I never thought being a speech pathologist would be easy, but boy, it’s beyond exhausting and makes me feel super grateful for Vanessa, the woman who helped me learn to speak as a child.
“Hey, pumpkin.”
Twenty years old, and Dad still calls me pumpkin. We went through a rough patch for a while. Okay, longer than a while, but since Mom married Mike, he’s been making a concerted effort to rebuild relationships with both Oli and me.
It’s easier for Oli, he’s a hockey player just like Dad was. And despite the agony of Dad’s career careening off the ice in a fireball ending, he gets to live vicariously through my straight-a-student, already-drafted-to-the-NHL super-brother.
Oli walks on water and can do no wrong. He adjusted to my parent’s separation much better, and faster than I did, too. If there was a Golden Child award, well, let’s just say it wouldn’t be the female half of our dynamic duo receiving it.
“What’s up?” I lean back against the headboard of my bed, heart still thrashing in my chest from my encounter with the boy next door.
Sure, he might be Satan’s spawn but he has the prettiest freakin’ eyes I’ve ever seen on any human in the entire world.
Ever.
They haunted my dreams for months after we made out at the Halloween party. And I admit, they almost lured me back into his sphere of influence, but shortly after I met Tate, Dad needed another surgery on his back. Seeing Dad lying in a hospital bed in such a fragile state stopped me from thinking with my ovaries. Barely.
A tiny, small, minuscule part of me wonders if Tate might be different from his dirty, cheap-shot hitting father. But I can’t take the risk he might be everything his father is.
And no amount of staring into Tate’s gray-green eyes could take away the pain his family has caused mine. I know I’m blaming him for the sins of his father, guilt by association, but I can’t extract one from the other. I can’t.
I can’t kiss the son while the father destroyed not only my father, but my whole fucking world.
Dad says something that makes me pause.
“Wait, what? Go back.”
He chuckles. “I said I got a job. A janitor at Mercy. It’s not statistician extraordinaire, but it’s a start, right?”
Pride swells in my chest, and tears trickle down my cheeks as I nod even though he can’t see me. “It’s definitely a start, Dad. Congratulations. I’m very proud of you.”
It’s been a long and painful road for him, for all of us, but mostly him. He lost his career, his livelihood, his identity, then his house, his family, and his sobriety all over the course of a few years. He’s the strongest man I know.
And despite our complicated relationship, I truly am proud of him, and in awe of his perseverance, strength, and tenacity. It got dark there for a while. Again, for all of us, but him more thanthe rest. If I’d been in his shoes, I’m not sure I’d have found a way out the other side.
We chat for a little bit. Our conversation still feels kind of stilted, forced sometimes, and I’m not sure what I’m supposed to talk to him about. We’re in two different worlds, in two different spheres, and we spent so much time apart I’m not sure how I’m supposed to talk to him anymore.
But I’m trying. We talk about Oliver, my cousin Karlya—her mom eloped to Vegas and got remarried for the third time, and Dad’s parents’ ailing health.
“How’s school?”
Loud. Exhausting. And your arch enemy’s son lives next door to me, and oh yeah, a year ago I had my tongue down his throat at a Halloween party, my bad.
Yeah. No. That’s not going to go down well at all. So I simply go with, “Fine. Good. I mean, I’m acing statistics.”
In a former life he was going to be a statistician before he chose to play professional hockey. He majored in math with a minor in computer science, so, while it’s not my favorite, he can relate to my flare for numbers. It runs in the family. Oli’s a wicked math nerd too.
“You get that from your old man.” The pride in his voice makes my eyes fill with tears all over again.
“How’s your psych class? Enjoying that any more than you were?”
“I think I’ve found my stride. I’m not flunking it anymore anyway.” Which is a relief, because having a blemish on my excellent academic record has been something of a pain point for me recently.
“Good. That’s my girl.”
There’s a long pause. He swallows. “Got any plans for the weekend?”
I never tell him that I still go to watch hockey games without him. That’s something he and Oliver do together when Oli’s in town from Wisconsin, something I’m never invited to participate in, something I don’t feel like I can insert myself into.
