butter knife I used to spread peanut butter.
My dad is on me in seconds, swiping the knife out of my hand and throwing it at the sink. It misses, hits the floor, and slides under the fridge. “I don’t want none of your damned sass!”
“That’s not gonna be good for bugs,” I say in disgust, pointing at the bottom of the fridge where my rogue peanut butter knife slid. “Should probably fish that out of there. Wire hanger, maybe.”
He’s breathing so hard and has come so close to me, each of his breaths crashes against my face. Lee has appeared from his bedroom, standing now at the archway leading into the kitchen, a loose, limp-lipped expression on his face as he watches this.
“You go to that garage right now,” my stepdad orders me, “and paint over all of that nonsense. I am not starin’ at no damned seaside fantasy-land bullshit while I’m tinkering in my garage.”
I let out a lighthearted laugh in his face. “Your garage? That is so adorable, Carl. Is that really what this has been about? Some slow-motion war over territory? When you drunkenly crashed your vehicle into my art supplies and took back your garage like it’s a piece of land you stuck your big manly flag in?”
His eyes are murder. He swats my plate off the counter in a fit of rage, sending my sandwich to the tile. Completely unimpressed, I shake my head as I stare mournfully at my meal. “More food for the bugs. You must really like cockroaches and ants. Or gnats. You know my sandwich has honey in it, right?”
Then Carl grabs hold of my wrist.
My eyes snap to his at once, all humor gone. He’s never once put a hand on me. Yet something today has given him permission, whether it’s my attitude, or something terrible at work that’s put him in a combative mood, or my artwork.
Lee takes a step forward. “Dad …”
“Stay out of this, boy,” he growls at his son while keeping his furious eyes on mine. Then he brings his voice really low, to a near growl. “I don’t like your lip, Toby. I don’t care if you hate me. Or if you think you’re entitled to prance around here and do whatever it is you want. But you will address me and speak to me with the respect that I deserve.”
“That’s assuming an awful lot,” I state quite calmly to him, despite his grip turning my wrist numb, despite how deadly close he is. “For one, that you deserve any of my respect at all.”
“I pay for this house,” he says. “I paid for that sandwich you just made. I paid for the bread, the peanut butter, the very clothes you’ve got on your ungrateful ass. I paid for that shed you live in. I paid for that computer you play your little games on. I paid for the paint you just wasted in my garage.” His grip tightens to the point that it’s painful. I don’t so much as flinch. “I think I deserve at least the minimal amount of respect a breadwinner deserves, who makes the life you live possible.”
“Did you look at it?”
His eyes twitch with confusion. “Huh?”
“My painting. In your garage. Did you look at it?”
Carl’s grip on my wrist loosens, yet he keeps hold of it. “The hell does that matter if I looked at it or not? ‘Course I looked at it. It’s the only damned thing you can see.”
“I mean really look at it. The way one looks at a painting.”
“Who the hell you think you are, boy? Mozart? I don’t give a shit what the painting is. You had no damned business—”
“Mozart is a composer. And the point is, if you had bothered to open your tiny eyes …” Suddenly, whatever point I was about to make splits open like a flower, revealing an even bigger picture. “If you had bothered to ever open your eyes, or your heart, to who I am, who your stepson is … If you had learned to embrace my ‘arty’ side you can’t stand, we could have had a shot of developing a real relationship. I could have been calling you ‘Dad’ for years.” My eyes harden. “And maybe instead of holding my wrist like you are, you’d be holding my hand.”
There is a precious moment between us right now, Carl and me, where my words seem to have touched him. And in this tiny, fleeting moment, Carl sees a life