Dumping Dallas Winston

by Jessica Bucher

  So how could I tell him what I’ve struggled with this year? Coming to terms with our new financial situation. Rebuilding a relationship with my brother. Figuring out who the heck I was and then meeting a girl who turned all of that upside down.

  “Landon, talk to me,” he pleaded from the kitchen counter.

  “What did Hunt say?” I asked, ignoring his request.

  “He said something about a party, his daughter, a fire...and you trying to be a hero.”

  My eyes lifted to meet his face. There wasn’t anger in his features but what looked like curiosity and a little concern.

  “Well, I bet that had you worried,” I joked, a tight, sarcastic laugh coming out of my mouth.

  “Why do you say that?” he asked, keeping his expression serious.

  “Me being a hero. Doing something for someone else. Not exactly in my character.”

  My dad walked around the kitchen counter and stepped toward me until he was only a foot away. How had I not noticed that I was taller than him now? He looked up at my face like he was searching for something.

  “I don’t think that’s out of character at all,” he said.

  The frantic rise and fall of my chest slowed as my dad stared at me. “I’ve made a few enemies since then. I know I’ve been a pain since...Mom.”

  “Well, you two were always the closest, so I wasn’t surprised. I just didn’t know how...to help you. Even then, you tried to carry the burden alone, Landon. You were twelve and trying to be a hero.”

  I didn’t speak but focused on not losing it, keeping the tightness in my chest from exploding. He thought Mom and I were the closest? Did Gabe think that too?

  Did she?

  That last thought pricked the back of my eyelids like tiny needles being shoved through my retinas.

  “Landon,” my dad said carefully, like I was a minefield, and he had to tread lightly. “I’m sorry I’ve been gone. I honestly thought you boys didn’t need me. You’re so independent. But I messed up. You didn’t deserve to lose two parents at once.”

  He took me by surprise and pulled me in for a tight hug, and honestly, I couldn’t remember the last time he hugged me, but the contact broke whatever was holding me together. My dad squeezed my shoulders as my eyes started to mist, and everything that happened tonight, and well, in the last four years, suddenly came out in a one loud sigh.

  I had been, as Harper had so eloquently expressed, a bag of tools. There was no excuse for how I treated her and her friends, but I knew now that I didn’t want to be that jerk anymore. The way I felt tonight, watching her run away, knowing she wouldn’t have to face the handcuffs, felt right. I was so used to carrying the pain of losing my mom alone, that it came out in bitterness and bullying.

  And for the most part, everyone just dealt with it. They accepted that that’s who I was, and they never held me accountable for it.

  Everyone but Harper.

  When I pushed her buttons, she pushed right back, never letting my crappy attitude slide. And that’s probably what made me so attached to her at all this summer. With Harper, I had a chance to be someone different than the usual entitled, self-absorbed bully that I’d become.

  When my dad pulled away from the hug, I noticed he was crying a little too. We still had a lot to work out with each other, but I felt a little less mad about his absence, now that I knew he was just another dude in this family struggling with the loss of the one who kept us all together.

  None of that conversation would happen tonight, but I hoped he wouldn’t be leaving right away again, and maybe we could actually start to act like a normal family and look a little more like the Hunts.

  For now, all I could think about was Harper. I was so busy driving around town, coming down from the high of what happened tonight that I hadn’t even thought about that kiss, how she kissed me back, how I told her I loved her. She didn’t say it back, and I didn’t really expect her too, but she definitely kissed me back, and maybe that meant she finally kicked Drake to the curb and was willing to give me a chance.

  If she was willing to forgive me for the years I spent being a royal bag of tools.

  And if at the very least, she’d let me continue hanging around her because doing so made me the opposite of a bag of tools. With Harper, I actually started to like myself.

  Dad and I stood there in the living room, not really knowing what to say to each other now but both feeling a lot better about things when the front door opened carefully and Gabe stepped through looking like a rooster caught in the hen house. Wide eyed and frozen, he stared at me and Dad with our crying faces and post hug glow as we both bellowed at him.

  “Where the heck have you been?”

  Harper

  I missed community service. Community service meant I got to see the outside world. Now, I was basically Cinderella with a side shave, scrubbing the hardwoods in silence because Dad had confiscated my phone at the same time as my freedom.

  If Taylor Swift was here, what would she say? Shake it Off? Calm Down? It had been three days, and I could hardly remember the sound of her voice.

  “You have to stop moping,” said Dad over the top of his readers. He was currently butt-deep in his Lazy Boy, his slippers up on the ottoman in front of him and the world’s most embarrassing book in his hands. Just last week I was complaining that he didn’t spend any time at home with the family, and now that he had taken a week off to puppy guard my grounding, I missed the old dad, the uninvolved Dad. The dad that wasn’t gasping in shock every five pages of Bill Clinton and James Patterson’s “The President is Missing.”

  “I feel reformed,” I tried, plastering a hopeful smile to my mopey face. “Just totally and completely reformed.”

  Dad lowered the book onto his lap and propped his glasses on his chest.

  “You would like me to consider probation?”

