He smiled sympathetically. “I know you better than you think. You would have pretended everything was fine, but I can see that it’s not. You’d just keep running, like you always do.”
“I’m not running.”
“Listen, I need to talk to you. Throw on a pair of shoes and a shirt and let’s get brunch.”
My dad didn’t do brunch. He meant a burger and a beer. I sighed. “Tell me how you knew I was here.”
“Penny thought you might be.”
Of course she did.“Fucking Penny,” I said. When I turned around, Carissa rolled her eyes at me and sashayed into the bathroom, shutting the door behind her.
I walked over and whispered through the door, “I’ll be back in a bit.”
“No, you won’t,” she said in a muffled voice. “Get your stuff and leave.”
My dad laughed from the doorway. “Nice.” I walked into Carissa’s bedroom, grabbed my bag, threw on a T-shirt and shoes, and met my dad in the stairwell.
“Where are you staying, son?” my dad asked as we walked toward the car. “Not here, I hope? Looks like you’ve been evicted by the little lady.”
I shrugged. “Just couch-surfing. Mike already got a roommate.”
“You planning on staying in Denver and looking for a job?”
“Yeah, that’s the plan.”
We got into his truck and he started the engine. Without looking at me, he said, “I’ll float you. Get you set up here until you find work.”
Relief washed over me. “Seriously, Dad, that would help me out so much—”
“On one condition...”
Oh shit.
“Penny wants you to be in her wedding. And I told her I would walk her down the aisle.”
“What?”
It had been two months since I’d walked out of Penny’s basement after she told me she was going to marry Lance. We hadn’t spoken since then.
“She’s been coming over a lot. Hanging around, shooting arrows in my backyard. She misses you. She wants you to be in the wedding. It’s in a month.”
“She feels so close to you that she’d ask you to give her away?”
He pulled up at a stoplight and turned to look at me. “Her exact words were, ‘Gavin told me you were sad you didn’t have a daughter to walk down the aisle.’ So this was actuallyyourdoing.”
It was true. I remember him telling me that once, and me telling Penny. He wished he would’ve had more children, for both of us, so I would’ve had a sibling.
“And then...?” I asked.
“And then she said she missed you like crazy and wanted you to be in the wedding. Lance is okay with it.” He paused and looked over at me. “You better be there, son.”
“Dad—”
“You better be there, son.” He wouldn’t take no for an answer.
“Fine, I’ll be there.”
After “brunch,” my dad and I looked through the local listings for apartment rentals and put down a full month’s rent on a little studio that afternoon.
