“What?” he snaps, watching me.
“Oh, don’t stop now.” I sweep my hand out magnanimously. “Why don’t you tell me how you really feel? It’s not like I don’t already know, what with the way you can’t even stand to stay in the same house with me for more than three hours. Though, I’ve got to say, adding ‘some princess’s snot-nosed brat’ to those college applications will really give it a certain flair. So, thanks for that, I guess.”
I barely catch the look on his face when I sweep past him, but it’s slack and surprised, and I want to tell him, Yes. I know. Of course, I already knew all of this. It’s just different, hearing it all laid out like that.
It stings.
I drop on the couch in the den and try not to let it bother me so much. I’ll be out of his hair soon, and he can have his house back. We’ll probably end up rarely speaking to one another. Holidays. Birthdays. I can see it now, me calling him on Father’s Day and faking through it, pretending he’s still the same guy who built me that treehouse and taught me how to catch a football.
I don’t turn when I hear him walk into the room, keeping my eyes fixed to the TV. Strangely, Vandy’s mom is there. She’s covering a story about fraud down at the board of education. Sometimes watching Mrs. Hall makes me wish I’d turned out to be a better kid—like I could have a mom like that, with warm eyes, who actually gives a shit.
And then I remember the stuff her own kids are getting up to.
My dad picks up the remote control, turning the TV off. The room goes silent, darker, thick with awkward tension. “Reyn,” he starts, and he’s standing there shifting around, hands planted on his hips, looking anywhere but at me. “You’ve got it all wrong.”
I snort bitterly, wishing he’d just go away. Vandy will be here in thirty minutes.
“You were just a boy when you went away,” he goes on. “You came back this angry, quiet man, and the truth is, I don’t know you anymore. I don’t know how to talk to you. I don’t know how to be a dad to someone who’s—” he lifts a hand, gesturing at me like I’m something baffling and foreign. Maybe he’s right. Maybe I am. “You grew up when I wasn’t even looking. Sometimes I go into your room and look in that damn drawer.” He nods when I gape at him. “Oh, I know about the drawer. I also know you haven’t been adding to it quite as much, so I thought maybe… maybe you were working it out on your own.” He falls on the couch beside me, heaving a big sigh. “I don’t know what else to do about it. When I was your age, I was just fucking everything that moved.”
My face screws up. “Gross.” And then, “As if you ever actually stopped.”
I see his nod through my periphery. “I did, once. When I was with your mom. For… for a long time.” He looks around the room, the silence still charged with that uncomfortable silence. “This is her house, you know. Your mom’s? She’s the one who chose it, furnished it, decorated it. Everywhere I look, there she is.” He drops his head to the back of the couch, admitting, “I hate it. I was going to move, but they said I shouldn’t. They told me you needed some normalcy when you came home, the home you remembered. I thought I could handle it, but I guess I was wrong. You’re right; I don’t like being here. But you’re wrong if you think it’s got anything to do with you.”
“You miss her,” I realize.
He smiles sadly. “Like you wouldn’t believe.”
“Then why?” I wonder, my reality shifting. “Why did you fuck around on her? She would have stayed.”
“Christ, Reyn.” He drags a hand down his tried face. “There’s no easy answer to that. Just sometimes, when things get rough, that’s the only thing that…” He trails off, waving his hand, but I don’t need him to finish.
It’s such a carbon copy of what I’d told Vandy that night—about why I steal—that it guts me. “Jesus.”
He must realize I’m drawing the dots, because he nods. “Your mom used to say McAllister men had a sickness. That we sabotage ourselves. That we couldn’t handle things going good, we just had to mess it all up. She never understood
. Not like we do.”
I finally look at him, and I know she was wrong. It’s not about self-sabotage. But it doesn’t really matter. That’s the outcome, every time. “Sometimes I really hate how alike we are.”
“Me, too.” He doesn’t look upset about it, but his smile is rueful. “It’s not all bad, is it?”
It’s easier than I thought it’d be to give him this. “Not all of it.” I pluck idly at a spot of fuzz on the sofa. “Plus, grandpa still has all his hair, so we’ve got that going for us.”
“You take after him, you know.” He nods when I meet his gaze. “Oh yeah, that man would steal the ground right out from under you. He just became a CFO and called it acquisitions.”
We share a small laugh.
“I’m not sure that’s for me,” I admit. Then, quietly, “I can’t go to college next year, Dad.”
Instead of arguing with me about it, he asks, “Why?”
I shrug, falling back against the couch. “I’m not Emory, okay? I didn’t spend the last three years at a nice school, finding out who I am and what I want. I only just recently learned how to drive with someone else sitting in my car. I know I’m too old to be a kid anymore, but...”
“But you’re not ready to be an adult. I’ll let you in on a secret, son. No one ever is. It’s just something that comes and we deal with it, because there’s no other option.” To my surprise, he adds, “But if you think a gap year is going to give you time to become an eighteen-year-old, then I think I understand.”
“You do?”
“One year,” he stresses. “And I want you to work hard, Reyn. Get your GPA up. Keep performing on the field. Use that year for something good. Become an attractive applicant.” He claps me on the shoulder, standing. “I know I can’t tell you not to steal, but would I still be a hypocrite if I asked you to try?”