Grateful

By Kim Fielding

Nate Roth’s latest dumb stunt has left him with a broken arm, black eye, and stitched chin—and extra trepidation about visiting his family for Hanukkah. He fears his relatives will put him through another round of criticism for his foolish choices and his nonexistent love life. Several mishaps during his short journey to his parents’ house don’t bode well. But along the way he meets impossibly gorgeous Gio DiPietro—and maybe it’s time for Nate’s risk-taking impulses to turn out well for a change.

Y
OU
KNOW
those times when you’re goofing off at work, and instead of rocking your spreadsheet or selling widgets, you’re surfing for stupid GIFs? The ones where some idiot body-slams a cactus, or drives into a swimming pool, or walks face-first into a glass door. Really funny, right? Way better than writing your boss another report on quarterly toilet paper usage, or whatever it is you’re getting paid to do.

But here’s the thing: I’m that idiot.

Okay, not
all
the time. I’m not responsible for all the stupidity on the Internet. Just more than my fair share.

I don’t
plan
to be that guy you see ramming a forklift into the shelving. It’s just that I tend to act first and think later. Plus, I’m naturally a klutz. Add to that an unfortunate tendency to pick friends who egg me on for comedic effects and, well, there I am. Climbing on the roof and pretending to be Batman, but then skidding off and landing on my ass. Taking a dare to eat a whole habanero. Riding down a really steep hill on some kid’s tricycle.

That last one? That’s how I ended up with the cast on my arm, the limp, the black eye, and the stitches on my chin. The trip to the ER wasn’t so bad; they all know me there. They’re threatening to give me a punch card—make ten visits, get the eleventh for free—and I’m not sure they’re kidding. Besides, two of the doctors are drool-worthy younger guys, and a third has that whole DILF thing going, with that sexy silvering in his perfect hair and just enough softness around the middle to make you daydream about squeezing him.

But now the holidays are biting at my heels, and I look—and feel—like an extra from
The Walking Dead
. Which I suppose would be okay if the holiday in question were Halloween, but it isn’t. Nope, Hanukkah is fast approaching, which means I face a two-hour drive, followed by a flood of relatives who will want to know, in detail and repeatedly, why I’m looking so postapocalyptic. And although my family’s used to my ways, it’s kind of embarrassing for a thirty-year-old accounts receivable clerk to explain why he did a header over the handlebars of a trike.

“D
OES
YOUR
face hurt?” asked Julia.

We were sitting in the break room, me with a huge coffee I’d probably end up spilling on my lap, and she with a Greek yogurt and a waiting stack of napkins. She knows me well.

Julia is my office BFF. Her cubicle is right next to mine, and we spend a lot of time bitching about work or moaning over men or discussing
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
fanfic. She ships Buffy and Angel, while I’m all about the Spander, but I love her anyway.

I pressed a finger to my puffy eye. “Ow. Yeah, it’s sore. And I’m gonna end up with a scar on my chin.”

She shrugged. “It’ll be sexy. Like Harrison Ford.”

That should have perked me up. Harrison Ford tends to do that for me. Instead, I sighed. When she raised her eyebrows, I sighed again. “Hanukkah,” I explained.

“Oh God. You’re having another shopping crisis.”

I am famous for giving gifts that are the wrong size, the wrong color, the wrong flavor. I don’t mean to; it just happens. But now I shook my head. “I have grown wiser. Everyone’s getting a gift card this year.”

“Good choice. But then why the drama, Nate?”

“It’s… a holiday.”

Julie licked thoughtfully at her clear plastic spoon, then pointed it at me. “I thought Hanukkah wasn’t a big deal. You
told
me that, in fact. You said it’s a minor holiday that people only make a fuss over because it happens to be near Christmas.”

“True.”

“So…?”

