I tapped my thumb against my stomach as the clock hanging on the wall ticked loudly.
The monitors on his desk toggled between cameras, flashing lights across his new wire-framed glasses every seven seconds.
His phone rang.
And was ignored.
He flared his nostrils.
I flared mine back.
His lips twitched, and something in my soul took a long overdue breath.
This may have been the longest I’d ever looked at him, which was maybe something worth thinking about.
Later.
Finally, he yielded the competition with a blink and a statement. “Work sucks.”
I nodded solemnly. “I know.”
A beat of silence followed before Dad thew his head back and laughed. “I don’t know if I feel cool or just old. You had that band’s poster in your room for so long.”
“Checkered Vans and Blink 182 were the foundations of my teenage aesthetic,” I agreed.
He laughed again and reached over his desk, turning a framed photo I’d never noticed before toward me. “I remember.”
I only let myself take in the photo briefly. It was me on my first day of eighth grade—the first school year after I decided to live with Dad and moved here from Louisiana—wearing a Hollister shirt with a bleach stain and frayed edges, a puka shell necklace, and a shitty attitude. Something intense must’ve shown on my face now, because my dad’s laughter abruptly fizzled.
“Why—” he started, but I stood up abruptly, and he didn’t complete his question.
It would be balls to sully my new leaf so quickly by ignoring myself, so I paced around the room and tried to ferret out the barrage of emotions that, once again, weren’t the ones I expected to feel today.
Tracing the gleaming wood of the high-backed chair with my finger, I rounded up my conclusions and gathered some courage. “I think I just….” I lifted my chin and braved his gaze. “I think I have just conditioned myself to not expect anyone but Bree to have, um....” I cringed at how I was about to finish that sentence and blew out a breath instead. “Talking is hard.”
His phone rang loudly again, and he reached out and silenced it. He didn’t even look to see who was calling.
The instant gratification that lit up inside me from having his full attention was like a boon, but then it fell in my stomach like a heavy weight.
“Cody, I notice you. I always have.” He ran his hand through his neatly styled hair, his eyes filled with regret. “I can only apologize that there was a time when you felt like I didn’t or wouldn’t.”
Nodding slowly as I processed that, it occurred to me that I said almost those exact words to Bree just a few months ago during one of my small breaks from the cruise ship. I brushed my palms down my thighs as if straightening my shorts. “I’m sorry too. I don’t think I gave you a fair chance from the beginning.”
His expression became sterner than I’d ever seen it. “I appreciate the sentiment, son, but no. You do not apologize to me.”
I swallowed thickly at the serious turn of this conversation. I really only intended to come in and say hey, like the smallest of baby steps. I’d stayed at his house some since being back, in myold room, but had barely seen him. Bree was going to have to pull out some embarrassing Polaroids of me in my early teens to even me out after all this vulnerability.
My stomach dropped out of my ass as I remembered that those Polaroids might be ash. The local fire department hadn’t allowed Bree to enter the remains of her grandmother’s house, and she wasn’t even sure if there was anything to salvage.
And probably never would.
Which bothered me. A lot.
“You’re wearing your Bree face.”
My eyes snapped up to my dad. “That’s a creepy thing to say,” I countered, rounding the seat and sitting again. “Tell me more.”
He snorted. “Whenever you think about her, you get this look. Kind of… hmm. How to describe it.” He threaded his fingers together and relaxed them on his desk. “Like a concerned dad who is also planning a bank heist.”
