“I don’t remember the last time we’ve had a conversation.”
My eyes flicker back to the picture of us, and Dad follows my line of sight.
“It hasn’t been that long,” he says.
Yeah, it has, but I relax back in my seat. I’ll admit—I’m disarmed yet cautious. He’s never waved a white flag, but I wouldn’t put it past him to knife me in the back. “Let’s talk.”
“All right. Let’s talk.” Dad taps his fingers together. I search for the last conversation Dad and I had without it turning into a slam fest. I look over at the photo again. Dad and I had made a birdhouse together for a school project—the same day I first used a hammer and a nail.
“I fix stuff,” I say. “At a bar. It’s what I was hired to do, and I’m good at it.”
“I know what you’ve been doing. At the bar, at school and with the gym.”
Anger tremors deep within me. The lone outward sign is the grim lift of my lips. “You’ve had me followed.”
“You’re my son and you left home. What did you expect me to do?”
“You kicked me out and I expected you to come after me. Not let me live in a car for two weeks.” The words slip out and I shift, immediately wishing I could take them back.
As a child I wondered if Dad’s hands were a crystal ball with all the answers because of the way he’d lose himself in them when I stood in the middle of this room waiting for whatever punishment for my crimes. I know now there’s no magic—just staring.
“I wanted you to ask me to return home,” he finally says.
“Wouldn’t have happened.” I would have lived in a car forever rather than crawl to him.
“I know,” he mumbles, then clears his throat. “And I don’t think you would have returned home even if I had come after you. I hated using your mother as the excuse to force you back, but I didn’t think you’d come home any other way. It was obvious when you didn’t return that weekend that you were set on proving something and I know how you are when you get determined.”
If he had asked me... No, if he had begged, I would have come home, but begging isn’t his style and crawling isn’t mine. Maybe Dad’s right. Maybe I was set on proving something.
“Do you know what I see when I look at you?” Dad asks.
“A failure? A loser? A disappointment?” If I say it first, it steals the sting from his words.
“Me.” Dad unbuttons the top of his shirt. “Every time I look at you, I see me and it’s a mirror I don’t like looking into.”
Jesus Christ. I lean forward and scrub my face with my hands. For years we’ve torn each other down. That’s how we communicate—in glares and words of hate. How the fuck am I supposed to respond to this? My head spins as if I’ve been knocked around.
“You remind me of myself,” he says. “Especially at your age. I thought your grandfather was going to kick me out before I graduated from high school.”
Neither he nor his parents have mentioned this before. Dad, in my head, has always been excruciatingly perfect. “What stopped him from doing it?”
“Your grandmother.” His eyes become distant and so does the grin on his face. “Just like your mother would have stopped me if she wasn’t involved with Rachel at the time. She’s still mad at me—for kicking you out.”
I massage my neck. The muscles tighten there, creating the sensation of choking. “You messed up? When you were my age?”
“I messed up then...and I messed up now.”
Is he apologizing? I glance over my shoulder to see if Mom is there, coaching him. The door is shut and it’s only the two of us. “How bad did you fuck up?”
“Worse than you.” Dad picks up the report card. “I never made straight Bs. I never voluntarily worked a job or kept one and I never found something to focus on like you have...When was the last time you hung out with any of your old friends?”
I shrug. “A while.”
“You spend a lot of time at the gym.”
“Yeah.”
Dad slides over a brochure for top-of-the-line equipment for a home gym. “Rachel will be spending most of her time in physical therapy, so I’m converting the front living room into her own gym and I’m hiring someone to personally oversee her recovery. While I was researching, I found this. I thought you’d like to pick out a few pieces.”