunday.”
“What is Sumo Wrestling Sunday?”
“We’d dress up in those sumo wrestling suits that would make us look real fat. And then we’d wrestle.”
“Oh good Lord,” I mutter. “Shuffleboard Sunday sounds just fine.”
“Good. I had no idea where I was gonna get sumo wrestling suits.”
I give him a look.
“We can always do Synchronized Swimming Sunday if you want, but I don’t know how we’d declare a winner.”
“Would you just drive, Jeremiah?” I snap, working to hold my laughter inside.
He chuckles, starts the ignition, and turns out onto the highway. The scorching summer sun blazes through the Jeep windows; my thighs stick to the duct tape holding the seat together. We sing along to the radio as we dip up and down the hills near Spring Hill. He takes me to, I kid you not, his grandparents’ old folks’ home.
“Why are we here?” I blurt.
“This is the only place I know with a shuffleboard court.”
I accidentally snort, and once the laughter starts, I can’t stop. And then he’s laughing too. I laugh so hard my stomach hurts. The elderly people loitering in the courtyard give us confused looks.
We laugh until an elderly man with a walker appears. He’s wearing a gray pageboy cap and has more wrinkles than a Shar-Pei.
“Jeremiah Brown.”
“Hey, PopPop.”
PopPop reaches up to pat his grandson’s face, gingerly touching the greenish bruise. “You been icing this, young man?”
“Yes, sir.”
Seemingly satisfied with that answer, his grandfather then turns his attention to me. “You haven’t visited in two weeks and now you show up with a date?”
“This isn’t a date. It’s a competition. I’m fixin’ to beat Annie at shuffleboard.”
“You’re using your PopPop for his club membership?” PopPop gives his grandson a shifty look.
“He thinks this is an exclusive club,” Jeremiah whispers to me. “But it’s an old folks’ home.”
PopPop grabs his grandson’s ear and shakes it.
“Ow! Stop it!” Jeremiah says.
“Why do you put up with this clown?” PopPop grabs my elbow. “Come sit with me.”
Jeremiah rescues me from his grandfather’s clutches. “No, no. Don’t grab Annie like that.”
“If you’re not dating her, I will.”
“You better not let Granny hear you say that,” Jeremiah warns. “Where is she anyway?”
“She went to play bingo over at the church.”
“I reckon you couldn’t go, huh? A sinner like you would spontaneously combust the minute he walks inside,” Jeremiah says, and PopPop grabs his ear again.
“I’ll have you thrown out of my resort,” PopPop says.
“It’s an old folks’ home!”
“PopPop, can you keep score for us?” I interrupt, in case they were planning on arguing all afternoon, and the next thing I know, I’m beating Jeremiah at shuffleboard because his grandfather keeps awarding me extra points.
“You get ten points just for being pretty,” he says.
“Yessss,” I say, pumping my fist.
Jeremiah rolls his eyes. “Stop hitting on her, PopPop. She’s not your type.”
“And what’s her type?”
“Somebody under seventy.”
“I’m cutting you out of my will, boy.”
I love their banter. It kind of makes me jealous, to be honest. My mother’s parents live in Mississippi and I don’t see them much. And I never knew my dad’s parents.
I use my broom-paddle thing to push the disk toward the numbered triangle. It stops on the number eight. I hop up and down, smiling.
Jeremiah’s turn. He slides the next disk and it lands outside the triangle. “Daggownnit!”
“Don’t use that foul language of yours around a young lady,” PopPop says. “That’s negative five points.”