“I thought you might think so.” His Adam’s apple bobs as he drinks. Up and down like a metronome. Hypnotic.
“It was…”
His reverie is interrupted by his phone vibrating on the bar top.Dadblinks below a photo of Daniel P. Haverford, the airbrushed one from the bus line ads, not even a casual family shot. This was a usual occurrence back in high school. His father disrupting any outing to learn of his son’s whereabouts, who he was with, why he wasn’t home. But this late? I’m surprised Mr. Haverford’s even still awake at this hour.
“I should take this,” Derick says, all the color draining from his face. He slips away from the bar, and when he doesn’t find a pocket of quiet, he shoves out the exit, leaving me alone with two half-full drinks.
A woman offers me her seat before she goes to grab a table in the back, and I take it.
Time becomes fuzzy as I reminisce on the night. Fantasy flurries around me. Derick and I are New Yorkers blowing off steam after a hard day at work—me writing my Alice Kelly biography and teaching film studies courses at a city college before returning to Willow Valley in the summers for another season as the owner of Wiley’s, Derick working as a brand manager during the week and doing photography for the lot on the weekends. Adoptive dog dads to a Jack Russell named Jack (we’re not that creative, and it’s aTitanicreference, okay?) with a wiry personality and a lazy eye and an underbite. Derick makes his famous pancakes every Sunday morning, and I slip Jack the leftovers when we’re done. Life is good.
This liminal two-day trip is a reprieve from summer, the lot, figuring out what lies beyond August. The dream isn’t a reality yet, but the longer I drink and contemplate the possible success of this podcast episode, it feels like it could be.
I get worried after about fifteen minutes, lost in my own head. Derick hasn’t returned. His glass has gone warm. I settle the tab and turn to go.
It takes three frantic scans of the street before I spot him, hunched against a wall, speaking in hushed, harsh tones. The phone is still stuck to his ear. I approach him tentatively, not wanting to alarm him.
“Because,” he bites back. “I’m an adult. You don’t need to know where I am all the time.” A long pause. “I understand I should’ve told you, but what is it you always say: ask forgiveness, not permission? You can’t have it both ways.”
I stand back awkwardly, folding my arms across my chest. It’s all I can do to stop myself from reaching out and hanging up the phone for him.
“We can discuss this tomorrow when I’m home.”
When he pivots into me, he startles. It’s clear I wasn’t meant to overhear that, and I try to stay as neutral as possible. “Everything okay?” I ask.
My question breaks him. He flops back into the brick wall and hangs his head. “My dad’s angry. What else is new?”
“Do you want to talk about why?” My voice registers barely above a whisper. I’ve never seen Derick distraught before. Happy-go-lucky always hangs around him like the cloud of his cologne.
“I didn’t tell him we were here. That we were coming here at all actually.” He doesn’t sound remorseful, but he does sound a tad bitter.
“I thought you were using your dad’s account for our bus tickets and your mom’s rewards points for the hotel and…”
His gaze bores through me, and I immediately understand. He planned this behind their backs, and he did so for us. Maybe even more so for me. And if our conversation about Charlie taught me anything, it’s that his dad’s preoccupation with appearances would’ve hindered this whole trip.
My heart aches for him. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. I assumed they were slamming margaritas and fishing and wouldn’t even notice, but apparently they’re back in Willow Valley and breathing down my neck again.”
“Have you talked to your brothers about any of this?”
“They’re chill, but they’re not around much anymore. Nobody’s there to run interference when my dad blames a failed interview on me screwing too many guys.” He lets out a sarcastic, pinched laugh. “The real screwing. Not the kind we do on Alice’s cabinets.” I give him a flirty shove, happy to hear him sounding more like himself again. “My brothers are reformed textbook players, and my dad has to rag on me for being gay? He doesn’t even know the half of it.”
“You’ve graduated. You can get a job in marketing and move out now. Things can be different.”
“No,” he says quickly, rapping his knuckle on his thigh, like the sound might summon some answers. “My older brothers got to move away. They got to forge their own paths. My younger brother got the sports genes and gets to play the baby-of-the-family card whenever he wants. Me? Doesn’t matter that I have my own photography business. Doesn’t matter that I graduated with honors. I’m chained to the family business. Dale should’ve been the one to take it on. He’s the one my dad loves best, but no. He moved to Silicon Valley for some start-up I’m ninety-five percent sure never reallystarted up.”
“Can’t you just tell him you want to work somewhere else?”
“Not an option. Not even a conversation.” His jaw clenches. A bulbous blood vessel I haven’t seen before pronounces itself along the side of his neck.
In high school, his dad was demanding. That much couldn’t be covered up. If he talked about his family on our coleader dates, he was talking about his brothers, his cousins, sometimes his mom, but never his dad. Which was weird considering every time his phone buzzed or dinged or beeped, it was his dad, checking in on him or checking up on something.
His stormy eyes grow cloudier by the second. “We made a deal that if I got an internship, apprenticeship, or job right out of undergrad then I’d be let off the leash for good. He’d see my major as a real field. I could pursue opportunities there and work my way to full time. And well, yeah.”
He doesn’t need to tell me the rest. I’m part of the rest. Wiley’s is where Mr. Haverford pulled strings to make the puppet dance.
What Derick said in the storage closet makes more sense:Didn’t exactly have a choice.
