She laughed. “Was it good, at least?”
“It was amazing,” I said. “And still, none of your business.”
“You’re boring. But you met him at the bar, right? Were you careful?”
“Yeah, we were fine.” I tossed her apple core to the garbage. “He’s a nice guy.”
“Not enough of those,” she muttered. “Are you going to see him again?”
“Maybe.” I grabbed a bottle of water from the fridge. “But let’s talk about something else. What were you up to last night?”
“Nothing special,” she said. “Oh, but I talked to Dad. He wants to know when a good time to call you is. I told him you’re off Sundays, so he might call today.”
Damn it. “Sounds good.”
She frowned. “You’re going to have to talk to him eventually, Brooke.”
Not really. I didn’t need anything from him. I didn’t need anything from anyone.
The library needed to sign off on my paycheck, I needed to know where my sister was and if she was safe, and that was it. I’d given up on the dream of a relationship with my dad at least a decade prior.
He was never going to change. He was never going to be my father. There was no use in hoping for something that could never be.
It wasn’t because he was an addict or a convict. Ria was both of those too. Yeah, she was a kleptomaniac with a drug problem. She’d done shitty things to get her fix and make it from one day to the next. But she wasn’t a bad person.
He was.
Because of him, Mom left one day, and we’d never seen her again. Because of him, I’d basically become Ria’s parent at an age where I should’ve still been playing with dolls. Because of him, I’d had no childhood. Because of him, I was twenty-three going on fifty.
I supposed I could’ve forgiven him for that. A part of me would always resent the fact that I’d never gotten a shot at normalcy because of him, but my sister was my best friend, and I wouldn’t change that for anything.
But I had more memories of him beating us than I had of anything else. I remembered every time we were put into foster care. I remembered when my little sister was with another family on the other side of the state on Christmas. I remembered lying to child protection workers and saying he was the perfect dad just so I could be with her again.
As a kid, I couldn’t protect myself from him. He was the tie that bound me to the only person I cared about. Ria. But as soon as I hit eighteen, he didn’t have an ounce of control over me anymore.
Keeping him out of my life kept me safe.
But I wasn’t sure if Ria would ever stop craving the dad we’d never have.
“I’ll talk to him.” I gave her a smile. “Relax.”
One came to her lips too. “Good. He misses you.”
He missed the money I put on his books twice a month. I doubted he missedme.
Clearing my throat, I glanced out the window. “Any idea what I should plant in the garden this year? I was thinking some peonies.”
“I don’t know what a peony is. But you need more roses. Ooh, and daisies. Daises would be pretty in the windows.” She craned up to glance out the one over the kitchen sink. “What about vegetables this year? Like, some peppers, and some cucumbers, and stuff.”
“I could go for some peppers and cucumbers and stuff.” I smiled her way, walked to the back door, and looked out the glass. “Where would I put them though?”
Ria hopped down and peered out beside me. The yard was small, no more than five hundred square feet in an awkward rectangle, so options were limited. She pointed to the far-left corner. “What about back there?”
A tree blocked out all the sun in that spot. “There isn’t enough lighting.” I glanced to my flower beds beside the porch. “I haven’t planted anything yet, so maybe I could go with hanging baskets this year to make room for them up here.”
“Ooh, and window boxes. Do you have any? We could make some. And I could paint them. With daisies, and roses, and butterflies. Wouldn’t that be pretty?”
I laughed and tucked an arm around her waist. With everything considered, the type of life she led, I often forgot how young she was. She was well aware of the world—very street smart—but still, only a nineteen-year-old who loved daisies, and roses, and butterflies.