Page 27 of Lovers Like Us
I hear a splash, and I turn myhead.
Across from me, my dad slicks his hair back with his wet hands. When he was in his twenties, he modeled for a single day and then quit. But he could probably still model if he wantedto.
Why the fuck I’m hanging onto this—out of everything—I try not to overanalyze.Yayme.
“I was wrong,” he says. “That’s the first thing you need toknow.”
I already knew that.My words aren’t even close to surfacing. I just stare at the one man who means the most to me in my life. I teeter between worry and hurt. I fear saying the wrong thing, but I wade in this murky pain from ourblowup.
My dad rubs the back of his neck again. “At your charity event, I made a mistake.” His amber eyes lift to my forest-green.
I cradle all my words before I let them loose. I speak with ten-billion times less emotion than I really feel. “This isn’t a normal mistake, Dad.” I rest my arm on the hot tub edge. “This isn’t forgetting to sign a field trip slip or missing a birthday. You sided with the…” I pause to avoid a curse word. “You sided with the media overme.”
His brows cinch. “I didn’t side with anyone. I didn’t know what tobelieve.”
My muscles burn.Don’t get angry. Don’t get fucking angry. Hear him out.I hold his gaze. “But you couldn’t fathom believingme.”
I’m starting to wonder if he brought me to the hot tub because it’d be twice as hard for either of us to just walkaway.
My dad squints as the sun brightens. “What do you remember about your grandfather?”His dad.He died of liver failure when I was a littlekid.
Most of my memories are good. He always bought me a new toy when I saw him, and he tried to give me life lessons:listen to your parentsandbegrateful.
But I was also aware that my dad would never leave me alone withhim.
“I remember he had a loud, distinct voice. Pretty forceful, but I was never scared of him.” My shoulders stiffen. “I guess he was nice to me.” I know thehistory.
I know my grandfather verbally abused mydad.
A quick Google search says as much, and I’ve seen a few clips ofWe Are Callowaywhere my dad and Ryke talk about theirfather.
“Nice…” My dad mulls over that word, and then he shakes his head. “He wasn’t that nice. I still loved him, but he was a terrible father. Just…goddamn awful. And it took meyearsto come to terms withthat.”
He leans his neck back, gazing at the hut’s wooden rafters as he says, “Living with someone who tears you down every goddamn day—it’s like living with a constant monster. You start believing his words. That you’re a piece of shit.You’rethe problem. Until you just…becomehim.”
He tilts his head towards me, strength in his ambereyes.
“For the longest time,” he continues, “I thought I was as awful as my father. Some parts of me were. And I believed that those parts would make me an equally terrible dad…it’s why Ineverwantedkids.”
I didn’t knowthat.
I rub my lips, hand warm from the water. “Whatchanged?”
“You,” he says. “You weren’t planned. As youknow.”
“Yeah.” The media loves toting around that fun fact about the surprise pregnancy and my subsequent birth. It’s not a big deal tome.
My dad stares at the snow-capped mountainside. “When Lily said she was pregnant, I told myself that if I fucked up, I’d ruin everything good and pure in my life. I made a promise to stay sober. To do better. I hung onto something that made me feel like Icould.”
I hesitate to ask, “What?”
“I hoped for agirl.”
I bottle something inside. What’s the feeling I feel? I don’t know. I won’t let it rise, but it amasses inside me like a cementblock.
“I was afraid to raise a boy,” he explains. “I was afraid to find out decades later that I raised someone just like me.” He lets out a dry laugh. “I don’t know why I thought I’d get what I want. I was such a shitty person back then; I didn’t deserve any kind of shortcuts or easyouts.”
I stare at the water and force myself not to defend his character. I didn’t know my dad in his early twenties, and I need to stop protecting someone who’s gone. My dad isn’t that guy anymore, and he knows it,too.
