A Father First
—
Grey Traynor
EACH YEAR, TED BUYS 12 BOXES of Girl Scout cookies from his estranged daughter using a fake profile on a mobile payment service. Before his daughter Laura Jean began taking digital money, Ted would have to bribe the women who wore dry wigs at his AA meetings to order for him, having them go to the same grocery store where Laura Jean sets up shop every year beginning in mid-January.
Coming by to see his daughter vending, Ted would bring along his father’s boxy vintage film camera and, pretending to be the paparazzi, would snap pictures of Laura Jean and her squat little troop friends, careful to never include Emily Barnett (a sad sack who had peed on the ropes course, ruining it for Laura Jean and the rest of the troop). But these blurry pictures never made it to the fridge because Ted’s father never showed him how to use the camera before he died.
Now Laura Jean was 12, and Ted was four DUIs and a failed marriage deep.
He also had an apartment that, to avoid the empty divorcee look, he over-decorated with an overwhelming amount of black velvet paintings—a skating penguin, a lion mid-roar, an idyllic winter scene of aspen trees in a light snow.
Ted also had a girlfriend, Sheila, whom he made smoke her Marlboro Reds outside, even in the rain.
“I gotta kid to think about,” Ted would say after Sheila pointed a pink (always pink) acrylic nail at the downpour framed by the small living room window.
But Laura Jean had never, and would never, step into Ted’s apartment as he had missed too many paper-hat birthdays and make-up Christmases; the leather stool at Shotgun Shooter’s, the one at the far end of the bar, in its own little corner, had molded perfectly to his behind and Chris the bartender had a way of keeping Ted in a comfortable brown-out: no crying or falling over but still keeping life’s troubles and memories, tarnished like old, newlywed silver, further than any grasping hand could touch.
After sobering up and scrawling out countless apology letters and emails that Laura Jean left unanswered, Ted did receive an email from his ex-wife that said, “Just leave the girl alone.” This is when he got the idea of buying cookies from his daughter—a way to respect her wishes while also still supporting her, past the $100 that came out of his paycheck for child support.
He settled on this plan of buying exactly 12 boxes to represent every month he wished Laura Jean would walk that young, jaunty walk of hers back in his life, and, being a part-time, non-union warehouse guy, he couldn’t afford to buy anymore.
In January, he would bite into his favorite: the crispy peanut butter Yum-Yums. Chewing with a mouth half-open, Ted would picture the last winter he spent with Laura Jean; they had taken a wintry road trip down to Lake Tahoe, and he had needed to wrap up her, and her rosy cheeks, like you do rolls on the Thanksgiving table.
February meant the chocolate and coconut pairing of the Whistle Bite cookies. With a mouthful of these, Ted would hope that Laura Jean’s valentine mailbox, probably a papier-mache dusty pink, was stuffed to the brim, but free of any flirty notes from the bad boys in her class. The ones who played rough on the blacktop, fingernails sharp, packed with dirt. Ted had to speak to Tucker McKenzie’s dad about his son constantly pulling on one of Laura Jean’s chestnut pigtails, screaming “Ding dong!”
By March, however, Ted would undoubtedly relapse and come home from Shotgun Shooters, smart enough to drive the backstreets home, and rip open every box to chow down on every single last cookie.
Except for one.
In his first year of cookie destruction, after a nightcap of bourbon and doing his best shrieky Bon Jovi for an applauding Sheila, indoor cigarette dangling from her pink mouth, Ted spotted one last and intact Lemony Lala peeking out from under the rust-colored recliner.
Even though it was his least-favorite cookie, a strong enough citrus flavor to make his lips pucker like he was insulting the look of a fish, Ted took this as a sign of hope.
Maybe one day Laura Jean will want to see me again, want to give her old man a hug.
Maybe one day I’ll make it to April without tumbling off the ol’ wagon.
Five years on, nothing like that had yet to occur. But every year, despite the bourbon’s call and Ted’s winking answer, he would manage to spare one Lemony Lala, tucking it away, safe in the freezer, until it was time to buy the next year’s haul from Laura Jean.
This year, when the time finally came, Laura Jean returned the cookie payment to Wilma Covington, Ted’s payment alias. Figuring the price for the sweets had gone up even higher, Ted began to figure out which of his warehouse buddies might lend him one of their shifts until a message came from Laura Jean—his first correspondence from her, outside of the yearly “Thank you, Wilma Covington! Your order will ship to you soon.”
Her message read, “I don’t do that anymore.”
Ted put his phone down.
He wanted to imagine what new hobby Laura Jean had turned her attention to. Was it toward horses and the brilliant way they gallop? Was she a cheerleader? Ted wanted to hope she hadn’t developed an interest in those bad boys with their tight jaws, strong from clenching through their foul moods.
But Ted’s mind didn’t go to Laura Jean, holding a pompom or bundled up in the cold. It also didn’t get to remembering the name of his new sponsor, his phone so packed with the old ones he had spurned but whose names he could better recall.
No, Ted thought about how delicious a glass of bourbon would taste, chasing down a nasty, cold Lemony Lala. •
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Grey Traynor (they/she/he) is a transfemme writer who has been published in X-R-A-Y, beestung, BULL, and Tiny Molecules. They attended the 2025 Tin House Summer Workshop and they read at the 2025 Portland Book Festival and are currently querying manuscripts. Also, check out their gay romance podcast, Baby, Don't Shoot (featuring a Luigi Mangione type), on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to pods.
