“Yeah, sure.”
Maybe I soundedtoocasual. Dad must have read my tone as offhand. “I thought you liked Harry. Don’t you like him?”
I scoffed, overcompensating yet again, this time in the other direction. “Of course I like Harry.Everyonelikes Harry.”
“I know, right. I’m trying to set him up with someone new in town. A teacher at the school. She seems great.”
“You are? She does?” I did a terrible job of hiding my shock. “That’s great.”
Instantly I wanted a change in conversation. I needed a distraction from the pang that hit my heart. At that moment a pair of teenage girls rushed toward me, Sharpies and boarding passes in their hands, and I’d never been happier to be approached by a couple of fans.
“Excuse me, are you… Dean?” one of them asked, breathless. “Oh my God, it’s really you. I’m dying. I’m dying right now! Can we please get your autograph?”
I smiled and took their boarding passes to sign. “I’d love to. What are your names?”
The girls gushed. “Susan. No wait, I’m Denise. She’s Susan. Oh my God, we can’t believe it’s really you! Would you mind signing my T-shirt too?”
I chuckled. “That’s a Shawn Mendes T-shirt.”
“He’ll never know,” one of the girls said.
“I won’t tell him if you don’t,” I replied with a wink.
The two girls giggled so hard I thought they were going to hyperventilate.
Out of the corner of my eye I noticed my dad stepping back, a little confused, as though he wasn’t expecting any of this. I guess in a way he wasn’t. Whenever we talked on the phone, I never really went into details about life in the fast lane. I knew it wasn’t his style, so why fill his head with it. It’d only keep him up at night worrying about me. So I kept our conversations simple; I told him about a new burger joint I liked, about how small the Hollywood sign looks when you’re standing right in front of it, about the beaches and the gridlocked traffic and the funny, crazy, weird and wonderful people you see on the Boulevard. But I never talked about the fame, the concerts, the paparazzi, the fans, and he never asked. Clearly, he wasn’t following my career online—hell, despite being a handyman, Dad could barely operate the TV remote, let alone navigate the internet—and that was fine by me. Because if he wasn’t swept up in it all, it meant that I had someone I could trust who could stop me from being swept up in it too. I had someone who would always keep me grounded.
Deep inside, I hoped that Harry could be that someone too.
As I signed the boarding passes and the T-shirts—always on the sleeve, never on the chest; not even Astrid needed to give methattip—the girls scurried back to their parents,eekingandsqueeingand trying not to make a scene in the airport.
Dad looked at me strangely, as though some alien had claimed my skin as its host. “What was that all about? Do you know them? Does that happen all the time?”
I shrugged. “Forget about it, Dad. Let’s get home. I don’t know about you, but I’m ready for a big plateful of fried chicken.”
* * *
Home was home, the same as it had always been.
Driving into Mulligan’s Mill was like kicking off a tight-fitting pair of shoes at the end of the day. It was like unbuttoning a collar, like stretching the cricks out of your neck, like slumping onto the couch, grabbing the remote, and flicking on the TV.
I physically sank into the passenger seat of Dad’s pickup as we passed theWelcome to Mulligan’s Millsign, like melting into an easy chair.
I sighed with relief when he drove along the clattering boards of the red-roof-covered Brannigan’s Bridge, then gawked at the cordoned-off hole in the ground where the old Ritz Theater once stood. “What happened to—”
“Don’t ask. It’s a long story. I’ll tell you over a drink.”
From Main Street Bridge I saw the changes that had happened on the river promenade—that Mrs. Hartigan’s old garden shop had been transformed intoBud’s Blooms, while next door to that Mr. Flannery’s bakery had becomePascal’s Patisserie—and I suddenly felt the sting of distance, that a small part of me had become a stranger in my own town. “When did that happen?” I asked Dad, pointing to the new stores.
“Last year, I guess. Just after you left. Bud opened up his flower shop, then Pascal moved to town from Paris and opened up his patisserie, then before we knew it—boom! They fell in love. There was more than just geraniums blooming, let me tell ya.”
“Wait. You mean, Bud? The mechanic? He owns a flower shop now? He’s gay now?”
“Yes, he owns a flower shop now. Flipped from being a grease monkey to watering daisies, just like that.” He clicked his fingers. “The whole gay thing, though, I’m not entirely sure how that works, but I don’t think it’s something he suddenly decided one morning. Hey, I could be wrong. You probably know more about that than me.”
I sat up defensively. “Me? What do you mean? Why would I know about being gay?”
“I don’t know. Because you live in LA now, I guess. You must meet lots of different people. Isn’t Elton John gay?”
