"I see," he said finally.
Two words. Inflectionless.
I didn't fill the silence. I'd spent my whole life filling his silences—rushing in with explanations and qualifications to smooth over whatever I'd just said that had landed wrong.
Not this time.
I picked up my fork and looked at my food and didn't say another word.
He ate his meal. I ate mine. We talked about the firm, briefly. About my mother's plans to renovate the Pointe house. About nothing. The conversation moved along its polished surface, and underneath it, everything that had just happened sat perfectly still and unchanged.
My food tasted like cardboard. I chewed mechanically, swallowed, kept my hands steady on the silverware. Across fromme, my father cut his steak with surgical precision, each piece exactly the same size.
When the check came, he paid it without looking at it.
At the coat check, he turned to me.
"You understand what Sunday represents."
Not a question.
"Yes."
"And you're certain this is the choice you want to make."
I looked at him. At the face I'd been trying to please my entire life. Trying to become the reflection he wanted to see.
"Yes," I said.
He looked at me for a moment longer than necessary. Something moved behind his eyes—not anger, not disappointment. Something colder. More calculated.
Then he picked up his coat. Checked his watch.
"Very well."
He buttoned his coat with the same measured precision he'd used on his steak.
"I'll see you Sunday, then."
He walked out through the glass door into the afternoon.
I stood at the coat check and watched him go.
The shaking was worse now. I pressed my hands flat against the counter and breathed.
I'd said no.
The word was still reverberating in my chest. Small and terrifying and more real than anything I'd done in months.
I'd said no, and the building hadn't collapsed, and my father had eaten his meal and paid the check and left. Not the catastrophe I'd spent twenty years anticipating.
But I knew him.
It wasn't over. He'd saidI'll see you Sunday,the way other men saidthis isn't finished. He would be there. Watching. Andwhatever happened on the water would have consequences I couldn't predict.
The invitational was only a week away, tomorrow's scrimmage would decide if Liam and I would be chosen. I still had the chance to shut the whole thing down, a way out of my defiance towards my father.
I walked out of The Laurelwood into the cold afternoon and started toward campus. Thought about Liam. About the boat. About what it would feel like to sit behind, knowing my father was watching from the bank.
