We were bowling when I told her my father had died. I would like to say I was drunk which was why my timing was bad and my tact was poor. But I would be lying. I was sober.
You can't really respond to that. The setting is poor for it. It is also unexpected, when someone you haven't seen for about three years brings you to the bowling alley and just blurts it out in the fourth frame.
She had to have known something was different. I walked up to her parents' door, not really expecting her to be there. That gravel driveway under my feet, those helicopter seeds flying around the air, the ivy in the yard. It was almost too much. That night came rushing back.
But she was there and I remembered why I was there. I couldn't look her in the eyes. After all this time, I still couldn't stare into her face. I didn't want to see that questioning look there.
I didn't want to see that pity.
"Come out with me," I said.
"Where?"
"To bowl."
"I can't," she said.
"Please."
She wasn't obligated to go. There was nothing between us anymore, no friendship, nothing. That bridge had been burned a long time ago. Maybe she still cared, but maybe, too, that was too much to ask for.
Maybe she just wanted to bowl.
So I told her.
"When?"
"Today. Around 2 p.m.," I said.
She sunk down in her chair. She wrapped her arms around her head, a gesture I had forgotten about.
"Oh," she said.
It was my frame. I got up, bowled. Gutter ball.
"You're an asshole, you know?"
"I know," I said.

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