“Andrew, I—”
“Drew,” he says, cutting me off and confusing me all at once. “Drew. I, uhm … I go by Drew.”
“Drew.” I repeat back to him, letting the name settle inside my mouth and then roll off my tongue. “I-I’m really glad you’re okay.”
I turn fast on my heel, embarrassment popping up out of absolutely nowhere, and feel my face heat at the way my skirt billows out around my thighs. I don’t look back as I practically run to the door.
****
I’m halfway across the parking lot, walking beside my father, when I start beating myself up over the things I had the perfect, if not only, opportunity to say. I mentally kick myself for the questions I failed to ask. There are so many things I should have said.
You need to be careful. I know you already know this, but I need to hear you say you’ll be careful.
Trust no one. I know you’re not in some cheesy action movie, but that doesn’t mean I can’t think these things, okay?
Except my dad. You can trust him.
Oh, yeah. My dad’s a guard there…
Do you think your dad had something to do with this?
You know, somehow … bruises and all, you’re cuter this close.
There’s a freckle on your left earlobe I usually can’t see because your hair covers it, but your hair is being all adorable and sticky-uppy right now, so I can see it. And I kind of want to taste it.
Okay, so maybe there are a few things I was definitely right in keeping to myself.
I look back over my shoulder, up at the third floor even though his room is on the opposite side of the hospital.
What do you think of me? Do you think of me at all?
Chapter Eleven
I know mom’s working late, so it doesn’t surprise me when Dad heads in the opposite direction of home. He hasn’t said a word, but it’s more likely he’s only waiting on me. Waiting until I’m ready to talk. There’s no way it’s because he doesn’t have anything to say. I can practically hear him thinking from the passenger seat.
He loosens and tightens his grip on the steering wheel, bouncing back and forth between the two as he maneuvers the car through traffic. We come up on the intersection that is one left turn away from the Bluebird Café, and he turns to look at me, one eyebrow raised. I shake my head ‘no’, and hope it doesn’t upset him. The diner might be tradition for us, even if it’s not Friday, but its staff is also one of the most gossipy group of ladies I’ve ever met.
He turns right instead, pulling into a Chinese place a few blocks down we normally hit up at least once a month. It’s mom’s favorite.
I know without asking we’ll leave with an extra order of Mongolian chicken just for her. And a sack full of those little sugared donuts she’s constantly trying—and failing—to replicate at home. Dad will also grab a fortune cookie for her from the tray on the hostess desk even though she never actually eats the cookie. And she throws away the fortune unless it’s a good, clear, concise message. Or if it’s a duplicate. I can’t tell the number of times I’ve seen her ball up those tiny strips of paper and toss them into the bottom of her purse because she’s already gotten the same fortune before.
I let these little details take over my thoughts because, for probably the first time ever, I have no idea how this conversation with my father is going to go. Distracting myself seems like a pretty good idea at the moment.
I manage to forgo it even longer by disappearing into the ladies room as soon as we’re shown to our table.
A glass of water and a menu are waiting on the table in front of my seat when I return. My eyes are stuck on the red tassels hanging from the lantern above our heads though. And the design, etched in blue, gold, and green. I know now those colors will look completely different once the light inside the globe is turned off. I take a second and try to picture that in my mind.
There’s a single line of gold around the base, and I follow it with my eyes. I pay close attention to the tiny dots of distorted color where my father and I are reflected in it.
And then I look over at him.
He’s still quiet, and I still don’t know what I’m going to say, but open my mouth regardless.
Our waitress arrives with two bowls of sizzling rice soup and takes our order. She has lipstick on her front teeth, a pale-rose pink, and I try not to stare at it when I say thank you.
“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you,” I say as soon as she’s gone.
“You know you can—”
“Tell you anything,” I interrupt. He smiles, and I mirror the expression. “Yeah, I know.”
And I do know that. I decide not to share my bizarre, fabricated conversation involving him keeling over from a heart attack. It was ridiculous then and even more ridiculous now. I mean, not only did he find out about this in one of the worst ways possible, but he’s kept a cool head and is feeding me some of my favorite food. Okay, so the tears and the near inconsolable state he found me in might have actually helped my case, but still!
It was silly of me to ever expect anything less than the best from my father.
And I know he deserves answers, so I take a deep breath, gird my loins—whatever that means—and start to give them to him. He sits still and doesn’t comment, but there’s really no need when I can read his facial expressions as well as I do.
When I start off with ‘a little over a month ago’, he’s surprised. Surprised and maybe even a little bit scared I’ve been able to keep something this big from him for so long. I stop myself and start over.
“Dad, can you just… Can you not look at me like that while I tell you this?”
He blinks. “How am I looking at you?”
I scrunch up my forehead and do my best to look both concerned and heartbroken. It’s a tough mix and I can’t tell if I’m pulling it off because he’s trying not to laugh at me more than anything else. I give up and chuck my straw wrapper at him instead.
“Like you’re a complete failure of a father because you didn’t somehow see this coming. Like it’s your fault I made the decision not to tell you. I didn’t tell anyone, Dad. Beth doesn’t even know. She thinks I joined the prom committee on my own free will.”
