my sweetheart #2: this wanderer is not lost

July 2088. Jordan Graham is 28, Milo and Felix are 9. Colette Marin is 31.

previously: Jordan doesn’t want to rock the boat?

The big wedding had been postponed, so the entire staff at Coolidge House Country Inn got a surprise two weeks off. Why did that make Jordan feel like an animal whose cage had been left open? The boys were on summer vacation and he had an idea. He also had a nagging suspicion that two weeks would not be enough to scratch this itch. But it was what he had, so he posed the wild idea to their mom.

 
“I want to take the boys backpacking in Canada.”

And Colette replied, with a patronizing chuckle, “Good luck with that.”

The boys were nine, and their mother was a snobby, opinionated, control freak. But she didn’t say no. He was surprised, but also not. She did this sometimes, when she knew her razor sharp attitude had run away from her for too long, she offered a little peace treaty, to say, “Remember that time I let you take the boys backpacking in Canada? Remember that?” 

And she would remind him of that small grace for the rest of his life.

Jordan didn’t invite Colette on this trip, and she didn’t ask to tag along. The backwoods was not a place for a woman like her. Maybe they would take a family vacation someday, but he suspected he would be bored by the kind of vacation Colette dreamed of—sunning herself on a cruise ship while getting her nails done. Jordan wanted the opposite of all that. He wanted to unplug himself completely, and he wanted that for his boys, too. 





So he took them to the mountains. And the trip was quite wonderful. 

Jordan just wanted to be left to be, to exist, to parent his boys the way he saw fit. And out here, he could do that. He could breathe, and their boyish trio was a happy one. He would take them fishing and hiking and teach them to start a fire. He would fill their minds with adventure and their bellies with nothing but hot dogs and potato chips.

It really lit a spark in him. The yearning to wander without an endpoint. To go where money and status didn’t matter. To have no expectations and disappoint no one. 




To catch fire in their bellies and dance with danger, even. 

Don’t tell their mom.

But it was all good. Jordan took care of everything and nobody got hurt.

He liked to imagine the boys would take something positive from this experience. 

Jordan knew that he wasn’t what Colette hoped for in a partner and father of her children. Without a doubt, he had disappointed her over the years. He’d been terrified to become a father of twins at nineteen. And it had been overwhelming when the boys both went through their terrible toddler years simultaneously. 

But now, Jordan loved fatherhood. He never wanted to be a deadbeat dad, but what does fatherhood need to look like? Certainly, there were more options available than the conventional family setup they’d all been sold. He dreamed of what else their lives could look like. He didn’t want to write it all off because he got some chick pregnant when he was nineteen.  

But he was also content enough, sometimes. Don’t rock the boat, he told himself. But you didn’t need to cause much more than a ripple to rock Colette’s boat. 

The next day rained nonstop, which Colette would have hated. She would have hated the mud and bugs and fire. She would have hated how everyone here smelled of smoke or fish guts or five-day-old sweat. She actually would have loved the lodge, for a quick minute, since there was a hot tub here, but she soon would have grown bored. 

But these boys weren’t bored and they didn’t intend to let a little rain spoil their adventures.





They hiked through the wet brush and mud. They followed the trail even when it was difficult to decipher. And they found what they were searching for. “Careful on the rocks, not too close to the edge.”

“Wow,” they all said in chorus. 

“Look at what we did,” Jordan told his boys. “Just imagine everything we can do.”

“Can we tell Mom?”

“Yeah, tell your mom.”

She would have her opinion about it, for sure, but for now, Jordan didn’t spend an ounce of worry on that. 

The boys accomplished this easily, and Jordan couldn’t wait to see what more they could do. This trail wasn’t very long or challenging, but some would be. Jordan dreamed of more. He wanted to climb mountains. He wanted to see the world and really live in it, and that kind of lifestyle required sacrifices that Colette didn’t want to entertain. And no, he wasn’t asking her permission. They weren’t married, and they weren’t going to be, either. But they were a family, sort of. He couldn’t say that her opinion didn’t matter at all. 

