CHAPTER1
BART
Usually, my friends and I had a rule. The last person to arrive at any get-together had to pick up the tab. That person was almost always me, but today, my dad had insisted that he would be paying for us.
The mood was somber and we were all dressed in black as we filtered into the sports bar in our old neighborhood and got our drinks. Today, things were different, and for me at least, they always would be.
From now until the day they put me in the ground, things would never be the same again.
“To Dean,” Tanner said, raising his glass and glancing up as if he could see my father looking down on us from heaven above. “Mr. Philips, you fought long and you fought hard. It was an honor to know you and you can rest assured that you will be missed.”
Shawn nodded, blinking hard and looking at me. He lifted his beer until it was hanging next to Tanner’s drink. “Your old man was a class act. I’m sure he and your mom are really happy to be reunited up there, but knowing that doesn’t make it any easier for those of us left down here.”
“True.” I blew out a soft breath as I looked around the table, glad to have my closest friends here with me. “Thank you all for being here today.”
“The funeral was beautiful,” Stephanie, Jeremiah’s wife, said. “I only met him a few times, but he would’ve been proud of you for it. You did well.”
“Really well,” Larisa added, managing a small smile as she leaned against Tanner’s arm. “The service was lovely. Father Al spoke so fondly about your dad and all of you. I can just imagine that it must’ve been a real treat to see those two together.”
I chuckled, realizing that now was the time to really start cherishing all those memories I had. If I didn’t talk about them and reminisce with these people who knew my father and needed to talk about it too, then I would forget—and forgetting wasn’t something I ever wanted to do.
“They were great when they were together,” I agreed. “Father Al may be pushing a hundred, but he treated my dad like his best friend and maybe even a son. He was really there for us after my mom passed.”
Shawn suddenly snapped his fingers, grinning as the light of a memory sparked behind his eyes. “Do you guys remember that time Mr. Philips caught us drinking back in high school, and instead of punishing us, he sent us to Father Al?”
Tanner laughed and glanced down at his fiancée to explain. “Dean thought Father Al would make us feel so guilty that we’d never drink again, but he didn’t. All he did was tell us that experimentation was normal but that we should always be responsible about it.”
“Yeah, but then he dragged us into that community-service program for two weeks,” I said, smiling as I shook my head. “It’s amazing how he made us feel like we got off scot-free while also exposing us to the dangers of abusing alcohol, especially when it starts at that age.”
“Your dad was definitely working with a plan when he sent us to him,” Jeremiah agreed. “It sure worked a lot better than just lecturing us or grounding us. I’ve never forgotten some of the stories those kids told.”
“Dad was always working with a plan,” I said, sighing when I thought about the biggest plan of all that he never quite managed to get to. “Even at the end there, he told me he was ready to go and that he would be leaving me soon, but that he set aside some cash for us to have one last drink on him. The cancer might’ve taken him but not before he was ready. He’s at peace now. I guess that’s the most important part.”
Quiet tears tracked down Steph and Larisa’s cheeks, and Jeremiah, Shawn, and Tanner’s eyes were all glistening. Just like mine probably were.God, this sucks.
“I just wish he didn’t have to go with so many regrets, you know?” My throat constricted as I said it. I cleared my throat in an attempt to get rid of the giant lump that seemed to have moved in there permanently.
Shawn cocked his head at me. “What regrets did he have?” he asked.
Reaching into my inner pocket, I took out an old wrinkled piece of paper.The greatest plan of all that he never got through.
“It’s his bucket list.” I carefully opened it up and turned it around to show it to them. My dad’s familiar scrawl was etched onto it for all eternity—or at least as long as I could keep the paper in one piece. It was a reminder that he had been here and that he’d had so much more planned for his life than he ever got to do.
It was written in a combination of faded pen and pencil, all in different colors, and clearly added to over the years. I tapped beside some of the items at the top. “These that are crossed off are the only things on here that he got to do.”
“Marrying the love of his life and having a child with her,” Larisa read, then glanced at me and smiled. “Those are two huge, amazing ones to have crossed off.”
“Yeah, but you’ll notice he only ever got to do a few of them.” I moved my finger down to the bulk of the list, where, sadly, there were no lines scored through the writing. “He never got to most of the extraordinary stuff, like seeing the Northern Lights, riding a camel at the pyramids, and going scuba diving.”
Jeremiah narrowed his eyes at the list. “Hey, there was the rugby test match you took him to watch at Twickenham in England. That’s pretty fucking extraordinary.”
“Sure, but that was the only one of those things that he got to do. We were planning on going to Iceland next, but then his diagnosis happened and we just weren’t sure it was a good idea to go that far.”
“He got to do the most important stuff,” Tanner said. “My dad still wanted to go deep-sea fishing before his time came. I asked him once why he didn’t go before they had me, when he was younger and wasn’t spending most of his money on me and just surviving. He said that going would’ve been an experience but that nothing would beat the experience of being a dad teaching his son to fish normally and getting to do it together as often as we did.”
I leaned forward, my beer between my palms as I stared at the bubbles rising up to the surface. “Both of my parents died younger than they should’ve. So did your dad and Larisa’s. So did Jer’s brother and so many others. Do I want to marry the love of my life and have kids with her? Sure. If I have kids, a boy or a girl, I’ll teach them to fish and take them out on the water, but I don’t want to wait until then before I start doing the other stuff I want to do.”
Jeremiah shrugged. “Then don’t wait. None of us can keep expecting to have time to get to do the things we want to do later.”