With a grunt, Dad nodded, as if that made perfect sense to him.
He went to the fridge and pulled out two beers. I smiled a little as he popped off the caps and handed me one of them. He took a long drink and so did I. Then he leaned against the counter with his beer in hand and raised his eyebrows at me, as if to say,Go ahead.
“I got a job offer. Offensive coordinator at the university level.”
He nodded in acknowledgment.
“It’s wild. They came looking for me. Reached out over the summer, wanted me to come out and visit the campus, talk to them about the position. So, I did. I didn’t tell anyone. I guess mostly because I didn’t think it would go anywhere.”
“But it did.”
“Yeah, it did. They offered me the job.”
“You haven’t said where.”
I let out a breath. “Yeah. I know. That’s because it’s at the University of South Carolina.”
Dad nodded slowly for a moment, then took another drink of his beer. I took a long pull of mine.
“Are you going to take it?” he asked, finally.
“I don’t know.”
“What does your gut tell you?”
“That there are a lot of good reasons to take it. And a lot of real reasons not to.”
“Like what?”
“It’s a great opportunity. Really good money. A chance to take my career in a new direction, work with more advanced athletes. But it’s in South Carolina.”
“Is that the main drawback?”
“Yeah, but it’s a big one. Tilikum is weird as hell, but I love it here. I was feeling pretty settled. In a good way. And I’ve got nieces and nephews, and we both know Luke’s gonna get married. I want to be here for all that, you know? I don’t want to be like—”
I stopped myself before I said my brother Reese’s name.
Maybe I’d just realized what had been bothering me. My brother Reese had disappeared nearly twenty years ago. He’d missed…every-thing. Annika moving home, the end of the feud with the Baileys, weddings, babies—he was missing all of it.
“You don’t wanna be like Reese,” Dad said, echoing my thoughts.
It was strange to hear him say my brother’s name without the slightest hint of emotion in his voice. My siblings and I avoided talking about Reese, especially around my parents. It was an unspoken agreement that he wasn’t a safe topic of conversation. I suppose I’d expected Dad to spit out his name like a curse word, or at least grumble about him.
“No, I don’t want to be like Reese. In case you haven’t noticed, we’re all pretty pissed at him.”
Glancing away, Dad nodded again. “Yeah. I was, too.”
“You’re not anymore?”
He hesitated for a long moment, his eyes unfocused. “No. I’m not angry. And if I’m honest, I’ve always been a lot more pissed off at myself than I ever was at him.”
I stared at him, my mouth slightly open. I didn’t know what had happened when Reese left. It was one of those things we just didn’t talk about. At the time, I’d been too wrapped up in my own stuff to understand the full extent and impact of what had happened—that Reese had gone and broken off almost all contact with our family.
Dad cleared his throat and took another drink of his beer. I knew him well enough to know the topic was closed. It wasn’t going to do me any good to ask him what had happened between them, or what he meant by being pissed at himself about it. If I did ask, he’d probably just grunt and walk away.
“It’s not the same,” he said, his tone decisive. “If this job is what you want—hell, even if you’re not sure it’s what you want, but you know it’s worth pursuing—then you should take it. What’s the worst that can happen? You hate it, realize you made a mistake, and come back.”
“Come back a failure? Twice?”
