"Yeah, mine too," I said.
My dad was silent for a few minutes before he finally spoke again. "Now, I got one more thing to say, and I'm done saying my piece. And you're going to stand there and listen to me."
Oh, hell. We were about to go back to talking about June again.
"Now, that girl over there, I don't know what's going on with you -"
"Nothing," I said. "Nothing, dad."
"It's not 'nothing'. She loves you," he said.
"Dad, June doesn't love - "
"That girl loves you," he interrupted. "And you love her. I've seen the way you two have looked at each other since you got back here. You might not care to admit it, but it's true. The two of you have loved each other since you were kids."
"She doesn't need me. She doesn't need my shit," I said. Trying to convince myself.
He shook his head. "No, she doesn't need your bullshit. But the rest of it, well, June's a big girl, and she can handle herself."
"I'm leaving here anyway. Crunch and I can't stay. And June - there's just no point, dad."
"You tell yourself what you want. You want to continue intent on self-destruction, well, it pains me to see it, but I won't stop you. But at least be honest with yourself about what you're doing. You walk away from her, it's not about protecting her. It's about protecting yourself." My dad turned, heading toward the barn door. "Make sure you get that stall in the corner. Crunch is up in the house. I'm going to go put together some lunch."
I watched him walk away.
That girl loves you.
Maybe that was true, but love wasn't really enough. Life wasn't a fucking fairy tale, and sometimes, love didn't really conquer all.
Crunch looked up from his computer when I came inside, a smug smile on his face. "You've been gone a while, Axe," he said.
"I don't want to hear about it."
He grinned, not realizing how irritated I already was. "April and I had a bet on how long it would take for the two of you to get together."
"Christ, I don't want to hear about this right now. I'm going to take a shower. I stink to high heaven after mucking out those stalls."
Crunch laughed. "I got ahold of Blaze," he said.
I stopped. "You talked to him?"
He shook his head. "Not on the phone. Emailed him."
"Is that safe?"
He cocked his head to the side, giving me his most patronizing look. "You're going to ask me whether I know what I'm doing, contacting someone securely through email?"
"Fine, whatever. It's secure. What's the deal?"
"They're in Vietnam right now. They'll head back to Cali. It won't be for a few days."
"They're not going to the clubhouse."
He shook his head. "Come on, man. Give them some credit. I assume they'll lie low at Benicio's. It would make the most sense. I didn't ask."
"Okay," I said. "Good to know."
So we'd need to hit the road in a couple days. If I needed a good reason to stop what was going on with June, it just got handed to me on a silver platter.
"You're all coming to the birthday tomorrow night," my dad said. "Pass those peas over here." He took the bowl in his hands, spooning vegetables onto his plate.
"Yay! I love birthdays!" MacKenzie yelled.
"Mac," April said. "Use your inside voice so we don't all lose our hearing in here."
"Don't you even worry about that, Mac," my father said. "I'm half deaf already. Yell all you want. It doesn't bother me one bit."
MacKenzie squealed her approval, and April gave my father a mock look of exasperation. "You're letting her get away with murder, here, Stan."
My dad shrugged. "It's nice to have noise around here," he said. "It's been too quiet in this house for far too long."
"What's this about a birthday?" Crunch asked.
"It's the town birthday," I said. "It's no big deal, and we're not going down there, dad."
"No big deal?" my father asked. "It's only the biggest celebration in West Bend every year."
I laughed. "Yeah, it's the only celebration in West Bend," I said. "But it's just a regular country fair. If you've seen one, you've seen them all."
"But I want to go to the fair!" MacKenzie said.
"Dad..." I warned, tossing him a dirty look. "It's not a great idea."
"Well, it wouldn't be the worst thing," Crunch said. "I mean, we know that no one's looking for us."
"We don't know that for sure," I said. All I could think about was how much I didn't want to see June there. If we could keep our heads down and get out of here, it would be better for everyone.
"I think we can be reasonably sure of it," Crunch said. "I'm still keeping tabs on everything."
"I just don't understand all that technology stuff, you typing away on the computer, how you can track all that," my dad said.
"Well, it's complicated but I can try to -"
I cut him off, before he even got started. "We don't need a lesson in your tech shi - uh, tech stuff, Crunch. Dad, we're not going to the town birthday."