Page 90 of On the Rocks

I walked up beside him, signaling to the bartender. I nudged Dad’s shoulder when he didn’t immediately respond. As he looked over, I took in his glum expression and the still-full shot glass he nursed between his hands. Last I’d seen him, he’d been enjoying himself with Maggie. “What’s up with you?”

He shrugged.

“Just glowering down at my drinks for no reason?”

“The drinks are fine,” he grunted. “Had a fight with Maggie.”

Huh? That was his problem?“Aren’t you two always in the middle of some spat?”

Dad threw the shot back without answering.

“I mean, you guys bicker like no one else I know,” I said. “If she’s not getting after you about the light fixtures, then it’s about the fact you refuse to put a TV behind the bar.”

“This wasn’t a spat,” Dad said. “This wasn’t just her teasing me about the Red Lion or about the light fixtures or whatever the hell else. This was an honest-to-god real fight.”

“What do you two have to actually fight about?”

Dad signaled for another drink. He stared down at the glass when the bartender put it in front of him. “I found out she loaned a bunch of money to her brother.”

I racked my brain. For some reason, that was flagging up as a bad thing. “Wait. You mean the brother with the gambling addiction?” Dad had mentioned him before, concerned about Maggie and the obviously toxic relationship she had with her brother. “The one who calls her every time he gets in a bad spot?”

“That’s the one,” Dad said. He sighed. “I’ve bitten my tongue before. But this time, I couldn’t help lecturing her about it a little.”

“Alittle?” I couldn’t imagine Maggie putting up with any kind of lecture. “What did you say to her?”

Dad rubbed at the condensation on his glass. “What anyone would have said. That if she keeps bailing him out, her brother will never take any responsibility for his actions or seek help for his addiction. That he has a problem, and he needs to be forced into making the hard choice, but Maggie keeps making things easy for him. That there’s a difference between supporting him and enabling him.”

“What’d she say?” I asked, wondering if I even wanted to know.

“She obviously didn’t like that. Any of that. Told me to keep my goddamn two cents to myself.” Dad’s hand tightened around his glass. “Then she yelled something at me about how sleeping with her didn’t give me the right to tell her what to do or how to spend her money or treat her family. Then she stormed out. About the only thing she didn’t do was throw a drink in my face. Though I wouldn’t have put it past her with how mad she was.”

My eyes widened.Wait, what?When had they started sleeping together? I had no idea things had progressed that far between them. Part of me immediately thought to congratulate him. I liked Maggie a lot. She was good for my dad. Kept him on his toes. Right now, though, congratulations would be like pouring salt into the wound.

But wasn’t this just more proof that all love did was mess things up? My dad clearly cared about Maggie, which left him worrying over her in a way that made her angry. Meanwhile, Maggie lovedher brother in a way that only enabled his self-destruction. This was like a double-dose of what I’d said to Cora. Love made people behave irrationally, made them make poor decisions, made them the worst versions of themselves.

“But that’s my problem to deal with,” Dad said after a moment. “Why the hell doyoulook so upset?”

“I just had a run-in with Cora’s ex.”

Dad wrinkled his nose. “Didn’t think you’d invite her ex to the launch.”

“I didn’t.”

“Oh.” Dad took a swig of his drink.

“Yeah. Things got a little heated.”

“Is everything okay now, though?”

“Depends on what you mean by okay. She got the ex to leave. And then I ended things with Cora.”

Dad almost choked on his next sip. “Are you serious?”

“It just…” I lifted my shoulder. I didn’t want to get into everything right now. “It needed to be done.”

“Jesus!” Dad said, taking another long gulp of his drink. “What’s in the liquor tonight?”

Knowing how fond he was of Cora, I expected him to say more, to try to encourage me to apologize and patch things up, but he only shook his head in commiseration. Maybe his fight with Maggie had him seeing things my way, or maybe it was the alcohol, but either way, that was fine with me. I didn’t want to betold I’d made a bad decision. I just wanted to have my goddamn drink and get on with my goddamn life.

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