He leans forward, raising a brow and failing to bite back another grin.
“But more on that later.”
“Okay. I’ll stop looking at you like that then.” He settles back into his seat and moves into a bored pose, chin settled into his hand and face blank. “This better?”
I roll my eyes and decide maybe it’s better if I don’t look at him while talking.
“Anyway, a little over a month ago, when I spilled my grape soda all over the place like a spazz? That’s why.” I wave my hand out in front of me and, because I’m looking somewhere over my father’s shoulder instead of at him, nearly knock my glass over. I ignore it, act like it never happened, and let everything else out in a rush. “There was a group of kids coming in—Inmates? Detainees? Whatever you call them. Whatever. I looked up, I saw him, and then I thought I was going to pass out because it was the absolute last thing I ever thought was going to happen to me in that moment. And then I spilled my stupid can of soda and had to illegally download a program to tell me what color the stain on my skirt was because I was too scared to talk to anyone about it.”
He smiles at me, the one where his eyes crinkled a little at the sides like he’s still trying not to laugh. And he probably is. I know for certain the fact his only daughter, the little girl who literally brought color into his world, has met her Soulmate and he happens to be locked up in the same detention center he works at is not something he finds funny. The fact she’s so keyed up she feels the need to point out how she downloaded a program from the Internet without paying for it? Well, I’m sure that’s mildly amusing.
“Oh, if you think that’s funny, then I’m sure you’ll be amused at how I managed to get around the Center’s visitation guidelines.”
Smile. Gone.
“You’ve b
een to visit him?”
He doesn’t sound angry. Not exactly. I don’t think I’ve ever heard this tone from him actually. But that could be because I’ve never seen him really angry…
“Yeah…” I draw the word out like doing so will give me extra time to gauge whatever mood this is. His expression doesn’t change though, so I decide to go for the ‘ripping off the Band-Aid’ method. “I, um, I know visitation is usually only reserved or whatever for parents and legal guardians. I checked the website. But I also saw how sometimes they make exceptions for coaches and teachers and … and for church leaders if the person you want to visit has been approved or had good behavior or whatever.”
He takes a sip of his drink and moves the spoon around his bowl of rapidly cooling, otherwise untouched soup.
“I know it’s stupid, but I guess I just figured if his behavior was good enough to warrant a ‘special exception visitor’”—I make stupid quotation marks with my fingers—“it would be safe to visit. It’s not like they put us in the same room anyway.”
“So you posed as a church leader to do this?”
“A youth leader.” I’m not close to losing my temper, but I am close to tears because I have no idea how to explain why I did any of this. Why I didn’t go to my father and ask him. I know why I did it, of course. I just don’t know how to put it into words. “It’s not like I posed as a priest, Dad.”
I pick up my spoon and start shoveling soup into my mouth before I say something to really piss him off. My bowl’s almost empty before he makes another sound.
“I’ll be honest. I don’t like it.”
Sarcastic laughter is probably not the smartest way to go right now, but it’s all I’ve got. “I’m not entirely sure I do either.”
The look on his face is as close to thunderous as I’ve ever seen it, and I realize my mistake about a split second after I make it. Because he’s obviously thinking the worst. That Andrew has done something to me, or said something terrible during those visits that there’s no opportunity for him to take back now because he didn’t know they were even happening.
“Wait.” I hold up a hand and drop my voice lower because our waitress has popped up at my side out of absolutely nowhere with our food. “Maybe that didn’t come out right.”
I wait until the waitress is gone and take a breath as I fold my hands on top of my lap. I couldn’t eat right now if I wanted to.
“I want to start by telling you this is by no means whatsoever a ‘but, daddy, I love him’ scenario. I need to know you believe that, Dad.”
“Sweetie. That’s the most believable part of this whole mess.”
He says this, but I can tell that me saying the words out loud still relieves a good bit of the tension in his shoulders.
“The only reason I visited Andrew—I mean Drew … he goes by Drew. The only reason I visited him in the first place was because I was so incredibly confused, and because it had been decided he was the one person meant for me.” I twist my hands in my lap, searching for the right words. “I found out what he’d done, and it made me so angry… and I, I had so many questions about why and I … I knew I wouldn’t get the answers to any of them unless I asked him myself. Which is stupid now that I think about how I’ve been visiting him for over a month now and I still don’t have all of the answers I want. Only these stupid notions and ideas of who he is and how he ended up there…”
Now that the words are coming out, now that they can come out, there’s no stopping them. I get the feeling my father knows this, so I continue. I don’t pause for questions, or concerns, or even to try and decipher any of the looks on his face.
“And I did have a list. I still do somewhere. A list of questions that mostly turned into me going off on some righteous indignant rant whenever I practiced them in the car, but I never got to ask them anyway. Because when you’re actually there, and in front of the person you want to ask those questions to—it’s different, you know? You can’t look at someone who looks like he spends hours in front of the mirror perfecting his scowl and ask him what the hell he was thinking when he put a cop into a coma. And you can’t ask that same person that same question two weeks later after you learn he’s a straight-A student who talks about his little brother like the sun rises and sets on him and even coaches his soccer team.