  “Yes,” I cried. Instantly, images of my potential freedom filled my head. I could listen to music, text my friends, call a certain someone and ask if he meant the whole I love you thing.

  Also I could delete all signs of Drake from my life and phone because, according to dad, it didn’t really matter what Landon claimed to have done or how he tried to fall on the sword for me, Drake had been more than happy to implicate me.

  “Great,” said Dad. “You tell me what you did wrong and why you did it and I’ll consider it.”

  “Bah!” I scoffed, scrubbing harder at the scuffs from Dad’s shoes on the patch of floor in front of me. “You’re supposed to be on vacation remember? No interrogation.”

  A smile touched the corner of dad’s lips, but it didn’t reach his eyes. “You know, Harper, when you and Alice were little I felt like a good dad. You were impressed with everything I did. You used to yell Daddy the second you heard the front door open. I thought I was a better dad than a cop then.”

  “And?” I asked, when he seemed to stop what he was saying mid-thought.

  “Now I know I’m a good cop. I’m not so sure about the other part.”

  The words hit me smack dab in the core. I’d thought that about him a dozen times this year alone, but hearing him say it, made it sadder and somehow I found myself wanting to argue on his behalf.

  He had been trying right? He hadn’t locked me in the basement after I brought a boyfriend to camp and it had been his idea to pair me up with Landon which sorta kinda turned into the best thing that had happened to me all summer. I put down the rag and pulled my knees to my chest in front of me.

  “You’re a decent dad.”

  Dad shook his head. “Decent isn’t exactly what I’ve been striving for all these years.”

  I shrugged my shoulders and rested my chin on my knees. “Alice is at Yale. Doesn’t that fill your good dadding quota for at least four years?”

  I had meant it to be flip, but the way dad was looking at me, it was clear I had accidentally shown my hand.

  “I’m very proud of Alice. But her accomplishments have no bearing on my failures with you
.”

  Ouch, failure wasn’t the description I was hoping for when this father daughter convo began.

  “That came out wrong,” said Dad.“What I meant was. What Alice is doing doesn’t make up for the fact that I can’t seem to get you to talk to me.”

  Talk to him? When was I supposed to talk to him? With the exception of this week we had spent most of my teenage years waving as we passed each other in the hallway.

  “I can’t talk to you if you’re never home.”

  Dad pinched the bridge of his nose. “I’m trying here Harper. I took an entire week off with little notice to my staff.”

  “You took a week off to babysit me.”

  “I took a week off so I could look myself in the mirror,” said Dad. He took his feet off the ottoman and leaned forward to look me directly in the eye. “When I found your necklace lying in the grass my first thought wasn’t ‘what’s Harper done this time’ or even ‘She shouldn’t have been here.’ My first thought was, I don’t know why she was there. I don’t know you anymore and I can’t tell you when that happened. It’s not as easy to please you as it was when you were little. I have to do a lot more than walk in the door to make you happy.”

  “That would be a good start though.” I replied.

  “Maybe,” said Dad. “What else?”

  I furrowed my eyebrows in confusion.

  “You said that would be a good start. What else do I need to do to get you to care about yourself as much as the people around you do?”

  I felt tears stinging the back of my eyelids. I spent a lot of time blaming other people for not thinking enough of me, not trusting me, not believing in me, but Dad was right, no one judged me more than me.

  “You could let me do the mural project.”

  Dad sucked in a deep breath. “Harper.”

  “So I could prove to you...”

  “I’m trying to tell you that you don’t have to prove anything to me,” said Dad.

  “Right,” I said biting my bottom lip. “Then maybe let me do it because I have something I have to prove to myself.”

  “You’re going to have to tell me what that is,” said Dad with a worried expression.

  I smirked and wiggled a finger at dad. “You’re acting like I’ve given you a reason to worry.”

  “And you’re acting like Officer Nealson hasn’t already suggested just painting one of the holding cells purple for the arrival of your eighteenth birthday.”

  “Alright, but you have to promise not to laugh.”

  Dad held his hands up in front of him, “Fair enough.”

  “The night I got busted for tagging the riverwalk I wrote a letter to Molly Ringwald.” I could see dad’s lips twitching, but he swallowed his laughter as promised. “I asked her for help because I felt like an outsider in my own family.”

  The twitching behind his smile stopped. “I guess I thought you didn’t want to know me, because I was too different from mom and Alice.”

  “Harper, that’s not true.”

  “I get that now. I really do, but that feeling of not being enough, it gave me a passion for proving just the opposite. That you can take something people have written off and make them see it in a different way.”

  “Like your graffiti,” said Dad.

  “Exactly.”

  Dad sighed, “You are hereby ungrounded.”

  I leapt up off the floor. If my smile were any bigger my lips would split.

  “But.”

  My shoulders sagged. I should have known there would be a but.

  “You let the boy help.”

  I couldn’t help it, I squealed and launched my arms around his neck for a full on squeeze till he could barely breathe hug.

  “You still impress me sometimes,” I mumbled, closing my eyes to savor our first real hug in what felt like eons.

  Landon

  It had been a whole week since I spoke to Harper. We texted a bit back and forth about her groundedness, about the mural-less riverwalk, and about my dad coming back early. We did not talk about those three little words and that axis-tilting kiss we shared the night of the fire.

