We Are Inevitable by Gayle Forman (read aloud txt) 📕

need a thermometer. And some cold medicine. And some Band-Aids.”

Ira nods. He looks so pathetic. “Maybe some chicken soup?”

Chicken soup was the one Jewishy thing Mom learned to cook. She’d make it whenever anyone was feeling bad with any ailment, whether it be a cold or a sprained wrist. She made it for Sandy when he detoxed at home, spending hours trying to coax a spoonful down. She and Ira both swore by its healing powers. I never bought it. Soup is soup, but right now, I’ll take what I can get.

I decide to walk the mile to ValuMart, not because it’s a particularly nice stroll—it’s mostly a stretch of auto mechanics and gas stations—but because it’s not raining and it will give me more time to figure out how I’m gonna tell Ira.

I’ve decided to sell the store.

No, that makes it sound like I’m still thinking about it. I did sell the store. It’s been a week since I knocked on Penny’s door and said, “If you want to buy our store, it’s not Ira you need to convince; it’s me.”

Penny made me an offer I can’t refuse.

Only she didn’t. I asked her what she’d pay for the place. She wrote down a number on a piece of paper and slid it across her desk. It was so low, it would barely cover the mortgage, let alone our debt. “Forget it,” I told her, getting up to leave. Penny chased me out into the night, a funny little smile on her lips. “Aaron, some free business advice: you don’t walk away from an opening bid. Come inside. Let’s negotiate.” And so we did.

Don’t you see, Ira? We are the dinosaurs and the asteroid’s already hit.

Penny understood this. It took about an hour to come up with a price that would give me and Ira enough of a nest egg to make a fresh start. Another hour to negotiate the smaller details—like her letting us stay in the upstairs apartment, paying rent, until we find a new place, and agreeing not to tell anyone about the deal until I told Ira. “We both know you’re making the right decision,” she said after we’d finally come to terms. “Really, the only decision.”

Ira, you can’t fight the inevitable. The inevitable always wins.

After we agreed on the deal terms, Penny insisted I stay for a celebratory toast. Against my protests, she poured us each a shot of whiskey. “Did you know,” Penny asked—after she’d downed hers and I pretended to sip mine—“that I almost bought your building a few years back when your family had all that trouble? The deal fell through.” She smiled. “But I knew eventually I’d get it.”

The aisles at ValuMart are narrow, the floors scuffed, the produce unappealingly wrapped in cellophane. I grab the cold medicine, a thermometer, and some off-brand bandages and head to the meat department for some chicken, but the only pieces are rubbery and yellow, and for a minute I just want to be back in that beautiful corporate health food emporium, with its buffed floors and grass-fed everything, even though I know Ira is right about places like that.

I put the chicken back, grabbing a few cans of soup instead. I put my groceries on the belt. The cashier is someone I know, a girl from my year named Stephanie Gates. She checks my groceries without a word, pretending not to know me like I am pretending not to know her.

On the way home, I pass C.J.’s. The round table up front where the Lumberjacks usually sit all morning is empty. I get a bad feeling.

I pick up the pace.

Our store comes into view, Ike’s truck parked out front.

I start to run.

I arrive as Richie is lifting a ladder from the bed.

“What. Are. You. Doing. Here?” I ask, wheezing from the run.

“Good morning to you too,” Garry says, pulling a tarp from the truck. “We’re here to paint.”

“Paint?” I pant. “What? Why?”

Now Ike appears, holding a five-gallon tub of paint in each hand. “Well, you see, me and the boys were going back and forth about whether to stain the ramp or paint it to match the facade, and that’s when we noticed the facade was in bad shape.” Ike uses his elbow to gesture to the front of the building, shingled and once painted a robin’s-egg blue—Mom liked to keep things on brand—but which now has faded to a shade best described as overcast. “Anyhow. I took a splintered chip of the paint to Joe Heath. You know Joe?”

“No.”

“He’s got that old refurbished barn he used to run a scrap shop out of. He wants to retire, and is trying to offload all his surplus supplies, including several cans about the same color as your building. Have a look.” Whipping a stir stick out of his coat like a sword, he opens the tub. “Now, it ain’t an exact match.” He gives the paint a stir and it emulsifies into a grayish blue that falls somewhere between the robin’s-egg of yore and the gray of now. “But it’s close. And we thought we best hurry if we want to get it all done while the weather holds.”

“Should I start sanding?” Richie calls.

“Sure,” Ike says. “Start with the three hundred.”

“Wait!” I shout. “Stop.”

“Why?” Richie asks. “You think we need two-hundred grit instead? Ike, the kid thinks we should use the two hundred.”

“I never said that!”

“You want the one hundred?” Richie asks, scandalized.

“I don’t want any of it.”

“Why, you think we should power wash?” Garry asks. “I told you we should power wash.”

“And I told you power wash is the fool’s shortcut,” Ike says. “It’ll tear the wood clean apart.”

“Everyone just stop!” I yell.

They stop.

“What is going on?”

“I told you,” Ike says. “We’re painting.”

“No one told you that you could paint.”

“Ira just did,” Ike replies.

I breathe through my frustration, counting one, two, three, four, five so I don’t lose my shit at Ira. But holy hell! I was gone for an hour.

“That’s