Dadbod, part 2 (Patreon)

‘Which way? Where do I turn off?’ Paula asked. 

I was trying to use Google Maps on her phone to navigate (internet on my cell didn’t work too good). 

‘Uh, left here,’ I answered. 

‘This left? Are you sure? Cos there’s another-‘

‘Yeah, this left!’

‘Okay.’

She heaved the hand-me-down, pea-green Honda Civic we’d named ‘Moira’ for reasons I forget now, filled with our hastily packed belongings, around the bend and stayed on course til we started to smell the brine of the sea. Signs for Cresthaven began to pop up, and pretty soon the moonlit sky was filled with gulls and the streets got real narrow and winding. We’d driven all through the night, after a rushed, awkward talk with my parents who, rather than putting up resistance, just stayed confused. I don’t know what they must have thought. 

‘Okay, it looks like there’s parking up ahead,’ Paula said, peering ahead. The road we’d taken was leading us down toward the beachfront. 

‘You wanna stop and get our bearings?’ I asked her. 

She nodded, relieved at the prospect of a break, I think. She’d been at the wheel for hours. 

Some more winding lanes that seemed to criss-cross with cobbled footpaths and tram tracks, and we emerged out by the sea. A little grey strip made up the ‘parking lot’, right in front of the beach. Paula parked up and let Moira rest. 

‘Phew!’ she said, tilting her head back. ‘Ugh, we made it! I’m gonna stretch my legs.’

That sounded good. At my height, my legs tended to bunch up in cars. Getting out, the smell of the sea and the sounds of waves crashing hit me full force. It smelled like childhood vacations, just how I remembered. 

I watched Paula give a little twirl and then beam at me from across Moira’s roof. ‘We’re here, Richy Rich. We did it.’

I smirked back, tired. ‘Now all we need to do is get jobs and a place to live. How hard can that be?’

‘Ahh,’ she waved it away. ‘That’s tomorrow’s problem. You hungry?’

I nodded and we agreed between us that she’d go off to grab us something to eat, and I’d stay and look after the Civic, just in case we were asked to leave or something. It turned out the parking spot was free and there was no time limit; this place was pretty relaxed!

When Paula returned she came bearing burgers and fries and a couple shakes, which we greedily devoured. 

‘Listen, I’m pooped,’ she said after, wiping her mouth. ‘You mind if we just...’

‘Sleep in the car?’ I said, reading her mind. 

She nodded in fatigue and reclined her seat all the way back. Within moments her eyes were closed and she was off; she really was pooped! I slid my seat as far back as it would go, reclined it, and just lay there for a while, listening to the sea, the tide coming in and out. Every now and then a gust of sea breeze would gently buffet against the car. I could see the stars above the ocean. 

Without thinking, I realized I was absently rubbing my full belly, caressing its warm curve, feeling the the tautness of my shirt. Angel had been wrong, dead wrong. There was no way I wanted to lose this gut. These new feelings I was having, I couldn’t articulate them, but it just... made me feel nice. I can’t explain it any better than that. Thinking about how I used to be; all skinny and wiry, to how I was now - not big, by any stretch, but you could see the extra pounds - it released something in me; a feeling I couldn’t yet understand. I kept rubbing my belly. It felt nice to do this. Comforting, even. At some point, I must have drifted off, dreaming of more burgers and more fries...

DINK DINK DINK! Beside my ear. 

I didn’t know where I was. My neck was stiff and there was a seagull looking at me through a windscreen. 

Suddenly the car door swung open and brisk salty air blew in. 

‘Dicky, get up!’ Paula said. ‘We gotta go!’

‘Mwhat...?’

‘We gotta go,’ she repeated hurriedly. ‘There’s jobs going at the market, apparently, but we gotta act fast!’

It took her a while of cajoling and wrangling but eventually I was up on my feet and we were heading towards the nearest trolley stop (Moira wasn’t going to fit through some of the narrower lanes, purportedly). Before I knew it we were on a rattling aquamarine tram headed up through the streets, passing people and places, into the heart of this coastal town. 

Turns out Cresthaven was a pretty big place! All of it rested in the hills sloping down to the sea. You had your knick-knack seashell stores and beachfront arcades, kids going along with cotton candy, trying to keep it away from the birds, but then all these artisanal places too; a local-caught crab house, a fancy cheese joint, craft beer pubs, and painted wooden fronts to every one of ‘em, all kinds of colors and patterns. Probably a bunch of local artists all came together for that stuff. There was a clock tower, slatted houses all done up in whites and turquoises and pinks and greens and charcoal greys, some covered in shells or driftwood or netting, lots of little bars and wending avenues and cobbled alleyways, each one looking like it might’ve contained hidden gems. Seems like a lot of folks bicycled around, or took the tram system which seemed to cover a lot of the town. And the restaurants! Oh boy, that got me excited. My nose caught the scent of Thai, Vietnamese, Chinese, Italian, Turkish, and I spotted people eating outside in the sunshine with their morning coffees, some even waved to friends on the tram. Mingled into my nerves of starting out in this new place was the prospect of trying out all of the delicious food. I might have been rubbing my belly again without realizing. 