“So yeah, I started visiting him because I wanted answers to my questions. I went because I thought it was so freaking unfair how someone like me was paired up with someone like him. But now… now I’m not so sure.”
I’m breathing heavy when I stop and look around to make sure I haven’t drawn too much attention to myself. Thankfully the other patrons seem more interested in their meals than they are in me. I gulp down half my glass of water before meeting my father’s eyes.
“Libby. Sweetheart. He beat a man unconscious.” He dips his chin down so his eyes are more level with my own. “An officer of the law.”
I blurt it out. I feel like I have to. He never said it was a secret after all. “Officer Jordan is Drew’s father.”
I don’t know why, but saying it like that makes me feel awkward. Makes me feel like maybe it was a secret, and I just went and tattled to daddy. The silence that follows only solidifies the feeling. And how big of a deal this really is. It solidifies that, too.
I spear a bite of orange chicken with my fork, too agitated to attempt chopsticks, and shove it into my mouth to have something to do.
“I didn’t know Jordan had a kid.”
“He has two. And a Soulmate. The problem is he also has a wife, so he doesn’t see the need to be a decent human being and claim any of them,” I spit out. When I look at my father, his forehead is tense and covered with deep, furrowed lines that usually only come out when he has a migraine or tries to read without his glasses. His mouth is pursed and screwed up to one side, a sure sign he’s thinking. “I think … I think he might have had something to do with Drew being attacked. I don’t know anything for sure, but… Please, tell me you think this whole thing seems off, too.”
He doesn’t say anything for a long time. In fact, he finishes his entire meal and pays the check without another word. I can’t tell if he’s angry or not, but I can tell he’s still busy thinking. Hard.
Me? I spend the time thinking of Drew lying in his hospital bed and wondering how okay he really is. Yeah, he was bruised and I could see remnants of dried blood along his forehead they didn’t quite manage to wash away, but he’s awake and talking. If he hit his head, did he lose consciousness? Is that why…?
We’re back in the car, heading toward home with a quiet tension in the air. Half the drive goes by. I can’t take it anymore, and I have to break the silence.
“Dad…” I wait for him to acknowledge me before continuing, turning my face away from him and staring straight out the windshield. “Before I knew what was … what was going on with Drew, my vision kept… Flickering, I guess? Going from color, back to black and white. He hit his head pretty hard, and…”
My throat starts to close up and I get that awful, embarrassing hot and stinging feeling behind my eyes. Dad puts his hand on top of mine and squeezes. It helps, but not enough to stop the traitorous tears that escape from my lower lashes. I swipe them away with the back of my free hand and sniff hard.
“If he was knocked out—if he lost consciousness, that’s why, sweetie.”
My cheeks puff out with an exaggerated exhale.
“I mean, I know whenever your, whenever your Soulmate dies, your vision goes back to black and white. And I didn’t know what was happening.”
But I thought he was dying.
The words remain unsaid, but echo in my head. I don’t want to even think them, and I definitely don’t want to say them out loud.
He squeezes my hand again and says something about how Drew is okay, and I’m okay, and everything is going to work out. For the first time in as long as I can remember, I don’t know if I believe him.
When we pull into the guest parking lot
at the Center, I’m confused until he lets the car idle behind the spot I parked his Bronco earlier. It feels like an entire week has passed since this afternoon. It’s a good thing I’m not the one in charge of this whole mode of transportation thing for us tonight. It’s a good thing I’m not in charge of anything tonight, actually.
“You’re okay to drive, right?” He leans over to push some hair off my face.
“Yeah, I’ll be okay.”
Being alone with my thoughts sounds great now that I think about it.
“’Kay. I’m going to swing by the university and pick up your mother. It’s”—he pauses for a second, like he’s thinking of whether or not he actually wants to say what he’s about to—“it’s up to you whether or not you want to tell her. About Drew.”
He looks so serious and everything feels so serious. I can barely stand it.
“Come on, Dad. Aren’t you supposed to pretend you can’t remember his name or something?” I slip the strap of my bag over my shoulder and reach for the door handle. “Play into that whole stereotype?”
He laughs, but it sounds forced and his eyes are still too serious. The smile on my face, as forced as his laugh, falls and I nod to let him know he’s off the hook and doesn’t have to answer to my terrible sense of humor. Even if I do get it from him.
“We should tell her,” I say while climbing out of the car. I turn to face him before I shut the door. “Just wait until you get home so we can tell her together. But maybe, maybe not all of it?”
He nods and waits until I’m in the Bronco with the engine running and the lights turned on before he pulls away.
The drive home is a blur. I park beside my car in the driveway and make a mental note to send Beth a text saying thank you. And then I sit on the couch for the next twenty minutes straight, trying to figure out exactly how the hell I’m going to break this to my mother. I’ve thought of how I’d tell my mom and dad together… Months down the line when I’d had time to either accept or completely reject the idea for myself. After more research, and more time, and more visitations, and just … more.
What's a Soulmate? Page 12
