“Is she mad?” I ask again once he starts driving.
“She’s not happy,” he admits, sighing. I watch him out of the corner of my eye. Dad’s skin has never looked more lined with wrinkles. I swear every day his thick, once dark, head of hair and thin beard grows peppered with more gray. Even now, he smells like coffee, the kind he buys at the mercado forty minutes away because he says real Cubanos can’t drink just any old bean water. I’ve always considered myself more like Mom—romantic, sarcastic, honest—but something in his exhausted eyes makes me pause. He looks the way I feel.
“I’m sorry.”
“I trust you had a good reason,” he says, always too generous to his only daughter. “I’m sure Mom does too.”
I stare at the street, empty and pocked with shadows between the reach of the streetlamps. They shine so brightly, bathing the asphalt in harsh orange.
He takes a hand off the steering wheel and rests it, palm up and open, on the divider. I place my hand in his. “Tú eres mi luz, lo sabes, ?verdad?” You are my light; you know that, right?
I nod, tears threatening my eyes again. I’m lucky to have the parents I do. Agatha, Lindsay, and Sammie get along with their parents just fine. But like Sammie implied earlier, they think I’m weird for telling mine about my love life (or lack thereof), my friends’ drama, my bad grades, and bad days. I tell my parents everything.
Almost everything.
I never found our relationship weird or unusual. I always feel like I’m bursting at the seams with feeling, always physically incapable of keeping emotion in. I’ve needed confidants from the time I could first speak and realized my heart would chase after every pretty thing—every pretty boy—it saw. So who better to fill the role than the people who brought me into this world?
It’s that trust, that instinctual need to share with them, that tells me I owe Dad some explanation, even if he doesn’t ask for one.
“That boy, Jeremiah…,” I begin as we stop at a light. The car turns scarlet in the glow of the red light as I turn to Spanish because, somehow, it feels right to. “Dijo insultos homofóbicos.”
Dad’s grip on the wheel tightens. He inhales and removes his hand from my shoulder.
“Thank you for telling me. I’ll talk to your mom tomorrow,” he says.
“Wait—” I say. “Please, just … don’t tell her.”
He looks at me for a beat, eyes searing into mine, before nodding once.
The light changes. We don’t talk the rest of the drive home.
TEN
My alarm for Sunday morning gardening woke me up hours ago, but I promptly shut it off and tried to fall back asleep. I heard Mom come home a few hours after Dad and me last night, and I’m in no mood to learn what their hushed whispering means. So it’s not hard to imagine my annoyance when I’m in that foggy, not-quite-asleep-not-quite-awake state, thinking about what the floral arrangements at prom will be like, when my bedroom door flies open.
“Rise and shine, O. I’ve got things to see and people to do,” Sammie sings as he tosses my curtains open, allowing the bright morning sun in.
“It burns,” I whimper, pulling my sheets over my head and burrowing deeper.
“Wakey, wakey.”
“What awful thing did I do in a previous life to deserve this?”
“I’m a ray of sunshine brightening your morning, so shut it.” He yanks my blankets off my body, folding them at the end of my bed before sitting atop them. “I’m also requesting your forgiveness. Although, why the hell are you still sleeping? Aren’t there thirsty roses and thirstier boys you should be attending to?”
“We really need to talk about your apologies,” I moan, avoiding the question. I try to dig deeper into my pillow, but it’s unfortunately impenetrable. Eventually I give up and turn over.
Sammie’s curls are long and loose around his face, shining with dampness. He smells good, better than usual, like he doused himself with his best cologne. And he’s wearing a dark color for once, a black T-shirt that deepens his eyes. “So, I need your help winning the love of my life.”
“It’s nine A.M.”
“No, it’s romantic,” he replies.
“Elaborate.”
“On the definition of romantic? Well, well, well. How the tables have turned.”
“Samuel.”
“Okay, okay. So, you know how I agreed to help you with corsage crafting today?” he asks slowly, long fingers playing at a loose thread on my sheets.
“I remember you volunteering earlier this week.”
“Okay, so about that…,” he begins, then stands to look at photos of us from our middle school graduation plastered on the wall above my dresser. “Damn, I really looked bad with braces, didn’t I?”
“Sammie.”
“You didn’t look too hot either, but maybe that had more to do with those awful highlights you begged your mom for. Seriously, light hair was not the move for you.”
“For the love of all that is good, please tell me why you’re in my bedroom insulting me this early in the morning.” Before he can even fully open his mouth, I add, “And don’t you dare ask what time of day I’d prefer you to insult me at.” He closes his mouth, lips still curled in amusement.
“Lindsay asked me to come to the twins’ soccer game after her morning mass,” he admits, moving back to the bed. “She’s never invited me before. This is a good sign. You get it, don’t you?”
I do, unfortunately. The amount of times I ditched Sammie last year to watch Lucas’s games more than cancels out him bailing on me today. Still, last night left me in a funk, and I wish he would’ve at least let me sleep through this betrayal.
“Go,” I sigh, waving him off. “Have fun. Fall in love. Eat a snow cone in my honor.”
He leans over, ruffling my hair in a brotherly manner. It makes me feel even worse. “You’re the best.”
I check my phone after he leaves. Talia texted me a few minutes ago, asking for pictures of our government notes that she missed a few weeks back. As I dig through my backpack to find them, I feel slightly relieved that she texted. After Friday and Saturday, I needed this tiny victory.
I send Talia the pictures, getting ready to crawl back into bed when Dad walks by my open door. Damn you, Sammie.
“You’re awake,” he says, leaning in the doorway with crossed arms. “Are you feeling okay?”
“You know, most teenagers sleep in this late on Sundays.”
“You’re not most teenagers.”
“I don’t have the time to unpack how much I hate that statement.”
He laughs, and tension I hadn’t noticed in my shoulders until now softens. “I thought I heard Samuel up here.”
“You really should be more concerned about me having strange boys in my room. Honestly, Sammie should be banned as punishment.”
“He woke you up, didn’t he?”
I drop my backpack and flop into bed. “I’m going back to sleep.”
Dad clears his throat. “Your mom wants to talk to you when she gets home. She went out to brunch with David and Susan to celebrate the end of the quarter. They should be done in an hour or so.”