Page 136 of Role Play
A dog barks in the distance. Somewhere a car alarm goes off, then falls silent again. The city breathes around us, alive even in the late hours.
“I’ve been a terrible father in a lot of ways,” he continues, his voice rougher than usual. “But the way I’ve treated your writing, your career…that’s been inexcusable.”
“Dad—”
“Let me finish.” His eyes hold a type of shame I’ve never seen before. “I’ve been telling myself I was protecting you. That I was being tough because the world is tough, and you needed to be prepared.” He shakes his head slowly. “But that was a lie. I was projecting my own fears onto you.”
We resume walking, our pace slow, measured. A gust of wind sends dead leaves into a tango across the sidewalk, and I shove my hands into the pockets of my peacoat, which is starting to feel paper-thin against the glacial evening.
“What fears?” I ask, genuinely curious. “You’re J.P. Cooper. You’re successful, desired, respected, untouchable?—”
“Depressed,” he interrupts, the confession hanging low and heavy between us. “Every single day. I act like I’m immune to all the painful parts of being an author, but it’s why I was so reclusive when you were growing up. I was emotionally tortured, constantly at the mercy of reader expectations, the pressure of providing for our family, the feeling that I was a failure every day.”
I’m stunned into silence. This is the man whose confidence I’ve envied my entire life, whose certainty seemed unshakable.
“The truth is,” he continues, “my apathy was a shield. In reality, every criticism felt like a knife. Every review, every sales report, every comparison to other authors—they all cut brutally deep. I built this persona, because I had to. You’re either the king of the rock, or you’ll get torn apart limb from limb by the hyenas. I was never brave enough to let the world see how vulnerable I really was… But you are.”
“What?”
“I read your book—Lovely.”
I halt. The fiery fear consumes me head to toe. My most daunting critic of all finally read my book and I can collapse from the anxiety. Because Dad’s opinion…meanseverything.
I immediately get defensive. “Look, I’ll be the first to say it—I was on a deadline. It was admittedly a little rushed. And there’s a part two coming that’ll fill in a lot of the gaps fromhisperspective. I’m not saying it’s perfect, but?—”
“It took me a few chapters to recognize the story,” he cuts in. “It sounded so familiar, for a moment I was worried you ripped off some Lifetime movie I’d seen years ago?—”
“Hey!” I bark out. “Rude.”
“But then I realized why I knew it.”
We lock gazes, and it’s clear. Dad knows the secret about this book that no one else does. Every time I tell people whatLovelyis about, I tell them it’s a story about high school sweetheartswho reconnect years later. A second-chance story. A promise of hope. Never once did I admit out loud that it’s Mom and Dad’s story.
Dad pulls my book out of the brown paper bag. It’s worn and dog-eared. The pages are bent and the cover has a coffee ring stain on it. Basically Dad has committed every cardinal sin in the book girlies’ manifesto. But it’s proof. He read it. From the state of the book, it looks like he obsessed over it.
He puts the book into my hands, which teeters precariously because I’m still frozen in shock, my hands simply shelves attached to the wall of my body. Reaching back into the bag, he pulls out a black Sharpie. “I wanted to get the author’s signature.”
He spins around and hunches over, patting his shoulder, instructing me to use his back as my signing table. “Make it out to J.P. Cooper—not ‘Dad.’ Colleague to colleague.”
I sniffle as I uncap the pen, my hand trembling so much I know my signature is going to come out a squiggle. After opening the weathered book to the title page, I rest it against Dad’s back, trying to savor what feels like the most monumental moment of my author life.
“One more thing,” he says, right as the black ink dots the title page. I rip the pen away.
“What?”
“Sign it with your full name. Sora Cho-Cooper.”
“Okay,” I croak out. Just as I suspected, my signature comes out an ineligible scribble. Hands shaking from the cold and the magnitude of the moment, it’s the best I can do. “Done,” I tell him before he spins around. I hand the book back.
“Thank you,” he says, studying my signature, pride glazing his cold, red cheeks.
“I can get you a better copy,” I offer. “You massacred that.”
He shakes his head. “No, thank you. I have notes in the margin I want to revisit.”
I nod, pressing my frigid lipsicles together in a smile. The silence between us is hell-raisingly loud, bursting with all the broken promises, lost moments, and missed opportunities. We seem to relive them all at once in the chilly quiet. And then word by word, we rewrite our history. An unspoken understanding that from now on, things are going to be different.
“You said there’s a book two?” Dad asks, lifting his bushy brows.