“So I still have to go or everyone will get pissed off. And when I show up, I’m going to have to deal with this.” I gestured with my uninjured arm to indicate the cast, the stitches, and the bruising. “Mom and Dad are gonna lecture me like I’m eight years old. My sibs are gonna chime in. And when that topic gets old, my love life will be up for discussion.” Lack of love life, actually.

“Yeah, I get a lot of the same,” Julia said. “No lectures over wounding myself, but a whole lotta
When am I going to get grandbabies
.”

“You don’t have a Jewish mother,” I pointed out.

“I have a Chinese one. Just as bad. Plus I’m an only, so I get the full serving of guilt.”

Now it was her turn to sigh. For a while we just sat there. Julie finished her yogurt, and I sipped my coffee. The break room TV blared a stupid cooking show, even though nobody was watching it. Who wants to learn to make duck confit on their break? And what
is
confit anyway?

I don’t cook much. As you might have guessed, my attempts usually end in disaster. Last Thanksgiving, for instance? Against my family’s advice and my better judgment, I decided to make pumpkin pie. Didn’t sound so hard. I guess it could have ended up worse—only one hook-and-ladder truck had to show up, and for a little while, my apartment was stuffed full of well-muscled firemen.

When our time was up, Julia gathered her empty yogurt carton and my almost-empty cup, then threw them in the trash. I’m not allowed to have liquids in my cubicle. My boss got tired of replacing my keyboards.

“If you want, I can go with you,” Julie said as we returned to our desks. “I can pretend to be your girlfriend.”

“They know I’m gay.” I’d been out since, like, sixth grade. My people were cool with it.

“You could tell them you switched teams. That’d give them something new to talk about.”

“Thanks, Jules, but I guess I’m going to have to tough this one out alone.” Then I had a consoling thought. “Maybe I’ll get hit by a bus on my way home. Then I won’t have to go.”

“Good luck with that.”

I didn’t get hit by a bus—not even a little one. I did, however, step into a puddle that looked a lot shallower than it was, soaking my left pant leg almost to the knee. My left shoe squelched the whole way home.

I was supposed to pack the next day so I’d be all ready for an early start the morning after that. But I hate packing, and I kept getting distracted—Netflix was calling my name—and I never quite got around to it. Then I way overslept. That meant I ended up throwing stuff into my suitcase while my head was still sleep-blurry. I hoped vaguely that I was managing to choose clothes suitable for family holiday gatherings. I wouldn’t much enjoy spending the next several days stuck in my work khakis and polos, or in my flashy but slightly dated clubwear.

I remembered to water my houseplants, Guy and Audrey, which I figured was a good sign. It wasn’t easy lugging my shit out to the car with a limp and a gimpy arm—I dropped the suitcase on my bad foot twice—but I made it eventually. And I pulled out of my apartment complex parking lot and into traffic flawlessly, like some guy in a car commercial where the cars are perfectly synchronized and nobody ever gets stopped by a red light and nearly rear-ended by an SUV with a texting soccer mom.

I usually sing along with the radio while I drive, so loudly that if I have my windows down and stop next to someone else with
their
windows down, they stare at me. Except once, when a hunk in a Mazda started crooning with me—at least until the light turned green and all the impatient, nonromantic types behind us started to honk.

Anyway, today was coldish by California standards, so I kept the windows up, and instead of singing, I stressed. Family does that to me. I mean, I guess family does that to a lot of people, even when the family in question is loving and supportive. Maybe even especially when they’re loving and supportive. If they were all a bunch of assholes, I wouldn’t care so much about disappointing them. But here I was, stuck in a job they thought I was too smart for, banged-up from my own idiocy, and perpetually single.

So, yeah, no singing today.

Traffic crawled through San Jose and then came almost to a standstill in Pleasanton, where seemingly everyone in the state was trying to merge onto I-680 North. On a whim I decided to take a more eastward route instead. The new course would quickly dump me into the Central Valley and send me through scenic wonders such as Tracy and Stockton—cool if you’re into cows, strip malls, or tract houses—but the road might be less congested.