Website | Instagram
Coming by to see his daughter vending, Ted would bring along his father’s boxy vintage film camera and, pretending to be the paparazzi, would snap pictures of Laura Jean and her squat little troop friends, careful to never include Emily Barnett (a sad sack who had peed on the ropes course, ruining it for Laura Jean and the rest of the troop). But these blurry pictures never made it to the fridge because Ted’s father never showed him how to use the camera before he died.
Now Laura Jean was 12, and Ted was four DUIs and a failed marriage deep.
He also had an apartment that, to avoid the empty divorcee look, he over-decorated with an overwhelming amount of black velvet paintings—a skating penguin, a lion mid-roar, an idyllic winter scene of aspen trees in a light snow.
Ted also had a girlfriend, Sheila, whom he made smoke her Marlboro Reds outside, even in the rain.
“I gotta kid to think about,” Ted would say after Sheila pointed a pink (always pink) acrylic nail at the downpour framed by the small living room window.
But Laura Jean had never, and would never, step into Ted’s apartment as he had missed too many paper-hat birthdays and make-up Christmases; the leather stool at Shotgun Shooter’s, the one at the far end of the bar, in its own little corner, had molded perfectly to his behind and Chris the bartender had a way of keeping Ted in a comfortable brown-out: no crying or falling over but still keeping life’s troubles and memories, tarnished like old, newlywed silver, further than any grasping hand could touch.
After sobering up and scrawling out countless apology letters and emails that Laura Jean left unanswered, Ted did receive an email from his ex-wife that said, “Just leave the girl alone.” This is when he got the idea of buying cookies from his daughter—a way to respect her wishes while also still supporting her, past the $100 that came out of his paycheck for child support.
He settled on this plan of buying exactly 12 boxes to represent every month he wished Laura Jean would walk that young, jaunty walk of hers back in his life, and, being a part-time, non-union warehouse guy, he couldn’t afford to buy anymore.
In January, he would bite into his favorite: the crispy peanut butter Yum-Yums. Chewing with a mouth half-open, Ted would picture the last winter he spent with Laura Jean; they had taken a wintry road trip down to Lake Tahoe, and he had needed to wrap up her, and her rosy cheeks, like you do rolls on the Thanksgiving table.
February meant the chocolate and coconut pairing of the Whistle Bite cookies. With a mouthful of these, Ted would hope that Laura Jean’s valentine mailbox, probably a papier-mache dusty pink, was stuffed to the brim, but free of any flirty notes from the bad boys in her class. The ones who played rough on the blacktop, fingernails sharp, packed with dirt. Ted had to speak to Tucker McKenzie’s dad about his son constantly pulling on one of Laura Jean’s chestnut pigtails, screaming “Ding dong!”
By March, however, Ted would undoubtedly relapse and come home from Shotgun Shooters, smart enough to drive the backstreets home, and rip open every box to chow down on every single last cookie.
Except for one.
In his first year of cookie destruction, after a nightcap of bourbon and doing his best shrieky Bon Jovi for an applauding Sheila, indoor cigarette dangling from her pink mouth, Ted spotted one last and intact Lemony Lala peeking out from under the rust-colored recliner.
Even though it was his least-favorite cookie, a strong enough citrus flavor to make his lips pucker like he was insulting the look of a fish, Ted took this as a sign of hope.
Maybe one day Laura Jean will want to see me again, want to give her old man a hug.
Maybe one day I’ll make it to April without tumbling off the ol’ wagon.
Five years on, nothing like that had yet to occur. But every year, despite the bourbon’s call and Ted’s winking answer, he would manage to spare one Lemony Lala, tucking it away, safe in the freezer, until it was time to buy the next year’s haul from Laura Jean.
This year, when the time finally came, Laura Jean returned the cookie payment to Wilma Covington, Ted’s payment alias. Figuring the price for the sweets had gone up even higher, Ted began to figure out which of his warehouse buddies might lend him one of their shifts until a message came from Laura Jean—his first correspondence from her, outside of the yearly “Thank you, Wilma Covington! Your order will ship to you soon.”
Her message read, “I don’t do that anymore.”
Ted put his phone down.
He wanted to imagine what new hobby Laura Jean had turned her attention to. Was it toward horses and the brilliant way they gallop? Was she a cheerleader? Ted wanted to hope she hadn’t developed an interest in those bad boys with their tight jaws, strong from clenching through their foul moods.
But Ted’s mind didn’t go to Laura Jean, holding a pompom or bundled up in the cold. It also didn’t get to remembering the name of his new sponsor, his phone so packed with the old ones he had spurned but whose names he could better recall.
No, Ted thought about how delicious a glass of bourbon would taste, chasing down a nasty, cold Lemony Lala. •
Grey Traynor (they/she/he) is a transfemme writer who has been published in X-R-A-Y, beestung, BULL, and Tiny Molecules. They attended the 2025 Tin House Summer Workshop and they read at the 2025 Portland Book Festival and are currently querying manuscripts. Also, check out their gay romance podcast, Baby, Don't Shoot (featuring a Luigi Mangione type), on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to pods.
Website | Instagram