by Rowan Massey
Then came the over-sharing. It’s so embarrassing when I do that. Since I was little, I’ve had no filter and said whatever stupid, awkward nonsense I was thinking. My poor parents. I’d always thought I would grow up and get my shit together so nicely that I’d stop doing that mortifying stuff. Think first, talk second—that’s what everyone told me. I knew if I could do that, I might be able to hang out with better people. Instead, my mouth was not my own. My emotions, my actions were out of my control and nothing changed because I didn’t know how to change myself.
The way Zander had looked at me when we met…well, shit. I’d thought he was checking me out, but it was mostly my facial features and hair he was staring at. That should have been a clue. He hadn’t acted like he wanted anything but a friend that first day, but still, his eyes had been intent on me. He’d listened to every word. That meant he liked me, right?
Maybe he had changed too since the day we’d met. He’d seemed hyperaware, nervous, on the day we went to the tree, but his gestures and speech had been relaxed and confident. Since then, he’d grown to be less intense. He’d stopped having those awkward moments where his eyes traveled all over our surroundings as if he were looking at something beyond the walls or buildings. I would snap my fingers in front of his face. “Earth to Zan!”
As for me, I was in control of myself for the first time in my life. I’d had to be steady in order to study him and not spook him. He would shut down and find an excuse to leave if I asked for too many details about his life.
There was something about him I couldn’t define and I wanted to figure it out. I couldn’t blurt out all the things I was curious about though. If I had an impulse to tell him too much, ask too many questions, or assume too much, I would stop and ask myself what I really wanted to say, if anything. What did I want to do and what kind of outcome could I expect? Sometimes I still said yes to my impulses, but it was always a careful choice. I learned to control myself for his sake so that he would want to be around me. I started doing the same thing with everyone at school, and a few of my teachers took notice that there was less of the usual distracting drama surrounding me. They told me to keep it up.
After the first few weeks, the first significant thing I discovered—or finally realized—about Zander was that he didn’t like girls. He wasn’t looking at them when we were hanging out, but unfortunately he wasn’t looking at me either. Several times, when we hung around drinking cokes and eating chips together, I stood to go put something in the trash or go to the bathroom, but the real reason I was getting up was all about spinning around and trying to catch him looking at my ass. He wasn’t looking.
I showed up at the flower shop one day on a whim, thinking of buying a lily just for myself. He wasn’t anywhere sight and the girl at the register said he was in the back room. I poked my head through the open door to the back just in time to overhear him say to a coworker, “I always go to my boyfriend’s after work”.
I hurried back to the register, payed for the lily, and walked out with the bloom held up to my reddening face. Even though nobody could know what went on in my mind, I was embarrassed that I had a gay dad but apparently had no gaydar at all. I hated the way I had let myself feel about Zander.
Two days later at the park, I asked him what his boyfriend’s name was. He stood there looking at me, hands buried in his hoodie’s pockets, and said nothing. He looked off to the side and moved his lips but only said, “Uhh…I…”. He was shuffling his feet backward. I couldn’t imagine what the big deal could be. He knew about my dad being gay and he had even helped with the dating app scheme. I obviously wasn’t homophobic.
I couldn’t stand the way he was trying to get away from me so I said to forget it and we kept skating. We never went back to the subject, but it still bothered me. I accepted that he was gay. We could still be close friends if he gave it a chance. He didn’t seem to have anyone in his life other than his boyfriend. He needed a friend like me in his life. My opinion on the matter was verified by the way we clicked and how happy he was to see me every time we met up.
On top of all that, my dad was getting cagey about his boyfriend too. I was fed up with people who kept pointless secrets like little girls. He was about to go out of town visiting that awful old house he rented out. He’d been talking with my mom about selling it to help me pay for college. I hoped he would.
Mulling over all of it on my way to Dad’s for a surprise dinner visit, I pulled my mom’s sedan around the corner to my dad’s house on autopilot. I’d opted to do what Zander had suggested and look for clues among the books and clutter. I wasn’t completely convinced not to keep an eye on Dad’s phone. Dropping in unannounced was a strategy for meeting the guy I hadn’t mentioned to Zander, but I felt a little guilty and texted Dad right as I was entering the neighborhood. That would give him only a minute to hide his clues. At least I was trying to play fair.
When I saw Zander’s junker pull out of Dad’s driveway, my foot went to the break instinctively and I made a little sound of surprise. Why in the hell would he be at my dad’s house? His car turned and went the other way down the street, away from me. But there was no doubt. That had been Zander behind the wheel. It was so bizarre, my brains were trying to reboot. No answers came to me.
I pulled into Dad’s drive, grabbed my purse, and went in using my key.
“Hey, Dad!” I called out.
“Be right up!” he yelled from downstairs.
