Dad.
It’s hard not to feel a pang of resentment at his appearance now, when I’m spending so much energy trying to stay calm, trying to keep my head about me for this day. It’s Dad, after all, who I associate with these—I think of Greer saying it, her brows lowered, a question in her voice—panic attacks, my first one coming in the middle of the night while I’d sat alone beside his hospital bed, only a half day after he’d had the stroke that’d brought me back to Ohio for the first time in years. That night, barely two years ago now, I’d felt trapped, held in place against my will, my heart thudding against the bones in my chest. I’d felt my body swing wildly between hot and cold. I’d thought I’d die there in that room, sterile and close, all the equipment keeping my father alive mockinglyuseless to me.
I clear my throat and set my jaw, my eyes scanning his face. I can tell by the look in his dark eyes—one physical quality we don’t share—that he’s irritated, and I straighten my shoulders in preparation for whatever shit he’s about to fling at me, so long as he doesn’t get it anywhere near Kit. The tiny barometer for panic I’ve had living inside me dips low, nearly nonexistent, my brain and body steeling themselvesin preparation.
I turn away from the mirror and face him, spotting his girlfriend Candace at his side, who greets me with a friendly smile. Candace—a recovering addict herself who met my dad early on in his recovery efforts—has her own share of ugly family baggage, and she’s admirably, consistently immune to any tension that my dad and I give off when we’re around each other.
“Nice to see you, Candace,” I tell her. “You look great.”
She blushes, fingers at the corsage she wears around her wrist, a gift from Kit that matches the boutonniere my dad’s wearing. “I’m just so glad to be here,” she says in her raspy, smoke-scraped voice, her eyes welling up. Candace and my sister aren’t close, not really, but I gather Kit’s kindness to her means a lot, given that Candace is pretty estranged from her own kids.
“Dad.” I shift my eyes toward him, as much an acknowledgment as it is a warning for whatever thatlook is in his.
“Guess we’ll be going to our seats.” His jaw tightens determinedly against the slight sag that persists on his left side, his still-dark brows now slashing resentment on his face. Not for the first time I wish Kit had left him off the invite list. He’s better, no one could deny that—not drinking, not betting, and he’s got a good thing going with Candace, who’s kept him off cigarettes and natters on about heart-healthy recipes every time I call for a check-in, as much a nursemaid and mother to him as a girlfriend.
But he’s still my dad, which means he’s been defensive and lazily cruel about Kit’s choice to have me walk her down the aisle instead of him. Last night as we’d left dinner, my nerves still jangled and my palm still tingling from Greer’s touch, he’d stiffly endured a hug from Kit and said, “Nice of you to invite me to this, even though I didn’t have anything torehearse for.”
I’d watched, a familiar mix of anger and shame coursing through my veins, as she’d blinked away a split-second well of tears. Ben’s hand on the nape of her neck and the steady look of censure he’d directed at my dad had at least reminded me that I’m walking Kit down the aisle to a guy who understands her. Kit wouldn’t want a scene—some ugly, ultimately useless effort to curb my father’s worst instincts—but she would want to know someone’s there for her, sharing the sting of his flailing, childish complaints.
I don’t have to worry about making a scene, don’t have to worry about being so unflappable for Kit, who’s happily ensconced somewhere upstairs with her friends, and at the moment, I’m grateful.
“Dad,” I say to him, my voice pitched low to avoid the chance of anyone overhearing embarrassing Averin family drama—a skill I perfected over years of dodging the prying eyes and open ears of neighbors, teachers, social workers. “I’ll say this to you one time. You do anything to fuck this day up for Kit, and this is the end for you and me. When she walks by you going up that aisle, the only thing you do is smile and tell her she’s beautiful. Youunderstand me?”
The sad thing is, this works on my dad, who looks—well, if not chastened, exactly, then at least resigned. It’s the one and only ace up my sleeve I’ve ever held against my gambler father, and given the precarious nature of my childhood, I’ve never felt all that guilty about daring him to take that bet. I know—from the one worn, creased photograph of my mother I keep in my wallet—that I’m his best living memory of her, that he looks at me and sees her green eyes. It’s the worst advantage of my youth, that my dad always saw me as a generous but painful last gift from my mother, when he’s always seen Kit as something else—an unfortunate reminder of his basest impulses in the wake of my mother’s death. When Dad was at his lowest, debts so deep he couldn’t recount them all, drowning in booze, I could always shock him into too-brief periods of sobriety with little more than an uttered warning:All’s I need is a bus ticket, Dad.One bus ticket and you’d never seemy face again.