I felt the trolley shuddering to a stop and a tug at my shirt. ‘This is us,’ Paula said. 

When we stepped off, greeting us was a huge marketplace, a kind of open-space indoors / outdoors sorta deal covered by a vast Victorian glass and steel roof in peeling yellow ochre paintwork, stalls selling everything you could think of from printed tees to handcrafted jewellery to sweet, delicious, freshly made pancakes drizzled in chocolate and caramel and chopped bananas and little crushed nuts and-

‘Rich, I say we split up and get talking to as many vendors as we can,’ said Paula. ‘Keep your cell on and we can meet back up after, sound good?’

I was hungry. 

‘Sounds good,’ I agreed. 

So that’s what we did. She headed left, I headed right and we just got to it. It was difficult not to let myself become distracted by such an assault of colors and flavors, let alone some of the hot guys out for a Saturday amble; beefy dads pushing strollers, handsome sellers hauling wares, some wide back lost to the crowd. But I had to focus! A couple years of going round my hometown, meeting all the neighbors to fix up their homes had given me some pretty good people skills, if I do say so myself. I’ll talk to anyone, haha. 

So I got to talking. 

The short, swarthy vinyl seller said no. The glamorous screen-printer lady said no. The smoothie teenager who kept blowing hair out of his eyes said he’d just been hired and they were full and that he was sorry but maybe I could try Mr Gerhardt. 

‘Mr...?’

‘Pet stall, back that way. Pet food, or pet something,’ the teen laughed nervously. 

When I got there, it was more like pet everything. I spotted a burly, gruff-looking man in his fifties, arms covered in years-faded tattoos struggling with a particularly large crate. 

‘Mr Gerhardt? Do you need a hand there?’ I figured if I could swoop in and help, that would make a good first impression. 

‘Get this for me,’ he grunted. ‘Too heavy.’

He was damned right! I lugged the crate up to the counter. What was in it, anvils?!

‘My name’s Richard Dooley, sir,’ I began. ‘I was hoping-‘

‘More out the back,’ he rumbled. That was it. 

What did that mean, exactly? Was I... hired? I wasn’t sure, so I just did as he asked. More boxes and crates of unreasonably heavy pet goods. Then he told me the supply trucks stopped at a depot to the rear of the market hall. Then he told me it was real early starts but he didn’t need help manning the stall, just hauling the stock, so there’d be breaks and then more lifting and I’d be done by 4. He told me Saturdays were “the worst”, and that he could pay “okay”. 

My heart swelled a little with relief. I’d found a job! I went to shake his hand and he just kinda looked at it and nodded and got back to unloading rubber dog bones from the countertop. 

I was about to gush my thanks when my phone buzzed in my pocket. 

Hows it going - A text from Paula. I got a job selling fruit lol. Next to the fish stand tho Eww - followed by a ‘gross’ emoji face and a little picture of a fish. She carried on, Found a place to stay! But - only room for one :(  Im sorry Rich. I’ll keep asking for u xx

Well... maybe that was to be expected. I was a little deflated in that moment, but I texted back telling her about Mr Gerhardt and the pet stand. She replied with a little ‘celebration’ gif. 

‘Mr Gerhardt, sir?’ I asked him while he was hanging up cat collars on a pinboard wall. He made some sort of noise. ‘Do you... You don’t happen to know a place to stay, here in town, I mean? You see, I’m new here and-‘

‘Try Mrs Cassidy,’ he replied, not taking his eyes from his task. ‘Old lady runs a map store in midtown. Used to rent to students sometimes.’

‘Thank you! Thank you very much, sir! Do you know which way...?’

‘Left out of here, cut through The Cascades, go straight, there’s a park, Lufton, little bridge, you’ll see it. Tell her Vernon sent you.’

It was probably best that I headed straight there. Mr Gerhardt’s directions didn’t make much sense to me, but I was sure I could get help from locals along the way. 

I thanked him profusely and made to head off. 

‘Start on Monday,’ he called after me. ‘6am. Here.’

‘Yes sir!’ I called back and made my way out of the marketplace toward the map store, a big grin on my face.

‘No pets. No parties. No smoking inside. No drugs. No loud music. No midnight callers. No weird smells. No incense - last girl was burning some kind of thing that wafted down into my store. I don’t wanna smell anything like that, you understand? You clean up after yourself. You take the garbage out on time. You pay your rent on time - I’ll need a deposit: we’ll get to that. The apartment is directly above the store. My house adjoins to the back of the store. You can use the laundry room there, but I expect you to help out if I need a job or two doing.’

