mean, they don’t like to use a campfire when they camp. Just tents, raw food—but nothing destructive to the environment.”
“Nothing destructive… Like Arizona’s giant, old truck she drove to get to the campground, right?”
James groaned. “Why do you like ragging on my girlfriend so much?”
“Girlfriends,” I corrected. “It’s not like she’s the first one you’ve brought around. And because I like to watch you squirm.”
“Just wait. The first time you bring a guy home, I’m going to tease you so hard you’ll never want to come around again.”
“And that’s why I don’t bring dudes home,” I said with a cheery smile, tossing food into my mini cooler. That wasn’t the reason why, but for the sake of not having a heart to heart with my brother, that was the easiest explanation.
“Yeah, because you can’t keep a guy interested in you long enough to be your boyfriend, right?”
“Ouch,” I said, mimicking pain with my hands folded protectively over my chest.
My brother had his opinions of me and most of them were right. But despite growing up together in the same house, with the same parents, we had completely different experiences. He didn’t have the slightest clue to some of the biggest events of my life over the last ten years, things that made me who I was: flighty and unpredictable, with an inclination for dates and not boyfriends.
James pulled out his phone—thus dismissing me from his thoughts and this conversation.
I debated saying something to him. Telling him just how little he really knew about me. About the family that existed within these walls—the dad he worshipped, the mom he poked fun at. But these things were my burden to carry. James didn’t know the real reason I’d moved back home, but it was easier for him to call me a child than for me to tell him the things I was privy to that he wasn’t.
So, I turned away, resigned to hold on to my secrets longer than I ever thought I would and sought out my dad to say goodbye.
My dad often was in his den, conducting whatever retirement work he still did. Despite purchasing this house a few years ago, the smell of Dad’s den was familiar, comfortable. The feeling, too, lingered no matter where my dad called his office. And it all had to do with the man himself. Growing up, I’d always been a Daddy’s girl. He’d taught me to ride a bike, to change the brakes on my car, to hold a fishing rod, and how to responsibly invest. He was the one who bandaged up my scraped knees, who’d intimidated assholes who leered at me on the beach when I was still a fresh teenager, and who saved me from the mistakes I’d made—ones that had created a ripple effect through my entire life.
James was the apple of everyone’s eye, but I’d always been the apple of my dad’s.
I rapped my knuckles on the French doors that separated Dad’s den from the living room. When he didn’t answer, I assumed he had his headphones on and couldn’t hear me, so I pushed open the door. He stood behind his desk; his head bent as he faced it.
It took him a second to notice my presence, but it was long enough for me to see him smiling down at his phone. Quickly, he dropped it onto his desk and looked at me guiltily.
My stomach bottomed out.
Oh no.
His desk was mere feet from the door; short enough for me to cross the space with just a single stride, so I saw the phone before the papers he hastily tried to cover it with could obscure my vision.
Just like the last time I’d caught my dad with the same expression, I felt that familiar pit in my stomach, gnawing at my stomach lining. I opened my mouth but didn’t say anything because my throat was so full. It was like being upside down on a rollercoaster you didn’t want to ride and unable to scream to get it to stop.
Not again, I thought. Not again.
I swallowed past the pain.
“Seriously, Dad?” Equal parts betrayal and anger echoed in my mouth and I swallowed in an attempt to get the thunder of my pulse in my ears to calm down.
“It’s not…” He couldn’t even finish his sentence. He shoved a hand through his recently dyed hair, ruffling the front of it as I brushed the papers away from his phone and snatched it before he could.