JENNY SAID SOMETHING THE OTHER DAY at Elena’s soccer game that I’ve been thinking about a lot. Jenny’s my ex-wife. We get along, not just for Elena. It’s in our natures to keep the peace no matter what’s roiling inside us. I was telling her about my consulting business, StoryTeam, which has branched into internal communications – messaging and programs that help companies boost morale so that everyone pulls in the same direction. I think I wanted her to be proud of me, to see that I was doing better.
“That makes sense for you. You always did need a story to tell,” she said, shrugging apologetically. I didn’t know exactly what she meant, but was afraid of what else she might say if I asked. We never talked about what happened all the way through. She was right not to want to hear my explanations.
It was my week with Elena, but I craved more of the intimacy I’d felt sitting next to Jenny as Elena bounded across the field like a gazelle. “Come have pizza with us,” I offered after the game.
“It’s your night. You two have fun,” she said, shaking her head as if she knew me better than I knew myself.
IN THE YEARS BEFORE and just after Elena was born, I was a copywriter. I’d given up on the idea of becoming a novelist, but still wanted to call myself a writer. Every day at LaunchPad, a B2B marketing agency with a rocket logo, the other copywriters and
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Dan Rivas’s work has appeared in Brick, Your Impossible Voice, the Jabberwock Review, and other publications. In 2021, he was named a Finalist for the Sustainable Arts Foundation Awards. He has an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Michigan and lives in Portland, Oregon.