Page 50 of Please, Sir

“What if he asks me?” I ask but as soon as the five words leave my mouth, I realize they make no sense. Not to Jo Jo, at least. Quickly and as best as I can, I cover my tracks. “He confronted me about the piercing. Told me if I was gonna take you anywhere again, I needed his permission. We exchanged numbers,” I admit, the back of my neck hot with this unfamiliar territory of telling the truth in pieces.

“Lene!” a voice shouts.

“I’ll tell him,” she says, as a teenage boy with brown hair pops his head out of his rolled down window. Jo Jo walks backward, giving me a nervous smile. “Have a good night, Miss Riley,” she says, before slipping into his car.

I don’t want to think about if she’s going to tell him or not,but unfortunately, I have zero opportunity to overthink and ruminate, because my phone rings.

After putting my seatbelt on and surveying the caller ID, I answer.

“Hello… mom, and dad,” I say, not even trying to muster phony enthusiasm.

“Riley,” my father says, his tone shrill and icy. I throw the car into reverse and find my way out of the parking lot, heading home. “Where are you?”

The green digital light on my dashboard flashes 5:02 pm. “Leaving practice, you know, I’m coaching cheerleading after school, remember?”

Remembering requires giving a shit in the first place, and if I’ve learned a single thing about my parents in the last six months, it's that they don’t really care. They obsess over peoplethinkingthey care, with the illusion that care is given, but actually giving a good god damn? No.

Not my parents.

“That’s right. Well, your mother and I wanted to talk to you about what happened this weekend.”

Michael flashes through my mind, rose petals covering my porch. After Jake left, I scooped them up and put them in my compost bin so I would not have to see a single trace of his unannounced and uninvited visit.

“What happened this weekend?” I press, gaslighting them by playing dumb. I know gaslighting is wrong, but after Cadence and her bullshit, I’m finding myself a touch grouchy.

Dad sighs and mom gets on the line. “Riley, Michael told us he came to see you...” She pauses before adding, “...with three dozen red roses.”

I say nothing as I flick on my blinker, my house already in sight. I love living so close to the school, and on beautiful fallevenings like this, I wonder why I ever bother driving. I should walk.

“Okay,” I deadpan.

“Ry, you two have been pals your entire lives. You’re really gonna call things off because of an argument? Brian and Linda are beside themselves. They want a reconciliation, and so do we,” mom says, her tone rigid, as if they’ve finally come to a conclusion and I must accept it.

I don’t.

“Well,” I sigh, pulling into my driveway. “Want in one hand and shit in the other, see which one fills up first.” I park my car and hold the phone to my ear with my shoulder as I get out and grab my duffle bag and purse.

“Riley! That’s a terrible thing to say,” my mom scolds.

Dad sighs as I slip the key into the lock, wiggling the handle until my front door pops open. I set my things down, shutting the door with my foot before twisting the deadbolt. “Guys, I just walked in. I’m hungry. I need a shower. I just—I don’t want to do this tonight.”

“Do what?” mom barks, her tone brimming with righteous indignation.

“This!” I shout, spinning; my voice echoing around my tiny home. “Fighting about this! This shouldn’t be a fight! I’m your daughter. Your only child. A child who was always honest and hardworking, who grew into an honest and hardworking adult. Who has never betrayed your trust, or let you down, or anything! So no, I don’t want to sit through the speech about how I need to change my tune about Michael.Newsflash, it’s never going to fucking happen, okay? In fact, the only thing that should change is you two. You two desperately need to open your eyes and change before I stop taking your calls.”

I’m panting, sweat sliding between my shoulder blades,my mind reeling. I never raise my voice to my parents, or at least, I never used to. Except raising my volume seems to be the only way they listen, but even now, I have no idea.

A beat passes before my dad adds, “Michael loves you, Riley.”

“Oh my god,” I breathe, shaking my head as tears well in my eyes. “Oh my god,” I repeat. “Do you guys hear yourselves?” I hang up, without goodbye, without warning. They call me back again, but I silence the call, and then my phone and my house are both silent.

A hot showerand homemade soup lost its appeal after the conversation with my parents. In fact, all food lost its appeal and all of the energy in my body is gone, sucked into the emotional void of having a late-in-life unsupportive parental unit. Emotional stress is exhausting, and after pulling myself out of the bathtub, I wrap up in my bathrobe and sink into bed. My phone and TV remote are right next to me, but I lie there, staring out into the dark backyard, my tiny orange tree the focus of the oncoming moonlight.

How can something seem so simple to one person and yet it becomes a complicated, layered issue to my parents? There should be no complications. Growing up, there are a few universal truths, regardless of where you were raised or what your childhood was like. You have to pay taxes, death is inevitable, Coke is superior to Pepsi, and men who hurt women are bad.

Yet that last fact has somehow turned into an arguable point, a perspective or opinion versus an undeniable truth.

This isn’t like arguing over politics. This isn’t some far fetched problem we’re debating in theory.

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