She might have a point, but I was the oldest of us four and was bored out of my mind during our family fling-ding parties we had here. I didn’t do anything as serious as she’s making it out to be. I think we hid her in a barrel once and Journey and I laughed for about an hour while our parents looked for her, but other than that, I can’t think of a time I’ve left a bad mark on my reputation with the Quinn family.
“Well, now that I know what’s going on, I feel better. I’m glad we cleared things up.”
Melody shuffles her head from side to side. “I’m confused. What did we clear up again?”
“That Journey is single and needs a distraction, and she was so desperate for a break from real life that she attended an elementary school bake sale. The girl clearly needs to be saved.”
“Saved?” Melody repeats. “Brody, I’m sure your intentions are good, but I assure you, the last thing Journey wants right now is for some guy to save her. Trust me. It won’t end well for either of you.”
Or will it?
2
What woman doesn’t wantto be saved by a strapping young guy? I understand women, and I haven’t met one yet who doesn’t love playing the damsel in distress shit. Maybe Melody just thinks she knows what her sister needs, but Journey was screaming for attention last night. Why else would she kiss me like that out of the blue?
“Dad, you’re not talking in your head. I can hear your thoughts out loud again, and we need to go or we’ll be late for school,” Hannah laments.
My eyes struggle to open, knowing I must leave the comfort of my plush Tempur-Pedic mattress, but Hannah will not let me roll over and steal four more selfish minutes. If she doesn’t get to school ten minutes early, she will end up passing the boy she likes in the hallway near her locker and it will ruin her day. I’m only aware of this from eavesdropping on her phone call last week, but at least I have an answer as to why she has to be at school early.
I drop my arms out to the side, stifling the groan and whine I’d like to growl, but I’m an adult and it’s unacceptable to whine to my whiny tween daughter. Hannah is tapping her toe. “If you let me get up and get dressed, we can get moving, but I’m not jumping out of bed because you’re tapping your foot at me,” I say. The fogginess in my eyes clear and my focus falls upon a blue streak of hair mixed in with Hannah’s natural caramel-blonde locks. Electric blue against blonde. Oh God. If I say something, I’ll wake up to a full head of blue hair tomorrow, so it’s best to avoid this battle for now. It’s only a color.
I grab my phone from the nightstand and scroll through the news app to check out anything important is going on in the world before I step outside, but nope. Same old boring crap. A missed call notification pops up and I’m not sure when I could have missed one. No one calls me at night, or in the morning. I hit the notification, finding a random number I don’t recognize—oh, wait. That’s right, I grabbed Journey’s phone last night right after her little lip-lock tease, added my contact information to her phone and called my number from her phone. I never think that quickly. In fact, I deserve a pat on the back for accomplishing that task. I didn’t exactly receive direct consent from her to obtain her number, but the height difference and my ability to reach higher than she could, helped me get the job done.
I suppose I could call her today and ask permission to call her with the number I stole. It might be the right thing to do.
I’m aware of the time ticking and the shade of red likely glowing from Hannah’s cheeks, but I still have five minutes to take a quick shower, jump into some clothes and run out the door. Unlike Hannah, who tries to steal the—thankfully, endless supply of—hot water in this house, I barely give the shower enough time to heat up, to what most would consider an acceptable temperature, before I’m done.
“Dad, are you kidding me right now? There’s no time for a shower. You don’t need a shower. You’re working in a warehouse all day. Can we just go so we’re not late?”
I wonder if she can hear my eyes rolling at her the same way I can hear hers. If so, there’s no need to respond as I close the bathroom door, crank the water to the left, drop my shorts and step under the icy blast of daggers shooting from the spout. Five, four, three, two, there—warm enough.
Hannah thinks I’ll move faster when she bangs on the door, but in truth, it distracts me from my five-minute routine. I sometimes wonder if she bangs hard enough, her fist will go through the wood. She’s only eleven, though. She’s not forceful enough, but I put little past her.
I inhale the steam, block out the sound of her fist pounding and soap up. “I hate you,” she screams.
There it is. How would we ever get through a morning without those meaningful words straight from her heart? “I love you too, sweetie. I’ll be right out,” I respond.
I get she’s angry at the world and has been for the last two years because of Kristy, but she takes her aggression out on me as if I was the one who screwed up our family. I’m not sure how many details Hannah knows regarding our divorce, but I love her enough not to tell her the truth yet, that her mother was unfaithful and didn’t love us enough to keep our family together. I’ll bury that secret with me for Hannah’s sake, so she doesn’t have to see her mother in a more negative light than she already does, after moving two states away to Connecticut with her boyfriend who’s ten years younger than her.
I’m dressed and at the door by the minute we must leave, and Hannah has simmered down to a mere boiling rage from her explosive fury. Once we’re settled inside the truck, I glance at her in the rearview mirror, finding her icy stare reflecting in the glass window beside her. “Why don’t you just say hi to Gavin?” The moment the words leave my mouth, I decide I would pay any amount of money in the world to take them back because Hannah never mentioned the name Gavin or the fact that she was avoiding him in the hallway. I was listening in on her call.
“What?” she snaps.
“Nothing.”
“How do you know who Gavin is and why are you telling me I should say hi to him?”
A lump forms in my throat and I try to swallow it, but I can’t. My daughter shouldn’t scare me, but she does. “I overheard you mention it somewhere. I’m not sure,” I say.
“You were listening to my phone call with Ivy the other day?”
These kids today don’t even understand what it means to listen in on a call. I can’t physically pick up a phone that’s connected to the same line she’s on and listen to everything from both parties. Technically, I could only listen to one side of the conversation through the door, but she doesn’t even make that difficult because she and her friends video chat, which is essentially a loudspeaker, with a built-ininvitation for me to listen to everything they’re talking about. I hardly see this as being my fault.
“No, but your voice echoes through the hallway,” I try. She might have been whispering through that part of her conversation, but I could still hear it with my ear up against her door.
“I wasn’t talking loud enough for you to hear,” she rebuts.
“Obviously, you were. Back to my point … why don’t you just say hi to this Gavin guy?”
