Page 12 of Take My Hand

“I know, but I do appreciate it. Especially when the weekends should be your time to rest your back, not help move boxes from one end of LA to the other.”

Now that I have my keys in hand, we’ll go to the storage unit and get it moved over today. It’s not much honestly. I don’t have any furniture beside an old desk and chair that even Daniel didn’t want to keep out of spite. It’s mostly clothes and a few personal items, but it’s enough that I feel guilty to have my dad help me move.

He runs a hand over the scruff on his cheek, then waves me off. “I got my weekly chiropractor appointments and they’ve been helping. Besides, nothing you own is heavier than anything I’m moving around at work.”

I shoot him a look, and he raises an eyebrow at me. “I thought you said you weren’t doing any more heavy lifting?”

He shrugs but ducks his head sheepishly. “I don't do as much, but sometimes, the work’s gotta get done.”

I shake my head. “You need to be smarter about your health. I don’t want to get a phone call from one of your guys that you’re in bed ’cause you threw out your back again or tweaked your knee.”

“You make me sound like I’m elderly,” he grumbles.

“You’re not, but you’re also not twenty anymore. And you have a competent team you can rely on.”

“I’m supposed to be the parent here, not you.” He smiles as he says it and it causes one to break out on my face too.

This is what we do. We both worry about the other. I guess that’s what happens when that’s the only family you have.

My mom died when I was two, and my dad never remarried. He barely even dated when I was growing up, or if he did, he kept it hidden from me. Although I doubt he had any secret girlfriends while I was still living at home. He spent too much time wrapped up in work or wrapped up in me.

After I graduated and moved out, I thought one of the times I went home for a weekend to visit, he’d have a girlfriend to introduce me to or some sort of news to share. But he never has.

I’d love to see him happy with someone, but I also don’t think he’s ever fully recovered from losing my mom. It was sudden. Pancreatic cancer. Four months from diagnosis to funeral.

Sometimes I don’t know if I should be grateful or not that I don’t have any memories of her. Part of me thinks it’s easier because I don’t really have any part of her that I knew and loved and now miss. But the other part of me wishes for even the tiniest scrap of a memory of her to cling to. But whenever I try to recall her face from memory, not from a picture hanging in the living room, it’s like sand slipping through my fingers.

Maybe that’s why I love taking pictures so much. My dad was obsessive about capturing every moment of my life growing up. He has boxes and boxes full of photos from every birthday party, first day of school, and family vacation.

I found it annoying as a teenager, but I understand now that photos are the only way he can see my mom now, and he never wanted either of us to have a moment that we couldn’t look back on when our memory fades.

“Roger.” A voice rings out from the counter to my right, where two plates of food are placed there.

“I got it,” I tell my dad, moving to grab our sandwiches.

His plate barely touches the table before he already has a hold of his food, taking a huge bite and letting out a groan of satisfaction.

“We could’ve eaten before we went to the last place if you were so hungry.”

He shakes me off, not bothering with a response as he continues to eat.

I join in, pulling the toothpick out of one half of my wrap and keeping it folded together as I take a bite.

Damn, that is good.

We eat in comfortable silence, letting the chatter of people around us be the white noise to fill the space.

A figure enters the café, pulling my attention. The way he moves is familiar. He walks to the counter, keeping his head down and covered by a blood-red hoodie that seems too hot for the weather.

Watching him over my dad’s shoulder, I try to pinpoint who it might be because I don’t know that many people in LA.

But as soon as he walks around a table and makes his way to a dark corner at the back of the café with a receipt in hand, I see whirls of ink decorating his legs, a few patches of pale skin here and there empty, waiting for the right piece to fill them in.

I’d recognize those tattoos anywhere.

6

CARTER

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