Lake
LAKE
Despite me saying I would call Scott, I procrastinate the hell out of it and fling out excuses left and right. Not to Ryker. To myself. Ryker happens to have the patience of a saint, so he can wait me out and match my stubborn streak with his own.
I even call my mother to ask her if she knows what’s caused Scott’s sudden interest in me. She doesn’t pick up, and when I eventually message her about it, she replies with a series of photos of her on a beach with messages like Loving the life down under and You should plan a visit attached to them.
In the end, I’m none the wiser.
“Do you think he’s dying?” I ask Ryker when we’re having dinner on Wednesday. My classes are over for the day, and Ryker doesn’t have a game until Friday. It’s a rare moment of him taking it easy for an hour in between training, watching game tape, and scarfing down inhuman portions of protein and carbs and whatever else is on his diet plan for the week.
He looks up from the roasted vegetables and chicken he’s been shoveling methodically into his mouth.
“Do I think who’s dying?”
“Scott.”
“And you’re basing that guess on…?”
I shrug. “It’s a thing, right? A person finds out they have some life-threatening condition, and they want to fix everything they’ve done wrong. Tie up the loose ends and make amends and stuff.”
He spears a piece of carrot on his fork and eyes it thoughtfully before he pops it into his mouth and aims his gaze at me. “Did he sound like he was dying?”
“He wasn’t gasping for breath or choking on the other end of the line. What’s a dying person supposed to sound like?”
He shrugs. “Unless he’s in the middle of dying, most likely he’d sound like his usual self.”
“What I’m hearing is I’m right, and he actually might be dying.”
“I’m not going to rule that out,” he says, clearly just to appease me. “Or a second possibility. He really does have regrets and just wants to apologize. And make amends. Maybe he wants to get to know you.”
I push my food around for a few seconds before I put my fork down, drag my fingers through my hair, and huff out an annoyed breath. “He couldn’t have just left me alone, could he?”
Ryk sends me a sympathetic look. “Want me to call him and tell him to fuck off?”
“Would you?”
“I will if that’s what you want.”
It’s tempting, I’m not going to lie. My problem is I’m also curious. Yeah, sue me, I want to know why, all of a sudden, after all these years, he’s looking me up. I contemplate for a while about which side of me is stronger—the curiosity, or the urge to just let the sleeping dogs lie.
“Oh, fuck it,” I eventually mutter. I grab my phone and fire off a text to Scott. I’ll meet him if he shows up. If he doesn’t, I’ll put this whole thing out of my mind for good.
“Do you want me to go with you?” Ryk asks when I put the phone down. I don’t know how the hell he even knows what I was doing, but at the same time, I’m not surprised he does.
“You’re in Buffalo on Friday,” I mutter. The sulky tone is unfair. It’s his job. It involves a fuckton of travel. I know it, and there’s no use in being a dickhead about it all of a sudden. I put on a smile and force some conviction into my tone.
“It’s fine. It’s something I need to take care of on my own.”
He looks like he’s going to argue for a moment, but then he just nods because what the fuck else is he supposed to do? Tell his coach ‘Hey, can I skip tomorrow’s game? My secret husband is having a temper tantrum.’
He eyes me for a long moment. “It’s okay to hope for a good outcome. You know that, right?”
“I’ll be fine.”
I picked a random coffee shop instead of one of the expensive restaurants Scott chose the last time we were supposed to meet. I don’t like playing games, but fuck that for now. We’ll do it on my territory, or we won’t do it at all.
I arrive early for no reason at all and almost immediately regret that decision because now I have nothing to do other than nurse a cup of coffee and stare at walls covered in framed movie posters from the sixties and an assortment of signs that are supposed to be funny but really aren’t.
The slow sips of coffee I take taste bitter enough to make my face contort into a grimace, but it’s not like I have anything better to do while I wait. The sandwich I ordered with the coffee is so dry that I abandon it after the first bite.
The beginning of this meeting is super promising so far.
My phone chimes, and I pick it up.
Ryk: I love you. I’ll be back later tonight.
I smile despite myself and feel slightly less tense.
I glance out the window. Still no Scott. I’m not sure whether I’m rooting for him to show up or stand me up. Both of those options have their own appeal.
Even so, my chest is hollow with nerves. It’s not great. I’d like it if the nerves weren’t there. Nerves imply that I care.
Fuck, I wish I didn’t care.
But I do.
There’s a tiny seed of hope inside me, and it’s been there ever since Scott called.
Maybe hope isn’t the right word. It’s not that I think we’re ever going to be a family. I don’t expect him to become my father and erase all the years of disinterest. It’s so goddamn stupid, but I guess I just want to feel wanted by at least one person who’s related to me by blood. I’m embarrassed to even think that. Honestly, it’s goddamn fucking pathetic, and I fully realize that.
I still want it.
Some form of the unconditional parental acceptance I used to have once upon a time.
Some kind of link to a family member.
I want to feel that I’m wanted.
Christ. How pathetic is this? Here I am. Waiting for a man who, by all accounts, never wanted me. A man who hasn’t shown any interest in me in twenty-three years.
But somewhere deep inside me, I have this hope that maybe he’s changed his mind.
God. Damn. Pathetic.
Scott arrives two minutes early. He throws the door open and marches inside like he owns the place, so not much has changed there. He looks a bit older than the man I remember from my childhood, but it’s not a stark difference. He’s approaching fifty, but he could easily pass for forty.
