“Is it really bad?” I ask, cringing. Guilt bubbles up inside of me, thinking about the envelope from early summer I’d forgotten about. The reason he isn’t around more isbecauseof me, but not because he didn’t want to be spending time with me. I wish he’d told me sooner, instead of it being another secret getting between us.
“Ah.” He waves his hand away like it’s nothing. “That’s not for you to worry about, kiddo. Your dad’s got it covered.” He winks and puts on a face that makes me feel like everything is genuinely okay, even though it really might not be. But I also have to remind myself that he’s said some pretty awful things this summer that have driven a wedge between us. So it isn’t all my fault, and it isn’tjustbecause of the bills.
My mom must’ve never told him that I tried to come out to her. He wouldn’t be able to hide his feelings about it as well as she does.
I wonder what would happen if I did tell him. If I told him right now.
Each time I play through the scenario in my head, the outcome just gets worse as my brain comes up with new and terrible ways he could react. The last one I let myself imagine ishim flipping the table over, the Sierra Mist and chicken sandwich I ordered flying across the milk-saturated carpet.
“Earth to Stevie,” my mom says, and my vision refocuses as she waves her hand in front of my face. I realize I’ve just been staring at the two of them for the past minute or so.
“Sorry, I’m back. I’m here.” I shake the thoughts away as the waitress drops off our drinks.
“I was saying I’m volunteering to work the farmers’ market tomorrow if you want to come with me. I’m sure they could use the extra hands. It goes until four thirty,” she says to me.
“Oh.” Ryan and Nora are picking me up for the airport at 4:15 tomorrow. “I think I’ll stay home, actually, gotta catch up on sleep before school starts,” I reply.
We make some small talk over the next twenty minutes or so, until our food comes. It’s been so long since we’ve all had a sit-down meal together that I think we all need a little warm-up time. But after our food comes and we all dig in, everything starts to feel much more natural. Closer to how things used to be.
“You know, this place used to be a real dive,” my dad says, washing his burger down with a swig of beer. Then he gets on a roll of telling stories from when he was in college and used to come here with his buddies. I’ve heard most of them before, but he never manages to tell exactly the same story twice and his delivery makes me laugh.
He continues, “… so I get up on that bar, get a running start, and body-slide the whole way down the thirty-foot bar. People’s beers and empty glasses went flying everywhere!”
“Last time you told that story the bar was only twenty-five feet long.”
“Bullshit.” He smiles, shaking his head at Mom.
“No, she’s right, Dad. I think you add a few more feet every time you tell it,” I add.
“Ah, what do you guys know,” he replies. He tries to hide his guilty smile behind his beer as he swallows the last gulp.
“Should we swing through Dairy Queen on the way home like old times?” my mom asks as I take my debit card back out of the check holder. “I know it’s been a while, but—”
“That’d be great,” I reply before she can even finish.
Later we pull out of the Dairy Queen parking lot, my dad digging into his hot fudge sundae stacked miles high in a plastic cup as my mom and I try to keep our twists with rainbow sprinkles from dripping over the sides of our cones.
“It’s been alongtime since we’ve done this as a family, hasn’t it? What, five, six years?” Dad asks. He’s not wrong. We used to come at least once per week over the summers when I was a kid. Then we started coming less and less each year, until finally a whole summer had passed and we hadn’t gone a single time. I’m not even really sure why. I’ve been thinking things changed so much these past two years I can’t remember, but maybe things were changing well before that.
“At least. I miss doing this kind of stuff withbothof you. We should make time to do it more often,” my mom says, glancing back at me as she pulls up to a red light.
I smile and nod and try to keep myself right here in the car with them, instead of thinking about what’s changed and what will change tomorrow. My mom swipes my dad’s red spoon out of the side of his sundae and steals a bite out of the bottom.
“?’Ey!” he says, turning away from her. “Don’t be taking all the good stuff!”
“I want some peanuts!”
“Then you should’ve ordered some,” he replies with a laugh.
I smile, watching them fight over the spoon like kids until my dad gives in and lets her have one more scoop just before the light turns green.
As we drive back toward Wyatt, I open the window and breathe in the grass and the goldenrod, and the occasional whiff of cow manure.
A few minutes later my mom peels the paper off her cone and chucks the rest out the window just like she always used to. I’ve never been sure if it’s considered littering or not, but I’ve always found it pretty entertaining. Especially when she doesn’t throw it hard enough and it sticks to the side of her car like a badge of shame.
“Mom, you want to take Methodist Road? Take the long way home?” I ask, like that will make this night last forever.
“Let’s do it.” She turns off the main road and onto a smaller one with no lines and tall grass hanging over the edges, the music quietly humming in the background as the bright-orange sun sets below the pink-and-blue cotton-candy sky.
