I love you more than life itself.
- Ray
My eyes sweep over the note and my father’s clumsy handwriting. Right, tomorrow is my parents’ twentieth wedding anniversary. Dad prides himself in organizing something special for Mom to come home to every year, but he really overdid it this time. There’s got to be at least twenty bouquets in here.
Let me guess, twenty bouquets for twenty years together?
Please excuse me while I hurl.
He cares so much it makes me sick. It’d be so much easier if he didn’t take her on romantic getaways. So much easier if he didn’t do every fuckingthing imaginable to keep the spark alive. If he didn’t love her, I’d have no problem shitting on their parade. No issue watching their marriage go up in flames.
Just say the word and I’ll bring the matches.
Fine, I’m a coward. I talk a big game, but I’m too much of a pussy to tell him. Either way, it’s my mom’s mess to clean up. Only she can be the one to confess what she did.
What she’s been doing for years now. Maybe if it’d just happened once with some rando,maybe my dad could find it in himself to forgive her.
But she made her bed when she chose him.
Footsteps echo down the hall, and I swivel to see my dad pad into the kitchen with Hank on his tail. They’re probably on their way out to meet a few other guys for poker night.
“Why aren’t you at practice?” my dad asks.
Hi to you, too, Father.
“Coach let us off early. I figured I’d grab a shower and change before detention.”
“Who you trying to smell good for, hotshot? That Brie girl, perhaps? You two going on a date?” Hank pokes fun at me. “Fingers crossed that doesn’t end up on the internet, too.”
“It’s called hygiene, old man,” I counter, and Hank lets out a throaty laugh. Crazy how I’d never have the balls to say that to my own dad but can say it to Finn’s without blinking.
Hank has always been a much better sport than my dad. He’s the cool dad who laughs at his own jokes—you know the one. But don’t think for a second he won’t kick your ass to Mars and back if you fuck up. Police station, anyone?
Overall, when he’s not yelling at you with that freaky ass vein bulging out of his forehead, he’s pretty worry free. Might have something to do with the fact that he’s loaded and set for life.
Mydad is the polar opposite.
Raymond Emery is the frigid, uncomfortable with affection Dad who hides under the pretense of only wanting what’s best for his kid without ever listening to said kid. It’s one of the many reasons why he and Hank balance each other out so well. Finn’s pops reminds mine to take a breath every once in a while.
I snort thinking about what Hank said earlier.
One thing is for sure: I am not trying to smell good for this Mr. Tate motherfucker. I knew these after-school detentions were going to be a pain in the ass when I saw my old science teacher waltz into the detention center last Sunday.
The guy hates Finn, Theo, and me with a burning passion for stirring up trouble in his classroom freshman year. I thought surely, he couldn’t still be holding a grudge after all this time, but the way he looked at me?
I swear I saw a smile.
The bad kind.
I could practically hear him thinking, Karma, bitch.
He also looked like he’d rather be sipping on a jizz smoothie than monitoring detention, so there’s that. There were ten of us in that room. And the son of a bitch had to give me the thickest poetry book in history to copy for the next two weeks.
Coincidence?
I think the fuck not.
Little did he know I’d find something in there to entertain myself. Highly doubt I’ll be lucky enough to snag another letter from that angry chick, but it was fun while it lasted.