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“Because it’s true.”

“Then what does it mean?” I lean in. “You say it every week. What does it actually mean? Because you say it, and then you tell the story however you want, and then you say it again.”

“Jesus Christ, Nash.”

“You don’t get to say that to me and then decide what happened to me.”

He’s up out of the booth with his wallet already out. “We’re not doing this in here.”

The parking lot is half full. A family gets out of a minivan two spots over, the dad carrying a car seat, the mom telling somebody to stop it. Dad goes to the truck, puts both hands flat on the hood, and stands there.

“I fucked up,” he says. “Okay? Is that what you need? I fucked up.”

“Yeah. You did.”

“And I’ve apologized. I’ve apologized to you more times than—” He turns around. “What else do you want from me, Nash?”

“I don’t fucking know,” I snap.

The minivan family looks over. The mom moves the kid to her other hip, and they go inside.

“You can’t carry this around forever,” Dad says. “You can’t. It’ll eat you alive. You’re eighteen, you’re playing college hockey, you’ve got everything in front of you, and at some point, you have to decide—”

I yank my shirt up. Not slow. Both hands, hem to armpit, hoodie and shirt twisted together in my fist, and I turn my left side into the light coming off the diner window and hold it there in a parking lot in the cold.

“Easy for you to fucking say.”

He stops talking.

It starts above my hip and climbs into my ribs, wider at the bottom where it went deepest. In daylight, it’s worse than under any kitchen light. The skin is pale and shiny and pulled tight, with the diamond pattern from the graft pressed into it like somebody laid chicken wire on me and pushed. In one place, it sinks, and there’s just less of me there than there should be. It doesn’t tan. It doesn’t sweat. It doesn’t feel like the rest of my body. In the summer, it sits whiter than everything around it, and when I’m cold, like right now, the edges go purple.

My dad looks at it. He’s seen the hospital. He was there for the two weeks and the two grafts. He’s the one who helped me into the compression garment every morning for months when I couldn’t get my arm up to do it myself. What he has never done, not once in three years, is stand in front of his kid in daylight and look at what’s left.

His mouth opens. His eyes go down to his own hands, the palms, and then back up to my side, like he’s lining two things up.

“I have to look at this every day,” I say. “Every time I take a shower. I hide every time I change in the locker room. I keep a shirt on every time I’m with a girl, because I don’t want to have to explain what this is.” I let the shirt drop.

He puts his hand over his mouth and takes it off again. “I didn’t know it was eating at you this bad.”

I’m too angry to laugh, but that’s funny. That’s fucking rich coming from him. “Because you’re blind.”

“Nash—”

“You call me every week. Every week. You ask if I’m eating. You ask about my draws. You know which side I get tall on when I’m pissed off. You knew that from watching one period. And you don’t know this? You drove five hours. You hugged me in that lobby and put your hand right on it, and you don’t know?”

He takes a step toward me. I take one back.

“I’m sorry,” he says. “Nash. I’m sorry.”

“Stop saying that.”

“What do you want me to do?”

“Leave.”

He doesn’t move.

“Go home,” I say. “I don’t want to see you.”