“I didn’t think so.”
He blows out a breath from his nose that resembles the start of a chuckle, but then he grows quiet again. So quiet it’s painful. I wish I knew what he was thinking. I wonder how much I’ve forgotten about him.
He isn’t going to be like Reed. He doesn’t plan to spend time with me for me to find out.
“Teddy?”
I swivel my head at the sound of my name uttered from the cabin doorway. My dad’s standing with an uncomfortable look in his eye I can’t ignore. There isn’t anything more to say or ask of Miles anyway. I’m better off not exploring what this gravitational pull is that I feel every time I’m around him.
“Well, good night, Miles,” I say. And I walk away before he has the chance to say anything back. Even if he wasn’t going to.
“Dad, what are you doing still up?”
He waits for me in the doorway in his plaid pajama pants and fuzzy loafers, his reading glasses still on the bridge of his nose. My mom’s asleep on the couch behind him, her feet hangingoff the end of one of the recliners. Her own pair of readers are tucked in her hair at the crown of her head and a book is draped open on her abdomen.
I fall into step behind him toward the kitchen.
“Just catching up on a little work.” He hikes his open laptop to the edge of the counter and my eyes flash to the black screen—the one that should have his AutoCAD software open on it had he been telling the truth.
“You too?”
He shrugs his shoulders. “Fathers worry. It’s in our DNA. Especially where boys are concerned.”
“I promise you have nothing to worry about.”
“Even though you’re keeping things from us?” His gaze flits to the front window.
“Reed took me out on his family boat.” I leave out the part about us skinny dipping. I don’t think he’d appreciate hearing that.
“And Miles?” he pries.
I motion toward the dock. “You had a front-row seat to that conversation. It lasted all of ten minutes, and it was one-sided. I’ll let you guess who did the talking.”
He sort of chuckles then yawns. “All right, well, we should get some sleep.”
I make my way toward the stairs and stop.
“Dad, why do you and Mom hate him so much? Did he do something to you?”
“He needs to tell you himself, Teddy,” he says.
Figures.
“You know, it’s funny… a week ago, everyone sure seemed to have all the answers about my life.”
Like Margene, my dietician, with her advice to “increase omega-3 fatty acid consumption for brain cell repair.” I hate salmon. And Lucas, my occupational therapist, with his “image-matching memory games for honing attention to details.”The only details I notice now are the ones being hid from me.
“Now, no one wants to own up to anything,” I finish.
I don’t want to care, but I do. That much is obvious. I care about who Reed and Miles are. As much as I thought I could get away with leaving my past behind, I’m having to face it head-on.
I leave my dad and spend half the night staring at that damn sketch, feeling it transform me into a human mood ring. It’s Reed who turns me yellow. Nervous, the color of a bright sunny day and the sweet and sour flavor of lemonade. Miles turns me green. Mixed emotions, envy, the color and uncertainty of a watermelon. You never know what you’re going to get.
Observing them doesn’t grow tiring, but replaying everything they’ve said to me since we’ve crossed paths does. I guess I keep thinking something they said will be the key that fixes me. The thing that unlocks this side of myself I know nothing about.
The harder I squint, the more I try to imagine them. I spend over three hours ruminating on a sketch I don’t remember drawing and on memories that disappeared a long time ago until the madness gets so overwhelming, I slip into a sleep-induced oblivion where I don’t have to think or remember anything at all.
At five in the morning, I creep out the front door without disturbing my parents. They relocated to their bedroom sometime after I went upstairs. Pulling the door ajar, something smooth and rectangular falls on the tops of my feet. It’s too dark in the entryway to decipher the object, so I carry it tucked under the crook of my arm out the front door into the moonlight.
