“You haven’t eaten yet, have you?” he asks.
I shake my head.
“Well, let’s get out of this crappy hotel for some chips and salsa then.” He strides out the door to the stairwell. Must know about the elevator situation.
We bat at Mardi Gras beads and streamers, elbowing our way through Singles Night to get to the lobby.
“How about I drive? You look like you could use the rest.” He motions to the left side of the parking lot.
I gape at the familiar metallic-blue Ford F-150, calculating the distance in my head. “Youdrovehere?” He had to have left at four in morning. Right about the time I got off the phone with Jack. “You never drive long distances,” I whisper, feeling the weight behind that gesture.
“I needed to see my son,” he says. “Am I allowed to ask if you’re doing okay?”
It’s my turn to blow past his question.
“Where’s your Land Rover?” I pull on the passenger doorhandle.
He smirks as he pulls us onto the road. “In the shop. Ronny wrecked it. Right before he dropped out of school a month in and left on another European excursion with some gal he met on the internet.”
A snicker tugs at the corner of my mouth. “Interesting,” I say as he traverses the single city block to the FiestaDel Taco—a restaurant we could have walked to just as fast.
A draft of air blows out the front door of this place. It’s movie theater cold inside. Something I missed while…nope. If I’m not going there with my dad, I’m certainly not going there inside my own head.
In a deserted corner booth, he orders two enchiladas with refried beans, and I get the burrito. The moment our waiter disappears, I ask him again: “What are you doing here?”
Tears leak from the corners of his eyes.
“I came to take my son to Silverwood.”
“Did you feel that?” Dad gusts out an elated breath, and I have to keep pinching my arm to make sure that I’m awake. That I’ve not somehow slipped into a warped version of reality where my father’s alter egoenjoyedan amusement park.
“I felt it,” I say as the chest restraint and lap belt lift on our final roller-coaster of the day.
He steps onto the platform that leads riders in a single-file line through an exit gate. Ironically enough, it’s not until we approach the parking lot that I feelmypulse pick up speed.
Don’t be afraid. Be vulnerable.
“Thanks for coming,” I say.
I know most people wouldn’t understand that I needed to disappear at an amusement park at a time like this, but my dad of all people did.
He waits until we’ve both hopped in the front seat of the truck to respond. With his hands at ten and two and his eyes fixed on the windshield, he says, “You shouldn’t have to thank your dad for being there for you.”
I let his words sink in until they’ve settled into the pit of my stomach.
He clears his throat. “When you called a few weeks ago and asked me if I remembered that weekend we went camping… I never forgot it. Only because it wasn’t my finest moment as a parent. I’m sorry for all the times I haven’t been there for you in the ways you needed me to be.”
“I just wanted you to see me,” I admit. “And today you did that.”
He sweeps a hand through his hair and blows out a shaky breath. “We’ve always been so different, you and me. I don’t have to tell you that. Sometimes it scared the shit out of me just how little we could relate to each other. I never felt like I could give you the things you really needed until Jack called me about this job.”
“You got it for me, didn’t you?”
He jerks his gaze to me. “What? Thejob?”
“Yeah. I didn’t want to get the spot because you pulled your strings or because you felt like I needed to amount to something.”
“Reed… I promise you that’s not what happened.”