I’d never have done it, of course, not without Kit. I wasn’t stupid enough to think the two of us—me only five and a half years older than her—could ever make it out on our own without the buffer of a legal guardian keeping us out of the system. And while I might’ve had a chance out there once I got old enough, there was no way I’d leave her. My sister had been my heartbeat ever since the day her mother, looking glassy eyed and uninterested, had set Kit’s warm, damp-diapered body next to mine on the couch and walked out the frontdoor for good.
I’d loved Kit before that, in the kind of simple, little-boy way that came from seeing her tiny fingernails and her rare, gummy smile, almost always saved up for me. But that day, I’d known something different about my responsibility to Kit, and the rhythm of my life and heart had changed accordingly, apat pat patthat sounded like her name, quick and pressured and full of the many things I needed to do to keep her safe and healthy. For the first few years after her mom had gone, that’d mostly meant keeping my dad upright enough to do the basics while I grew tall enough and smart enough and just criminal enough to do more and more on my own—operate a stove, forge Dad’s signature, steal a can of SpaghettiOs from a 7-Eleven.
Later, it’d meant keeping her from the very worst of his behaviors. It’d meant adding extra spray starch to the dress shirt he’d need to wear for a parent-teacher conference, masking the smell of alcohol that would seep out of his pores. It’d meant breaking the ribs of a loan shark I’d caught lurking outside our apartment building. It’d meant controlling his temper the same wayI’m doing now.
He nods, offers Candace his arm, then heads outside toward their seats, leaving me alone again. My head is quieter now, more focused, and I know, Iknowit’s fucked up. Maybe I could solve all my current problems by taking my father on the job with me. Maybe I’d stop sabotaging shoots with shaking hands and a sloppy, impatient eye if I had him there, if I had some external motivator to keep myshit together.
I hear a footstep on the stairs behind me and mentally slap myself, remembering the true external motivator for calmness today. I’ll turn and see her now—Kit, my baby sister, my baby sister on herweddingday, and shit, however hard I’m riding myself about not showing any panic, I know already I’m not going to be able to hide the tears that are coming, pressing tight in my throat.
But it’snot Kit there.
It’s Greer.
I try to tell myself that the flush of heat I feel is some remembered shame from last night. But with all the effort it’s taking me to stay even-keeled, I can’t summon the energy to really believe that this feeling is anything other than exactly the same one I’d had when I’d first seen her two years ago, rushing into Kit’s front door like an actual breath of fresh air, something about her voice like a song to me. My hand had twitched at my side, searching for my camera. Some way to freezeher in my mind.
It does the same thing now as I watch her come down the stairs, wearing a long dress of the palest blue, the layers of fabric thin and flowing, the shape of her legs beneath them a teasing curve every time she takes a step. She’s got a small gardenia tucked behind her left ear, tiny silver earrings dancing at her lobes, a matching necklace, and paths of perfect skin dappled with freckles that make me swallow in suppressed desire.Jesus Christ.
“Let’s get this show on the road,” says a clear, sharp voice that breaks the spell. Zoe, right behind Greer, tall and blond and like she walked out of a magazine in that same dress Greer’s wearing, but I didn’t even notice her. “I need a glass of champagne and a piece of that cake I saw in the dining room. Hi, Alex,” she says, patting my arm as she walks toward the doorway.
I snap my mouth shut, only now realizing it’d been open.Fuckinggreat.
Greer stops beside me, and—hell. That gardenia in her hair. I want to know how that smells, mixedwith her skin.
“You’re okay?” she asks, barely a whisper. She’s not looking at me; she’s keeping her eyes toward the door, focused on the guests who await. If Kit’s back there, she wouldn’t even know about this exchange, same as she doesn’t know about the morning Greer handed me my ass two years ago, same as she doesn’t know I hyperventilated in the alley of her favorite bar last night. I want to say something to thank her for her discretion, for keeping the promise she made to me, but when I hear the sound of Kit’s throat clearing behind us at the top of the steps, I know it’s not the time.
“I’m okay.” She nods and walks to Zoe, leaving meand Kit alone.
She’s beautiful in her dress, the same fabric that her friends are wearing, but a bright cream, simply cut, and I wouldn’t be surprised if Kit—unfussy as she’s always been—let her friends do the picking. I know already that nothing really matters to her about today but who’s at the end of that aisle. It’s a silly, backward, sexist tradition, “giving the bride away,” and we both know it, but I’m suddenly so glad she asked. Glad that I’ve got this moment with her onsuch a big day.
“I don’t know why I’m nervous,” she says, those big black eyes of hers turned up to me, full of everything unfathomable about her—how smart she always was, how much trust she had in me, how muchshe needed me.
How much that had filled me up and emptied me out, all atthe same time.
