I rocked back on my heels. “You seem happy.”
He glanced at me, a little startled. “Yeah,” he said. “I am.”
“What changed?”
He wiped his hands on a towel and leaned against the fence. “I stopped trying to be someone I’m not. Started listening more. Fighting less. Let go of a lot of old anger.”
“You’re different,” I said.
“I had to be.” He hesitated. “I know I wasn’t the best father when you were younger. I was angry at your mom, at the situation, at myself. I didn’t always know how to show up.”
I swallowed hard. “I used to think you hated me.”
His face fell. “I never hated you, Dare. I hated how helpless I felt. And I hated that you had to see me that way.”
“I used to think… maybe if I was different, it would’ve been easier.”
He shook his head. “You were never the problem.”
Silence fell, thick but not painful.
I’d been afraid of the truth for so long that it stopped feeling true, just something I made up to scare myself.
Then I heard myself say it. “I’m in love with a boy.”
He didn’t flinch. Didn’t look away. I waited for the recoil, the disappointment, but it didn’t come.
“Is it mutual?” he asked.
“Yeah. At least, it was. I think it still is.”
“You miss him?”
“Every day.”
“Does he know?”
“Not the way I want him to.”
Dad clapped a hand on my shoulder. “Then tell him. If there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that pride will leave you alone faster than love ever will.”
I blinked back a rush of emotion and nodded. And for the first time in a long time, maybe ever, I felt seen by him.
Dad gave my shoulder a firm squeeze before pulling away. He leaned against the fence again, arms crossed, watching the fireflies blink in the hedge like any ordinary summer evening. As if he hadn’t just knocked the air out of my lungs with his acceptance.
“Call him, Darien. Tell Tru what he needs to hear.”
My head snapped toward him. “How do you?—?”
He just smiled. That same serene, wise smile Charlotte wore when she knew something before I said it out loud.
“You really think I didn’t notice?” he asked, turning to face me fully. “The way you lit up every time that boy was around. How miserable you’ve been since he left.”
His confession left me stunned silent. It wasn’t supposed to go like this. He was supposed to shout, throw something, look at me with disappointment on his face. He wasn’t supposed to be… decent.
“He was always more than a friend. Even when you were kids, you looked at him like he was the sun and you were daring it not to burn you.”
I exhaled slowly. “I was a jerk to him. For years.”
