Free Forgive Me by Joshua Corin

popularized this nickname people called me.”
    “What was it?”
    “You know the movie
Back to the Future
? You know Michael J. Fox’s father, the way his hair is all flat and dark and his face is, like, seventy-five percent nose, and he’s just a real doofus, and I guess I looked like that…I know I looked like that…and one day in eighth grade, in gym class—because of course in gym class—Walker called me ‘McFly.’ You know, as in ‘hey, McFly!’ and everybody laughed and the nickname stuck for the next five years of my life.”
    “Oh, Ross…”
    “In ninth grade—this was the worst thing, probably—in ninth grade, in homeroom, Walker pulled out my chair just before I sat down and I fell on the floor and broke my coccyx. I had to be in a brace for six weeks. It made the local news. And when I finally came back to school, I thought he’d see what he’d done and he’d apologize, but he just cracked jokes.”
    “He didn’t get punished?”
    “Oh sure. He got detention, I think. I don’t know. He played on our school’s baseball team. Another time, while waiting for the bus, he threw a rock at my head. Just because. Everybody saw him do it. Nobody stopped him. A few people laughed.”
    “Please tell me that karma exists and he got run over by a Zamboni.”
    “Hah. No. Maybe. Who knows. I haven’t seen Walker Berno since graduation.”
    “And if you ran into him now?”
    “Like, what would I say to him?”
    “Would you kick his ass?”
    Ross shrugged. “That was all a long time ago.”
    “Everybody needs closure.”
    But then she let the subject slide and they segued to a funny-sad conversation about the once-cute bad habits her two kids seemed determined to keep. The older twin just loved to adjust his junk in public. Every few minutes. Was that normal? And the younger twin had discovered that he could annoy the four-year-old by coughing in his face.
    And for the first time in his life, Ross wanted kids.
    He also wanted to see more of Jessabelle—at night, perhaps—but he also didn’t want to ruin this amazing thing they had. So he did what he always did when faced with a dilemma. He called his old pal Phillip.
    “So you want to know how to close the deal. Well, I’m proud of you, bro. This is an historic moment. So is she cute?”
    Phillip then proceeded to encourage Ross to be confident, which had the same likelihood of success as if he’d encouraged Ross to be a spaceship, but it turned out Ross had a few days to mull it over due to rain. When he finally saw Jessabelle again for the sixteenth time, it was Friday. She told him she’d missed him. They adjourned for coffee. They sat with their drinks at an inside table. The skies were still ominously gray.
    “There’s something I want to ask you,” said Ross.
    “Ask away.”
    “OK. So this has never happened to me. This. The whole meeting strangers thing. I’ve been to bars but I always drank alone. Nobody ever approached me, and I never approached anybody, and whatever. I don’t believe in Fate. I didn’t believe in Fate. And I know it’s only been a few weeks. I’m aware of…the last thing I want to do is scare you away. But I like you, Jessabelle. I like you. And I guess what I want to ask you is…and forgive me if I sound like I’m a teenager…do you like me too?”
    She smiled. She put down her cup. She spoke. This is what she said:
    “What time do you have to be back at work?”
    “It’s not…I mean, it’s not like there’s a designated time that I
have
to be back…”
    “Good. That’s good. There’s something I want to show you.”
    At which point she led him to her car—her car!—and he followed through a light drizzle and a wind from the west and thank God for the drizzle and the wind or Ross would have been convinced he was in that moment inhabiting a fantasy, and Jessabelle smiled back at him with her wire-framed eyes and her blond hair was bound in a ponytail and Ross followed her to her vintage VW