‘I can do that. I used to do odd jobs around my neighbor-‘

‘I’m not finished yet.’

‘Sorry.’

‘There’s a recycling system. I expect you to respect it. The deposit is a month’s rent. Now, you said you were working?’

‘Yes, m’am,’ I stuttered, ‘Mr Gerhardt - uh, Vernon - gave me a job this morning. He sent me here, in fact.’

This was the most word I’d been able to get in edgewise since I arrived at Mrs Cassidy’s map store. I’d been expecting some sweet little old lady; what I got was a woman almost as tall as me, probably around 300 pounds, each boob bigger than my head, perfectly dressed and made up, with beautiful dark frizzed hair. 

At the mention of Mr Gerhardt, her lips went taut and she pulled a face I didn’t quite know what to make of, but said nothing. She jangled a set of keys in her hand and motioned for me to follow her through the store to a cast-iron spiral staircase around the back, and nodded for me to ascend. 

‘I suppose you’ll want to take a look at the apartment, then,’ she sniffed. 

It was perfect. A perfect studio apartment for a guy like me. I didn’t need much. A bed and general sleeping zone took up one end of the space, more of a living area and kitchenette at the other. Thankfully plentiful headroom clearance, despite being in the very top of the building. It was clean, cosy, inviting, lots of built-in nooks for books and what-have-you, but best of all was the completely windowed wall that looked out over the town; and you could even make out the sea beyond. This view was incredible! 

After poking around for a few more minutes (a little wood-burning stove for the winter, separate bathroom with shower adjoining), I emerged back onto the spiral staircase. Mrs Cassidy was still down there, looking somewhat impatient. 

‘When can I move in?’

The rest of that day was kind of a blur: I had to liaise with Paula as the two of us needed our stuff from Moira’s trunk. We celebrated with a couple beers for a short while, before I got all my belongings back to Mrs Cassidy’s map store and lugged it all up the spiral staircase (it took a few trips!). By the time I was done, it had gotten pretty late and the sky had filled with thick wet clouds. I decided to treat myself to Chinese food from an unpretentious-looking place further down the street, and managed to high tail it back to the apartment with my bags of food just before the rain started. 

My first night in my new apartment, in a new town. God, I was excited! I hadn’t unpacked much yet (not that I’d brought a whole lot with me), but I hooked up a desk lamp by the bedside dresser, which lit things up pretty warmly, and sat up in bed with my Chinese food. I spooned some kung pow chicken into my mouth and watched as the rain came down over the town, filling up gutters and spackling off of cobbled alleyways, spattering against my huge windows. The sound of it was soothing somehow. I forked down some noodles, some egg fried rice, a little more chicken; I was rubbing my belly again and I hadn’t realized. As the rain came down harder, I found myself pushing food into my mouth a little faster. I don’t know why but I wanted to try cramming it in a little quicker than I could chew, to push out my cheeks some. I forked it in with one hand and rubbed my belly with the other. It really was a downpour out there. I started thinking about the size of my belly, how it’d grown since high school, and how I’d been daydreaming lately about growing it some more. Deliberate weight gain? That sounded crazy in my mind, so why did it make me feel so good to imagine? I was really getting through the kung pow now, really filling up my gut, which felt so nice in my large hand. The Chinese food was stretching it out, getting the skin real taut and warm. It was... arousing. I had to be honest with myself. I was getting turned on. I kept eating. More chicken, more noodles, more rice. The restaurant had thrown in a couple of those little crispy egg rolls too; I shoved them both in my mouth at once, imagining that maybe... maybe someone else was doing it to me... 

That was a new thought; where had that come from?

A dull thunking sound from outside suddenly. It snapped me out of my reverie. I sat upright, listened out some more but heard only the rainfall. That was weird. 

Now in more of a mood to exercise caution, I slipped on my shoes and headed out to investigate, just to be sure. I mean, maybe this was a bad neighborhood and I’d just moved straight in like a dope?

But looking outside revealed nothing unusual, that I could tell anyway - I guess it was my first night. But no. I was wrong; there was something. A white object on the bottom step of the spiral staircase. What the heck? I descended, checking around but finding no-one nearby, and saw a white box on the step, placed just outside of the rain. Okay, this was a little odd. Or maybe this was a Cresthaven thing? I picked it up and took it inside, just to avoid getting a chill. I had no idea why someone would leave a blank white box right outside but... Well, I opened it and -

Muffins. Half a dozen large spongey-looking muffins. They appeared homemade and filled with berries and chocolate chips. At first I thought maybe they were a welcoming gift from Mrs Cassidy, even though that did not tally with her demeanor at all, but then I saw the note underneath them. Carefully picking it out and dusting off some crumbs, I unfolded and read. 

There was only one short sentence and nothing else:

“To the tall, ginger-haired man.”