Hayden
I’d had moreexperience sneaking into my own house in the past two weeks than I had in the entire time I was a teenager—although to be fair, my teenage experience was zero.
Based on how often dad caught me, that was probably a good thing. This morning was no exception—he seemed to know exactly when I’d come creeping in the back way.
“Happy birthday,” he said, grinning at me as he toweled off in the mudroom after his morning swim. “When do I get to meet this boy you keep staying out all night with?”
“Uh.”
I wished I could tell my dad, but I didn’t want to put Wes’s job at risk. I couldn’t know how he’d react—I didn’tthinkhe’d be upset, but it wasn’t my risk to take. I’d always be his son, he couldn’t do anything about that.
He could fire Wes, and I knew by now that taking care of my dad was the best thing that’d ever happened to him. I wanted him to be happy.
It was just that I also wanted to tell the whole world about him. Show him off. Take him to all my favorite places and hold his hand and kiss him in public.
I was starting to accept that I was, actually, the kind of person who kissed in public. It was just Aaron who hadn’t been.
For the first time since he left, I felt like I was over him.Reallyover him.
I wanted everyone I loved to know how I felt, that I was doing okay, and that I thought Wes was incredible.
“It’s not… that kind of relationship,” I lied. Itwas, to me. If Wes hadn’t already known Dad, I would’ve been more than ready to introduce them.
This wasn’t the summer vacation fling I’d told myself it was going to be.
Dad snorted. “Well, it’s making you happy, so tell him next time you see him that I like him already. In case it everisthat kind of relationship. How does thirty feel?”
“Younger than twenty-nine did,” I said honestly.
Dad grinned at me. “I met your mother when I was thirty,” he said. “Two years later, I was holding you in my arms for the first time. Best day of my life.”
He meant that.
God, hemeantthat. Not as a joke or an over-the-top thing he was saying, but sincerely meant it.
And I’d barely seen him in ten years.
All of a sudden the weight of the morning came crashing down on me, tears stinging at my eyes, threatening to spill over.
“I miss you, Dad,” I said, and I’d barely gotten the words out before his arms wrapped around me and he pulled me into my second hug of the morning, which was more hugs than I’d gotten in… years.
A sob escaped me, hot tears soaking into the towel slung over Dad’s shoulder.
“I’m right here,” Dad murmured, rubbing circles on my back. “I’ve always been right here.”
“And Ihaven’t,” I said. “And now I have to go back and I just found out I almost lost you and I’m not done processing that.”
I’d expected to have more time. Day after day to spend with my dad, even if I just sat in the kitchen and worked while he sat at his desk, together in silence.
I wanted Wes there, too. For a moment, I could see a future where the three of us just lived around each other, Wes kissing the top of my head as he came in from the pool or the garden, Dad bent over his desk, the sound of his drafting pencil and my kitchen knife filling the comfortable silence.
“Hayden,” Dad soothed, squeezing me tighter. “I’m okay,” he said. “I’mokay. I don’t even really need Wes around anymore, I just… like… him.”
I heard the unspokenI like the company, and it felt like another knife to the heart.
When I was twenty years old and Mom had just died, I couldn’t stand this place. It was too full of memories, like her ghost was hovering in every corner.
Now, those memories felt so precious. They were all I had.