The rain began again and they ate chips for dinner in their tents. It had been worth every little inconvenience.

—

They began their drive back home to Wisconsin. When the boys weren’t arguing in the back seat, they slept or watched their videos quietly. Jordan had so much time to think. He loved the relaxing rumble of the road beneath him.

They drove through mountains and valleys, forests and fields. Little by little, they lost the natural world on their way back to the suburbs, green to gray. The air changed, smelling of car exhaust and pavement, filing back into the tidy streets and box houses in rows, yellow, brown, beige, blue. Cage after cage with people inside. 

Jordan felt worse than ever, coming back to a life he didn’t want and couldn’t escape. This trip lit a spark in him, but it seemed to be growing into an uncontrollable fire that wanted to burn down his entire life. Why were they here? A week wasn’t enough. A month wouldn’t be enough. He didn’t agree to this, nobody ever asked him. He didn’t want to be here. 

Get back in the truck, he wanted to say to his boys. We have to go. This isn’t our life. This isn’t right. 

But Colette would sooner skin him alive before she let him take those boys. They’d had that fight before, had it a million times. 

—

“My boys! How did you get even bigger since you were gone?”

Colette opened her arms to two slimy, sweaty, stinky children. 

“Oh, are you still wet? And you smell like campfire. Hugs later. Get straight in the shower.”

The boys minded their mother and ran upstairs.



“Hygiene, Jordan. My God, their skin could rot right off. But you kept them alive, it looks like.”

“We had a blast,” Jordan said. “I would have stayed there forever.”

“Well, you can’t, so welcome back to reality.”

“Can’t? Who says? You?” 

“Says everybody! People don’t live like that.” 

“Some people do.” Jordan shrugged. “We could homeschool them, unschool them. That’s a thing people do.”

“Not normal people. I worked so hard to get them into that school. They have a middle grade to college prep curriculum. What about their friends, their sports, their future?”

“What about seeing the world and living on our own terms?”

“Eww. Why?”

“To break out of this box.”



“The box isn’t the problem. We just need a bigger box. A nicer box. I want the boys to have their own bedrooms. I want a master bathroom suite with a soaking tub. I want a home office that isn’t also my dining room.”

“I don’t want to buy a house.”

“Right, you want to live like a hobo.” She cackled.

That was a jab. She hated how little ambition he had. He imagined if she had a genie’s magic lamp, she would have wished him into an entirely different man, maybe a corporate CEO with a six-figure salary. But fantasy wasn’t reality and her baby daddy was tragically subpar for her tastes. 

Although it never stopped her from enjoying the sex. He used to enjoy it, too, and he often wondered if it was the only positive thing about their relationship. Now they hadn’t been together in months. He stopped trying to win her favor, it was like pulling blood out of stone. He could get by without sweeping romantic declarations, but would a little basic kindness kill her? A compliment when warranted, some encouragement, a hug? It was no mystery that she didn’t love him, but he often wondered if she actively hated him. She wanted him here to help when the boys were little, but now that they were almost ten, she probably wished he would just leave. 

The sex alone was probably never enough. What about because they had a history together? What about staying together for the boys? Could you balance the pros and cons like a mathematical equation and come up with an answer? 

Why are you here? This isn’t your life. 

She sighed heavily and shook her head once she was done laughing at him. “My boys won’t be homeschooled and they won’t live in a travel van. You know the campfire smell doesn’t come out of their hair for days. It really does make me retch. And when you’re done cleaning up this pile, you need a shower, too. Don’t even think about sneaking into my bed for a nap. And, actually, don’t sit on the couch, either.”

He once told himself that he was content enough, often enough, to not want to rock the boat. But often he was also exhausted by all the ways he didn’t measure up for her. 

So maybe he wasn’t content enough, often enough, after all. 

—