“We used a few staples to close the wound on his head,” Dr. Bowen told Tati and me with zero inflection. “He’s going to be sore when he wakes up, but he’s lucky. Drinking as much as he did can be life-threatening.”
After she left, I let my head fall into my hands and blew out a heavy breath.
I stayed that way a long time.
Tati sat beside me, silent, for the duration.
“You should go home,” I told her sometime around two in the morning. “You’ve done more than enough.”
She looked at me like I’d insulted her. “I’m not going anywhere.”
A long time passed before she spoke again, quietly and with a lot less poise. “I’m afraid this is my fault.”
I gaped at her. “How do you figure?”
“Your dad came by last night. He wanted to talk things out.” She lowered her voice, leaning in a little. “He’d been drinking. Too much. I can’t enable that kind of behavior. I can’t subject my little sister to it, especially considering what happened to our parents. Also, I don’t have the emotional energy to act as someone else’s mother. So I told him to go home. Two hours later, you called. I knew in my gut that something bad had happened.”
“God, Tati.” Her parents—Piper’s parents—were killed by a drunk driver. It’s no wonder she has no tolerance for Davis’s bullshit. I swallowed around the stone that had been lodged in my throat since I’d walked in on Damon cornering Piper. “I’m sorry he bothered you. I’m sorry he—”
Lost control, is what I was going to say, but is that even it?
Is Davis capable of controlling his drinking?
“No need to apologize,” Tati told me. “You’re not to blame for your father’s actions.”
“Yeah, well, he’s not up for making things right at the moment. I hope you know that tonight, and whatever happened between you guys last week…that’s not my dad. I mean, it is, these days. But he’s better than that. Or he used to be.”
The truth is, I hardly knew Davis before this summer. The last six weeks, he hasn’t been authentic. He puts on this cool-guy facade that’s so overblown it’d be comical if it weren’t so tragic.But he’s not a jerk at his core. He’s lonely and possibly a little sad, and he needs help. I knew, sitting there in the waiting room, that he probably needed more help than this tiny hospital was gonna be able to offer him.
“I’ve known your dad a while now,” Tati said.
“Since Christmas. Piper told me.”
She smiled, sheepish. “He’s compassionate, driven, and funny. But it seems like he’s losing that version of himself.”
I nodded somberly. She’d put my worries into words. It felt like permission to be scared. To be pissed. To ask for help. Permission to demand thatDadask for help.
She patted my arm. “He and I need some time apart, but you’re welcome to call me anytime. I’m always around if you need someone.”
“Thanks,” I said, hoping she understood how much I meant it.
I miss my mom, but last night, Tati was a pretty okay substitute.
Piper’s lucky.
Like she was listening in on my thoughts, Tati said, “Have you talked to my sister?”
I shook my head. “I don’t want to bother her with this.”
She gave me a mystified look. “She wouldn’t feel bothered. She’d want to be here with us. Withyou.” She sighed, closing her eyes a minute. When she opened them, she looked bone-tired. “She came home from Hudson’s with Gabi. Why, when she went there with you?”
Because a lot of crazy shit went down, I thought.
But I had no idea how much Piper had shared with Tati, andI wasn’t about to tell her story without her approval. I went with, “I figured out some stuff about why she and Gabi spent most of the summer not talking.”
“Ah,” Tati said. “The Damon story.”
So she did know.
