She glanced at him as if he was a solar eclipse, and she couldn’t risk staring at him for too long. “Nothing much. I’ve just been working and hanging out with friends.”
“Hanging out? With friends?” Her father repeated the phrase as if the words themselves were unfamiliar and foreign. Perhaps, in regards to her, it did sound strange and unnatural. Even in high school, Mia didn’t spend much quality time with friends outside of school.
She sighed. “I’ve been mostly hanging out with Ross.”
As an intelligent man, her father would have no problems connecting the dots. In this case, there weren’t many of them, and they were placed in a convenient straight line. But her confirmation must have proved his worst fears as his eyes grew dark and severe. “Mia—”
“I don’t want to talk about it, Dad. We’re going to the city. I have to finish drying my hair before he gets here.”
Her father remained rooted in the doorway. It crossed her mind he might consider becoming a permanent fixture in order to prevent her from leaving. “You’ve changed, Mia,” was all he said.
Her tongue tsked as she rolled her eyes and turned from him. Mia grabbed her hairbrush and jammed it through her locks, glad to have a task to focus on.
“No, I mean it. You’ve changed,” he stated again.
One part of her, the people-pleaser side, wanted to burst into tears at the disappointment in his voice. The other part, the angry Mia, pushed the people-pleaser down the stairs to barricade the door. She couldn’t get past that everything her father stood for had been a lie. She was ashamed at how much she had unquestionably accepted over the years, how much she let him influence who she was. Not anymore. “I hope so. I’m almost twenty-six. You always wanted me to be an independent adult, to think critically for myself. Well, guess what? That’s what I’m doing.”
“I don’t care how old you are. You don’t just stop being my daughter.”
“I know,” Mia replied with resignation.
“I love you, and I only want what’s best for you.”
Her heart peeked out from behind the wall. “I know that, too. And I love you, Dad. But you also have to trust me to make decisions for myself, regardless if you agree or not. I know it’s hard. You’re used to being the sole, important voice of reason most of the time, but I don’t need to be taken care of.”
If she was hoping for her father’s face to soften, then his unshaven jawline locking together was disappointing. “You say that, and, yet, what am I doing but taking care of you. You have a place to live. I’ve put money into your schooling. And for what? So you can get all indignant like you’re an actual adult here. If that was your goal, young lady, you failed. You’re a coffee barista.”
Her reaction to these words couldn’t be stopped. Tears sprung to Mia’s eyes. She willed her own jaw to remain firm, for her voice not to break. “I’m working. I’ve done my submissions. What exactly have I done wrong here? Am I not supposed to have fun during my free time? I have spent years killing myself doing everything I was supposed to do. When do I get that small pocket of time to not worry about school or what my future is supposed to look like or do something just because I want to?” A fissure popped in her voice, and a murky, thick layer of turmoil was threatening to squeeze through the cracks.
“I’ve only pushed you because it’s important, Mia. You’ve always been someone who’s going places, and I don’t want you to lose your focus. Getting stuck like this has never been who you are. I don’t understand why you’re letting this guy distract you. What happened to that drive? You’ve changed. And I’m only telling you this because I love you and I’m looking out for you.”
She gave him one last look, one made of steel, one like her mother reserved for special occasions of justified indignation. “Well, thanks for your concern, but I’m going to the city.”
Mia wasn’t sure if it was her words, her expression, or a combination of both, but an invisible force swept through the room. Her father’s form wavered like a malfunctioning hologram, and her eyes were granted a new view of him. It wasn’t her perfect Atticus Finch, judge of a father who stood there. Instead, what she saw was a man whose shoulders were hunched from age, hair gone gray and wispy, and his features sagging from a life spent on a bench in front of troubled kids. With one last look in her direction, he turned and left behind a void of uncertainty as empty as her doorway. It was clear their relationship was on a precipice of being transformed forever and was never returning to the way it was before. Her father was right. Things had changed and it wasn’t only her.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
When his truckpulled into Mia’s driveway, Ross spotted her sitting on the porch. A happy feeling passed through him at the thought of Mia being eager for his arrival. But when a smile didn’t light her face as she got into the passenger side, he realized his first instinct was wrong. Since climbing into his truck, she hadn’t said much of anything.
“Is everything okay?” he asked.
There were a lot of adjectives he could use to describe Mia: sunny, optimistic, smart, empathetic. One word he’d never use on her was quiet.
He slid a sideways look at her profile. “Mia?”
“I’m okay. Just lost in thought,” she responded.
“Is there anything you want to talk about?”
“No. I’m okay. Really.” She returned to staring out the window. “It’s just…things have been strained between Dad and I since lasagna night. My relationship with him has never been like this.”
Ross recognized the guilt developing inside him, the knowledge his big mistake was still rippling across the surface with unintended consequences. “I’m sorry,” he said. “Would you rather not have known what happened?”
She gave a slight shrug. “Would I rather look away from reality just for the sake of comfort? No. I want to know the truth, but I also don’t like how this feels either. Does that make me horrible?”
Ross shifted in his seat, adjusting the seatbelt strap across his chest. “What you feel is what you feel. No one likes their world turned upside down.”
“I found out my dad is not quite the moral saint I always believed him to be. I helped him put up his election signs. I was so proud thinking I was doing something great and important. I look at him now, and all I can see are his flaws. I feel silly for being naïve enough to put anyone on a pedestal. And, at the same time, I’m sad he’ll probably never be there again, and I’ll just continue to live with an empty pedestal. But I got exactly what I asked for. I know the truth, and I should have wanted the truth a long time ago. But compared to other people’s upside-down world turning, it’s very inconsequential. The size of my world is small and insignificant.”
