Page 19 of Hate To Love You

“No. Nope. No way. If he’s here, I’m leaving.”

All of Patience’s dad’s happiness evaporates into a cloud of ragey-rage the second he spots my dad out by the pool. Gerry’s outburst causes my dad to leap out of the zero gravity chair where he is sprawled out in tropical floral swim trunks and a T-shirt with a computer doing a jig on the front of it. I got it for him a few Christmases ago. Anything with tech-related objects doing a dance is pretty awesome in my books. His pineapple banana smoothie goes flying out of his hand, and it lands with a squishy plop on the concrete surrounding the pool.

“Dad…” Patience puts her hand on Gerry’s shoulder. “Please, just hear us out.”

“Never. Not if it means this.” He waves his hands madly.

My dad starts waving his hands around madly too. They’re both standing there, twenty feet away from each other, doing a windmill motion. If it wasn’t so tragic, I’m sure it would look funny.

Gerry spins around and shrugs Patience’s hand off. “You planned this.”

“Yeah,” she admits. “We did. Because it’s beyond time that you guys get this figured out. You need to make up. You need to figure out a way to be happy together.”

Her dad is about as red as his plain red T-shirt, and that thing is the brightest cherry red in the history of red. He rubs his hands on his jeans and frowns at his daughter. “This isn’t the way. Not through trickery. Two people have to want it. One person has to be sorry for being a pigheaded imbecile of a butthole.”

In an instant, my dad turns equally as red. “That would be you, you blathering, betraying bastard.”

“Betraying? I’m not the one who has done everything in his power to tank a company that is making a difference in the world for people who need it.”

“No need to froth at the mouth, Ger. I haven’t done a thing. You’re perfectly capable of running that company into the ground with your own bad decisions as it is.”

“You—you—”

“Skunk!”

Oh no.

I can’t stop what happens next. My dad doesn’t know I have a pet skunk. I knew he’d have something to say about it, so I just never brought it up. He’d lecture me about how wild animals belong in the wild, how I always was too soft and tender, and how I should just get a cat like everyone else. He would tell me that I should let nature be natural and not interfere. He told me that many times when I was a kid bringing home baby birds that had fallen out of their nests, a baby bunny that the neighbor’s cat was running around with, a mouse who got its back foot caught in a trap and broke it, a rat the school caught in a live trap that literally kept coming back to the point where they didn’t know where to release it, and an ancient dog I once saw online at a shelter—it really needed a home. I begged him every single time. And every single time, he told me no.

That makes him sound like an asshole, but I think he just didn’t want to break my heart. Wild animals don’t do well in captivity. They have a low survival rate. We had no wildlife rehabbers anywhere near us, and he wasn’t willing to make a twelve-hour round trip for a mouse. And maybe his point about wild animals was valid. Kind of? But not really, since the dog did get adopted by another family too. I kept calling the shelter to make sure. That one didn’t make any sense.

When I went off to London, he told me it was a good thing I didn’t have any pets that had to stay with him because I would miss them, and they’d miss me. It would have been heartbreak all around.

Now that I’m an adult, I think my dad has an aversion to grief. Don’t judge him. Losing my mom nearly killed him. I didn’t understand as a kid, but I do now that my emotions are more fully formed.

I’ve kept Bitty Kitty out of his way every single one of the few times he was here before, so he doesn’t know anything about her.

My skunk-cat comes walking across the yard, all casual and happy, completely undeterred by the yelling. She might hate loud noises, but she’s not easily scared off by our blathering dads, apparently.

Gerry takes off away from the poor girl, grabbing Patience’s wrist in the process. He shoves her in front of him and shields her. She keeps trying to sputter out that the skunk is a pet, but he’s not hearing her. He throws an arm around her shoulders and propels her forward, so she has no choice but to run or get clotheslined from the back. I guess he temporarily forgets his animosity toward my dad because when he approaches the pool and my dad, who is frozen in place, he grabs him with his other arm and turns him right around.

It’s a moment of blind panic. They’re all running forward, but there’s nowhere to run because the pool is right there. I yelp out a few sounds that don’t even make sense as they try to stop. Gerry puts the brakes on, but it’s too late. They careen off the edge of the pool. My dad is the only one dressed for it. Patience is in jeans, a T-shirt, and bright pink combat boots. She used to be what people would call a tomboy, I guess, although that term is so dumb and outdated, and I like that she still wears blue jean cut-offs, baggy T-shirts with funny sayings and pictures on the front, and those combat boots, which she just broke out this morning. The best part is they’re tough looking, but they’re also pink.

And now they’re waterlogged.

All three of them surface, gasping and sputtering.

“You imbecile! This is about as good an idea as setting out on your own. Just utter ridiculousness!”

“Ridiculous! Ridiculous! I’ll show you ridiculous, you malicious turd face!” Gerry takes one wide step in the pool and literally tries to drown my dad by pressing his head under the water.

My dad is a great swimmer. He surfaces immediately, cursing and asking who Gerry is to be calling someone a turd, and then he’s the one trying to drown Gerry, who isn’t the best swimmer.

Patience swims to the edge of the pool and hauls herself out. She’s crying, but not because she’s soaked in all her clothes. “Do something!” she begs me with a sob. There are tears streaming down her cheeks, mixing with the beads of water. “They’re going to kill each other!”

Maybe this is what they need to do to work it out for good, but I’m not taking any chances. I don’t know how well Gerry can swim, and accidents are not a thing that happens on my watch. Dunking someone is one thing, but even good fun can turn into a disaster at a moment’s notice. I’m very keen on not fucking around in the pool. I could never be a lifeguard as I’d be way too anal to let any kids have any fun.

It takes me a fraction of the time to dive into the pool. I grab Gerry around the waist since he’s underwater and haul him up. Then, I make sure he has a firm grip on the edge of the pool before I grab my dad and swim him to the other end. When I turn around, my dad is shoving at my chest, and he looks spitting mad. It’s as if he were a cat that was just dunked. I see Gerry swimming for the stairs at the other end of the pool. He walks out and stands there, water streaming from his clothes.

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