Still a little stunned, I wandered in a circle in the living room, running my fingers over the spines of all his millions of book. I perused for anything out of the ordinary, but he got new books in and sent some out every day besides Sunday. An ordinary book I hadn’t seen before wouldn’t tell me much. On the mantle, there was a gross old photo of a little boy. Maybe it was Dad or my Uncle Liam. No, it had to be one of my cousins. I couldn’t really tell. There was a mess of things on the coffee table including two empty coffee cups. I picked up the three books stacked there. One was old and didn’t seem like the kind of thing Dad usually read. I opened it and flipped around in the pages. Someone had scribbled a name on the title page. It wasn’t familiar, but the ink was more recent than the yellowed paper. I took my phone out and snapped a picture of it. I put the book back and kept looking around. There was nothing interesting.
Dad still hadn’t come upstairs. I went to the kitchen for a bite to eat, hopefully some iced tea. His cell phone was right there on the kitchen table. The screen briefly lit up with a notification and it vibrated.
Zander: txt me asap
My guts churned. I had to do what I’d been learning to do in the past few months: keep my mouth shut, think before speaking, and let things play themselves out without allowing my emotions to take over. I was getting practiced at not being the teen girl who started drama over everything, and I wanted to see if I could impress myself with a calm, adult conversation about what I was seeing.
I made myself the tea, moving slowly, trying to imagine what might be going on. Maybe they had some kind of work thing together and it was just a coincidence. Surely, Dad didn’t know Zander was also connected to me, but Zander had to have seen the pictures of me around the house.
My mind searched for a story that made sense. Maybe today was the first time Zander had been to Dad’s. A long time ago, I seemed to remember Dad taking a handy man out to the farm house. Maybe Zander was good at fixing things and had answered some kind of ad Dad might have put online. I couldn’t imagine how they might have met otherwise.
I gravitated to the two coffee cups next to the sofa as if I could read something in the tepid liquid they had left there to cool. I’d come across things like that before: cheap snacks in the pantry that Dad had never liked, a ratty and too-small t-shirt I saw him once wearing with pajama pants…and Zander had worn that shirt that looked just like one Dad had.
A chill traveled over my skin and my stomach felt weak. The shirts couldn’t be ignored. They were wearing each other’s clothes.
&nbs
p; Dad would never date someone who was in high school, would he? It made me sick. He’d always been so boring and normal. Dad was the opposite of creepy.
“Hey, sweetie, what brings you over?” he said as he came up the stairs. His hair was wet from a shower and his skin was flushed. When he moved in for a hug, I gave him one, but I didn’t really want to hug like nothing weird was going on. He leaned back and gave me a Dad look. “What’s the matter?” he asked.
“Um, just…” I mumbled something and took a slow step towards the door.
“Oh! You wanted help with your essay. I was drawing a blank. Where’s your laptop?”
“Oh, shit. Yeah, I left it in the car,” I said. “Actually…”
Actually, as soon as Dad picked up his phone and talked to Zander, it might become extremely uncomfortable for me to stick around. If he’d noticed me noticing him on the street just then, that would explain Zander wanting to talk to Dad “asap” even thought he’d only just left. Whether they were working together, dating, or something else, Zander knew he was my dad, but Dad probably didn’t or he would have said something as soon as I came in, like, “Hey, I apparently just met a friend of yours!”. So, things could be extremely weird for all of us as soon as Dad talked to Zander. I felt pukey. I didn’t want to stick around.
“I know I’m being weird but I’m gonna go,” I said. “I’ll be back another time.”
He put his hands out to me with concern.
“No, come on now, tell me what’s up,” he said.
I sighed and held up my cell phone and wiggled it. Eye roll. “I’ve got drama. It’s complicated. I’m gonna go meet up with Sherice. She needs me.”
“When is your essay due?”
“Monday. There’s time.”
With that, I said some awkward goodbyes, more nauseated by the second, and left as fast as possible.
Once I’d driven out of the neighborhood, I didn’t know where I wanted to go. I tried not to go to the skate park because I didn’t want to run into Zander, but that’s exactly where my muscle memory took me. There was a cafe nearby with little metal tables and chairs out front so I found a place to park and went there for coffee and a muffin. It was too expensive but I went there now and then because it tasted great. I sat outside staring up and down the street. From where I was, I could see a corner of the skate park, but my main view was of a bunch of trees across the road.
I stared up at the leaves, my mind working overtime trying to figure out what I’d discovered. Maybe Zander was in the neighborhood for some other reason and he’d used Dad’s driveway to turn around after getting lost…and then, a totally different Zander who, say, wrote the science fiction portion of the book reviews needed to talk to Dad about something. Maybe the car hadn’t been Zander’s. But no, that car was unmistakable, and I’d seen his figure at the wheel. There was no mix up.
After over half an hour of staring into my coffee cup, I accepted the icky reality that my almost-forty dad was dating my friend, which also meant my friend was so devious that I couldn’t wrap my mind around it. There was no way he hadn’t recognized my photos around Dad’s house.
A familiar urge to run far away made me grit my teeth. The constant restlessness I’d suffered from my whole life meant I’d long since made a habit of concocting plans for running away and ditching everything I’d ever known. I knew how to feed that urge enough to make it go away for a while.