  Both of us were still in mope mode. I was missing my internship like crazy, and she was three days of house chores deep into her penance.

  My dad and I were watching the Mariner’s game on the big screen downstairs when my phone rang. It was the first time it rang in days, and I nearly dropped it when I saw Hunt’s name on the screen. Did he find out I kissed his daughter? Was he ready to kill me? Already in the house.

  Somehow after being in cuffs, at risk of being charged for arson, that was what I was worried about.

  “H-hello?” I answered as I held it up to my ear.

  “What kind of coffee does Harper drink?” he asked without a greeting.

  “Soy white chocolate double shot latte.”

  “Hmm,” he answered. The background was silent as I waited for him to say something else. “I figured I’d grab her something while she’s up here, but I liked you bringing the coffee in.”

  “Harper’s at the station with you?” I asked, feeling hopeful. If he let her come to the station, then that meant he let her out of the house. Which was a very good sign.

  My dad’s rapt attention was suddenly on me when he heard me asking about Harper. I told him pretty minimal details about the girl I was hopefully, maybe soon-to-be dating.

  “So, I wanted to tell you,” Hunt said, clearing his throat and ignoring my question in a very Hunt manner. “There’s an appeal process to the internship suspension.”

  I sat up even straighter. “I’m listening.”

  “It involves writing an essay about the incident and your involvement basically proving your innocence.”

  “Oh,” I answered, feeling deflated. He was asking me to incriminate Harper, and I already told him I wasn’t going to do that.

  “Or…proving why you still deserve to be an intern and what you learned from the incident. For what it’s worth, I’m the only one who reads them.”

  “How long does the essay have to be?” I asked, at which he laughed.

  “There’s some other paperwork involved, and you can fill it all out here.”

  “I’ll be right down,” I said, practically cutting him off. I was already off the couch and looking for my shoes.

  “Now, wait a second, kid. I’ve got something else to talk to you about…”

  I froze in the foyer. My dad was now standing in the kitchen watching me with his arms out, waiting to hear the verdict. On the line, I heard what sounded like Hunt closing a door, and the background noise silenced. I could see him sitting in his office, the empty coffee cup on his desk next to the half-eaten cinnamon sugar donut. He was probably looking down at that middle school photo of Harper with braces and hair on both sides of her head.

  “I know the perp we locked up that night was Harper’s boyfriend. I know she was responsible for her actions, but he was a bad influence on her, and my daughter, as headstrong as she is, can be easily influenced. I also know that the trouble Harper got in could have been far, far worse if you hadn’t been involved.”

  He was quiet for a second and I wasn’t quite sure what I was supposed to say. Was he thanking me? Was I supposed to say “you’re welcome for keeping that douchebag out of your daughters pants because deep down I kinda wanted to be in them?” Because that just didn’t sound right, and I was afraid he’d see through anything else if I tried to lie. He was a guy after all.

  “Now I don’t know what your intentions are, but I hope you know that I’ve never seen her happier than she’s been this summer. Watching the two of you head-to-head, squabbling and fighting and making each other downright miserable, I actually found myself rooting for you. And if you tried to date my daughter three months ago...well let’s just say, you wouldn’t have gotten far, but now...you proved yourself, Maxwell. I trust you.”

  He cleared his throat, waiting for me to fill the silence and ease some of his anxiety. “Um...thanks, sir
. I don’t know what to say.”

  “Besides, the missus has been asking when you’d be coming over for dinner again.”

  A smile stretched across my face. I couldn’t wait to get out the door, down to the station, reclaim the life I had before this whole fiasco.

  “Now that that’s out of the way. I’m sending an officer to your house to pick you up. So don’t go anywhere. You have one last chaperone project to complete before your community service requirement is fulfilled.”

  “Huh?” I asked, suddenly confused. More community service? I let my head hang back in frustration. If there was community service to do to get my internship back, I would do it, but the last person I wanted to get in a car with was one of Hunt’s officers. I just wanted to get to Harper, finish our conversation, see her, touch her, kiss her. This week had been the longest week of my life.

  But I wasn’t about to tell him that.

  Just then, I heard the car door slam out front and before I could answer Hunt, I looked at my phone and saw the line went dead.

  Harper

  “This is so romantic,” squealed Reagan.

  I gave her a weak smile and tried not to let my hands shake on the steering wheel. Romantic wasn’t exactly how I was feeling at the moment, more like terrified, but admitting that wouldn’t be very punk rock, now would it?

  In the backseat of the Grover City Van, Sloane and Gabe snuggled impossibly close.

  “Very grand gesturey,” said Sloane, motioning to the brown paper sack in Reagan’s lap. I kept my eyes on the road ahead of me, going over and over again in my head all the ways I could screw these next few moments up. After all, screwing things up was kind of my calling card lately.

  As I pulled into the Maxwell driveway I felt my pulse go from slightly elevated to hummingbird on methamphetamines.

  “Good luck,” said Gabe, he wore a smile, but I worried that he, like me, wasn’t so sure Landon would come running into my arms just because I showed up on his doorstep.