“I figured. Your house is gonna be empty without your brother there, bouncing off the walls and talking your ear off.”
“He’ll be back,” I said with more confidence than I felt.
Dad’s next move was sudden, going from casually reclining in his chair to bracing his elbows on his desk, staring at me with intense accusation. “How could you not haveknown?”
Wave after wave of guilt hit me square in the chest. “I don’t fucking know. I’ve been asking myself the same question since he told us. The last year has been playing like a movie on a loop in my brain, like I’ll pick up on clues if I keep thinking.”
That wasn’t a good enough answer for him, and it wasn’t good enough for me either.
“I asked you to look after him, Santi.”
“He’s twenty-four. I can’t...god, I don’t know. We’ve been together nearly every day since we started Unrequited. I can’t even pinpoint when he started sliding.”
He slammed a hand down on his desk and pinched the bridge of his nose. “You should’ve known. You should’ve fucking known. He’s your baby brother. You hang the moon in his eyes. If you’d seen, if you’d told him to stop…”
I could’ve thrown his words right back in his face. Told himhewas the dad,heshould have known. It washisirresponsible and reckless choices that had started all this.
But this was my dad, and he was just as scared as I was right now. The accusations he threw at me sounded well-rehearsed. He’d been saying the exact same thing to himself since Diego told us he was going to rehab.
My head hung low, and for the first time in a week, I gave into the shame, the guilt, the overwhelmingness of it all. Too much had happened, too much to handle, too many conflicting emotions roiling around like a stormy sea in my gut.
“I should’ve, you’re right.”
Like he hadn’t even heard me, Dad went on, almost like he was talking to himself. “I can’t believe he went that way. Not Diego. Not after his mother, after all he saw…”
The thing about my dad was, he was a scary motherfucker. I didn’t say that about a lot of people. But he was. Grizzled, covered in prison yard tatts, scarred in more ways than one. He had changed while I was growing up, got himself straight, stayed out of jail and worked an honest living, yet he’d never lost his edge. Even at fifty-five, if I didn’t know him and saw him coming toward me on the sidewalk, I’d cross the street. That might’ve made me sound like a wimp, but it was just smart thinking.
But right there, in his pristine office in his pristine body shop, he cried. Fat tears dripped from his eyes faster than he could wipe them away. I didn’t try to comfort him in any way. I waited him out, pick, pick, picking at my jeans.
I’d only seen him cry once before, and that was when my mom died when I was eight. I’d heard him cry through his flimsy particle board bedroom door, carefully hiding his sorrow from me. Probably trying to protect me from it, but it had only taught me to keep shit inside—bury it, push it down until I couldn’t anymore.
I guess that was what was happening here in front of me. My big, scary motherfucker of an old man couldn’t tamp it down anymore.
He sniffed and wiped his eyes with the back of his hand. “Ah, god. You and your brother are gonna be the death of me. Shit.”
“When have I ever given you trouble?”
That had his tears drying up faster than a walk in the desert. He hit his desk again, but this time, it was accompanied by laughter. “Oh, Jesus. You’re a comedian now? Do I really have to bring up the time you rolled up in a cop car after being gone for two days?”
He didn’t mention I’d been fifteen anddrivingthe cop car.
I laughed, letting it roll through me and ease some of the thick tension between us. “In the last five years.”
“No.” He folded his hands on his desk. “No, you haven’t given me any trouble lately. Don’t even have a permanent record.”
“I’m counting on them having really expunged my juvie records.”
He shrugged. “You’re a rocker. If your fans ever find out about your checkered youth, they’d probably think you were more hardcore. Now, if you were trying to teach preschool...”
We both snorted at the idea, more of the tension between us clearing.
“You gotta bring the band by for dinner this week. Alicia likes cooking for you boys. The last time, Murray licked his plate clean. I swear, if she kept a journal, she’d have written that down. As it is, she went on and on about what a nice boy he is.”
My old man had married Alicia when I was in high school. She’d come into my life late enough, I never saw her as a mother figure, but Diego had. She’d been good to him, good to all of us really. Dad was fully aware he’d married up.
I chuckled, taking out my phone to set a reminder to ask the band. “Sounds good. Should I invite Maeve?”
He cocked his head. “Maeve?”
“The new drummer.”
“Ah. Yeah, Alicia would have my hide if she found out I hadn’t invited a member of the band. To tell the truth, I don’t hold anything against the girl.”
“Nah, she hasn’t done anything wrong.”
After that, my old man took me back out to the garage and showed me the Mustang he’d been working on. I’d worked as a mechanic before Unrequited got serious about making music, and I still missed getting under the hood, dirtying my hands. Tonight, he put me to work doing the grunt stuff. I cleaned tools and wiped down lug nuts. I knew it was a punishment of sorts, but I saw it as a mercy. If I wasn’t here, keeping busy, I’d be in my empty house, the storm in my gut not letting me rest, wondering how Diego was, and yeah, thinking about Maeve on her air mattress, hoping she was comfortable and wishing like hell I didn’t care.