“Can we, um, go somewhere private?” she asked, looking over her shoulder toward the living room.
The others were caught up in the game again, but that’d be over any minute and then they’d trundle out to the kitchen for more food. “Let’s go upstairs.”
He led her up the narrow flight of stairs to his part of the house, a large studio-like room with his bed, a couch, TV and video game system, weights, and a desk with his ancient computer on it. Several moving boxes were piled up in the corner, half full, as he’d started the search for his own place. The room was not exactly neat. Had he known Sophie was coming over, he would’ve spent some time making it look better.
He grabbed a blanket from the couch and then opened the door on the long wall that led to the world’s smallest excuse for a balcony. Sophie followed him out.
“This thing doesn’t meet code, in case you were wondering,” he said as he sat on the edge of the platform and dangled his feet between two of the vertical posts that supported the railing. He dropped down to the shallowly slanted roof of the kitchen below, which he considered his private, railing-less balcony. As Sophie came down after him, he spread the blanket over the rough shingles to protect her bare legs.
They both sat down, keeping several inches between them.
“Do you have a view in daylight?” she asked, squinting in the direction of the shore.
He leaned toward her and pointed. “Between those two buildings, you can usually see some waves.”
“Nice.”
“Said the girl with the oceanfront condo.”
“Luckily, somebody made me see how lucky I was before it was too late.”
“Somebody, huh?”
“Yeah. Somebody who made me see quite a few things, actually.”
He narrowed his eyes at her, trying to determine her meaning, but she kept her gaze straight ahead.
“Nate … I’m not sure where to start, but I have lots to say.”
Cautious optimism started to take root deep inside. He tried to keep it in check because she could mean anything. But the fact that she’d tracked down his address, baked him brownies — shared the imperfection of her brownies with him, at that — and seemed willing to talk…
She scooted closer to him and folded the outside edge of the blanket over her legs, supporting her weight on her hands behind her.
“My dad showed up at my condo this morning.”
“How’d that go?” he asked carefully.
“Oh, probably about as good as you might guess. He apologized for being an awful father. Et cetera, et cetera.”
Nate tried to imagine how it would be if his mom showed up out of nowhere and took full responsibility — and blame — for failing him and his dad. While she’d popped in from time to time when he was younger, it’d never been to apologize. At least not genuinely.
That’d take some absorbing, at the very least, he guessed. “Was he? An awful father? I mean, I guess it’s obvious he must’ve been for you to hate him, but…”
“But you don’t really know because I haven’t told you anything.”
“Well, yeah. But don’t feel like you have to—”
She sat up and pulled her knees to her chest. “I want to.” She darted a look at him. “Okay, that’s maybe not entirely true, but I need to. I’m ready to. I’ve never talked about my family to anyone before, partly due to not liking to talk about them, but also partly due to not having anyone to tell. Nobody who really pushed me. Nobody who truly wanted to know.”
“Every family has a dark side, Sophie. They all look so normal from the outside, but they’re never normal. Normal doesn’t exist.”
“I kind of know that. It’s not that I think mine is so much worse than everyone else’s…”
“Then what?”
She shrugged. “Mine is personal, I guess.” She attempted a laugh. “I walked away from my family… No. That’s not true at all. My dad walked away from me. My brother was always a wild card, and my mom died of cancer.”
“So really, they all kind of deserted you,” Nate said, moving closer to her and taking her hand, understanding how significant it was for her to confide in him.