I downed the rest of the coffee and threw the cup in the trash with more force than was needed. I grabbed my board from my car and jogged down to the skate park. Like always, my eyes searched out the regulars who didn’t like me and they were all there. They gave me glances that told me they remembered that day I’d acted like a crazy bitch. The only reason I didn’t feel like a complete reject at the park anymore was because Zander didn’t seem to notice everyone giving me the cold shoulder. He’d given me my confidence back.
I didn’t have my safety gear but I got out there and started focusing on my body instead of the things on my mind. I didn’t work on doing any trick in particular but I wasn’t skating lazy either. I let my body tell me what to do and when. If I let the ever-present internal scream control my body, the board would give me split-second opportunities to defy gravity.
An hour passed by that way. I was wearing the wrong jeans for it and fell three times. The bone jarring impact felt good, so did the mild pain on my palms. I kept getting up until I fell and busted my shin. It was a little painful to walk but I knew from experience it wouldn’t be that bad after a couple hours. I limped to where my board had rolled off to, grabbed it, and walked with it in hand back to my car.
In the driver’s seat, I thought about just going home and keeping their secret as if I knew nothing. I also thought about confronting them, but that seemed like something the old Lottie would do. Really, I was thinking about Zander the most. The whole thing meant I’d been fooled from the beginning. He’d told me to put Dad on a dating site so that he would have a way in. Why? Dad wasn’t hot and had no extra money to spend. I couldn’t figure out the end game.
The way Zander had tried to help me get around Mom’s supposed overprotectiveness had been the result of a lie on my part, but I’d been awkward about skating again and the lie kept coming up in conversation with various people as an excuse. The memory of the way he’d taught me about fooling people using what he called a lying notebook made me put my hand to my throat. Bile was trying to rise. He was much more serious about lying than any normal person would be. I should have seen that as a red flag. Instead, I’d thought he was exciting—just the sort of interesting person I wanted to spend my time with, or so I’d thought.
I took my phone from my purse and opened the texting app. My thumbs moved over the screen. What could I say? Maybe Zander would hang out with me a little and I could ask a few questions, tell him he owed me some information because it seemed like he was dating my fucking dad. Anger welled up and I squeezed my phone as hard as I could, but relaxed after a moment and typed a message with as cool a head as possible. If I was going to learn to be mature, I had to be mature when there was genuine drama.
Lottie: Meet me at Gravity Hill.
I thought it would make a good private spot to see what he had to say. It would be too embarrassing to try to talk where even strangers might hear us. Waiting for a response took all the patience I had. Finally, I saw that he was typing.
Zander: Did I see you a couple hours ago?
I had to sit and squeeze the phone again before answering.
Lottie: Yes…we need to talk. Now.
Zander: Why?
He was honestly asking me why? Testing me? Fucking asshole.
Lottie: I’m not stupid.
My pulse pounded while I waited. I hated that he was making me sit in my car waiting on him. I’d make him wait before I sent my next response.
Zander: Ok. Meet me at the tree.
Lottie: Fine.
I tossed my phone onto the passenger’s seat and slammed my palms against the wheel, letting out a screech. My life had been going great just that morning. I hated both of them. After talking to Zander, I’d be going straight back to Dad’s to confront him. If he didn’t break it off, I’d go to Mom. Even Mom couldn’t look past him dating somebody my age.
I cranked the car and took a breath before pulling out into the road. Still wanting to be mature enough to handle things—no matter how fucked up—I reminded myself there was a reason people say to never drive angry. My chest was shaky but my hands were steady. Usually, I would have listened to music but I was afraid it would make me emotional. I hadn’t even thought about crying so I congratulated myself on how I was handling it so far.
As I drove down the overgrown road to Gravity Hill, I checked my phone and there was still reception like last time. I got out, feeling increasingly unmoored, and made my way down the trail to the swing. I’d been staring at the ground looking for crunchy leaves the first time I’d been there, now I had my head up and was looki
ng for the twist in the trail that would lead to the tree. Anxiety was doing its thing. The adrenaline tightened my chest and rolled my stomach. If he was there first, I didn’t know what I would do.
I had a strong urge to just ignore him if he was there and hop on the swing for a while until the numbness came, then maybe it would be easier to talk.
The sky was cloudy, but I could see out over the cliff that there was no rain falling in the distance. The leaves hissed in the wind and the swing wobbled from the breeze out in the air. I scrounged around and easily found a branch with a little stick at the end of it to hook onto the rope and bring it in.
Without hesitation, I stood at the edge and stepped onto the wooden board, giving my full weight to the swing. Soaring out into the empty space made me like a part of the nature around me, just another silly animal, just another wobbling branch on an old oak tree. I hugged the rope tight to my chest, but when I reached the apex of the swing, I saw myself jumping the way you jump off a swing on a playground, only, I would fly out for only a split second before gravity took me. I contemplated the bushes and fledgling trees down below and wondered if I belonged down there, broken like a lost doll.