I was wrong. And although I wasn’t in a huge hurry to show up at my parents’ door, I also wasn’t especially fond of squeezing between lumbering semis or swerving to avoid the dimwits who couldn’t stay in their own lanes. Those dotted lines are there for a reason, people.

When traffic finally lightened up on I-5, I celebrated by putting the pedal to the metal.

Too bad there was a highway patrolman waiting for me.

When I was a little kid, I used to watch
CHiPs
reruns and imagine that when I grew up, I’d be a more Semitic version of Ponch. I dug the uniform with the shiny black boots, and of course the idea of getting paid to zoom around on a motorcycle was pretty appealing. But my tween attempts at dirt biking ended up in emergency rooms, and I eventually decided I was more interested in getting into other men’s uniforms than getting into my own, so the dream died. After that, I wanted to be an actor, and then I thought maybe I’d end up as a famous zillionaire.

No child has ever dreamed of becoming an accounts receivable clerk.

The guy who pulled me over near Stockton was driving a cruiser.

“How come they don’t let you drive a bike?” I asked.

I couldn’t be sure, since he was scowling, but I was fairly certain he couldn’t boast pearly whites like Erik Estrada’s.

“Do you know how fast you were going?” he asked.

There’s no good answer to that, is there? You can admit you were breaking the law or lie your ass off and claim your speedometer read sixty-five. Or you can do what I did—squint a little and tap nervously on the steering wheel. “Um… no?”

The cop glared at me as if I’d just admitted to being a serial killer. “I clocked you at eighty-two.”

Had I been going that fast? Possibly. Probably. There didn’t seem to be much point in arguing over it. I handed over my license, registration, and proof of insurance and hoped there were no thirty-year-old Nathan Roths floating around California with outstanding warrants. I’d never had to ask my parents to bail me out of jail, and today didn’t seem like a good day to try something new.

The other Nathan Roths must have been relatively law-abiding, because the cop soon returned with my documents, gave a skeptical look at my bruises and stitches, and handed me a traffic ticket. “Enter a plea by the date indicated,” he said. “Court date’s here if you want to contest it, or you can go online to plead guilty and pay. Fine’ll be double since you were in a construction zone.” He gave an evil grin and strode off without another word.

I know that a speeding ticket isn’t a huge big deal—Julia gets them almost as often as I end up visiting Urgent Care—but I’d only been nabbed once before. Today the citation felt like an official governmental seal, certifying what a loser I was. I slipped back onto the freeway and crept along at a glacial but law-abiding fifty-five, earning myself the hatred of the unticketed masses who zoomed by.

My parents live outside of Sacramento, which isn’t all that far from Stockton. But the closer I got to them, the more miserable I felt. My arm ached, my stitches itched, and I fervently wished the holidays were past and we were stuck in the depths of January. Up ahead I spied the freeway oasis, with its gas and fast food restaurants under one roof. I took the exit, rolled into the vast parking lot, and chose a spot a good distance from the building. Then I cut the engine and had an existential crisis.

Just a few years earlier, my life had seemed ideal. I had a steady job that paid enough for me to live reasonably well. Sure, it wasn’t exciting, but it wasn’t embarrassing either and didn’t impinge on my free time. I had a nice little apartment and a decent car. I had a lot of friends. I had sex when I wanted it, peace and quiet when I wanted
that
. No messy relationship drama. And yeah, maybe I did stupid shit too often, but it wasn’t as if I was hurting anyone but myself. Besides, I didn’t want to be that old dude brooding in a nursing home over all the things he wished he’d done when he was a kid. I
carpe
d the hell out of my
diem
s.

But now here I was, with my twenties behind me. I was bruised, single, ticketed, and about to explain my sorry state to my family for the zillionth time. I was giving everyone gift cards for Hanukkah because I couldn’t properly handle even holiday shopping. Was this where I should be? Didn’t I want to be something more than a running joke?