He looks a lot like John. Probably a lot like me, too. Or I look a lot like him, if you want to get technical about it. Same dark brown hair. Same light blue eyes. Same narrow face. Same sharp cheekbones.
The only stark difference from the Scott I used to know as a child is the way he dresses. He’s gone from frat bro to aspiring politician with his sleek black suit and slicked-back hair.
He holds out his arms as he approaches me.
It’s one of those moments when time seems to move in slow motion. Even Scott’s voice, once he opens his mouth, is sluggish and slow.
“, my boy,” he says in a booming voice that makes people turn their heads. In my head, he sounds how a sloth would if they could speak.
I get up, and once Scott’s in front of me, we do that thing where I think we’re headed toward a handshake, and he’s aiming for a hug, so my hand ends up being awkwardly slammed between our bodies as I receive an equally awkward hug. To be fair, it’s me making the hug awkward. Scott—at least, the Scott I remember from my childhood—was always the life of the party. The kind of person who never got into embarrassing situations and could talk to anybody.
Scott lets go of me after a hardy pat on the back and takes a seat. He takes a look around.
“Quaint,” he says. I’m not sure if that’s a good thing in his book or not.
His teeth are very, very white.
“Come here often?” he asks, studying the chalk menu above the counter. “What’s good?”
“It’s my first time here,” I say. I let out a deliberate breath. I might as well remove that stick from my ass for a moment and at least try to be civil. What’s even the point of being here otherwise? “The tea is supposed to be good here.”
“Never been much of a tea guy,” he says, affable as ever. “But hey, why not? Trying new things is supposed to be good for the soul, isn’t it?”
He gets up and heads toward the counter, where he leans his elbow on the wooden surface and starts to chat with the woman behind the counter. She laughs at whatever he says and then starts to twirl a strand of hair between her fingers.
It’s weird to watch because I’m suddenly very aware that technically, that’s my father there, which obviously doesn’t make this moment weird at all . To Scott’s credit, he takes his tea and comes back to the table instead of flirting with her.
He settles in. The cup of tea is left untouched, but he does take in his surroundings with mild interest.
“It’s a good location for a coffee shop. Near a campus, so there’s theoretically a steady clientele. I don’t know about you, but I drank a lot of coffee when I was in college. Mostly when I had to look human in class the morning after a night out.”
He flashes a smile my way. It’s very charming, I’ll give him that.
“Sure,” I say because try as I might, I’m the furthest thing from likable. It’s a shame genetics didn’t figure that I might need that trait in life and instead cast that aside in favor of painful levels of introversion.
Take small talk. I’ve never mastered that particular skill. I know the theory, but sit me down opposite a stranger and my head goes pitifully empty. All my thoughts flee, and I’m left scrambling for something to say. It usually ends in silence.
“So,” Scott says, “how are things?”
I wonder if he sees anything familiar in me when he looks at me.
“Everything’s going well.”
He waits for a beat to see if I’m going to say anything else, and when I don’t, his smile stretches a tad wider as if to compensate for my lack of social skills. “That’s good. I’m glad to hear that. Your mother tells me you’re studying medicine.”
I blink at that. “You talk to Mom?”
“We keep in touch,” he says easily. “She and I reconnected about a year ago. It’s been great. I always loved your mother.”
I really have no idea what to reply to that. It’s honestly impressive how he says that without looking the tiniest bit uncomfortable. Like it’s no big deal to have an affair with your brother’s wife.
“Look, ”—he leans forward—“I’m a man who believes in second chances. We’ve all done our fair share of stupid things when we were young.” He lets out a self-deprecating laugh. “Some more than others.” He drops the smile then. “I never got to settle things between me and your father. I deeply regret not putting things right with him before he died. I will never get that chance again. But I do hope to set things right with you.”
He sounds and looks completely sincere, which throws me off a bit, mostly because I’ve never really been one to give people the benefit of the doubt.
“I would love to get to know you, ,” Scott says.
I think of Ryker. More specifically, I think of what Ryker would do. The answer is obvious. He’d give that second chance because that’s just the kind of person he is. And we’ve already established that Ryker is a much better person than I am, so the only logical conclusion is that I should do what he would do.
Trust doesn’t come easily for me. It hasn’t for years.
Even so, I’m filled with this strange calm.
It’s okay to hope for a good outcome.
“Why now?” I ask.
“Better late than never, isn’t it?” He looks out the window for a moment, a small frown on his face before he concentrates back on me. “Losing John like we did really made me think. He was my baby brother and…” His voice dies down, and he looks down on his hands for a while before he looks up at me again, uncommonly serious for Scott. “Life is short. If I don’t try to get to know you now, I might never get the chance again.”
“John died over two years ago,” I point out. That’s probably a callous thing to remind him of. He wasn’t at the funeral. I remember looking for him, but he never showed up, at least not while I was there. I’m not sure if that was Scott’s own choice or if he simply wasn’t invited.
He studies me with an unreadable look on his face. “Sometimes doing the right thing takes time. And guts.” He grins, then. It looks grim. “Things have always come easy to me. Grades. Football. School in general. I wasn’t used to having to make difficult decisions or consider the consequences of my actions. Your mother… It was a mistake we both paid for dearly. We destroyed our families as a result of a stupid, drunken mistake.”
His shoulders slump, and he hangs his head. If that’s not real remorse, he’s a hell of an actor.
I very deliberately stop that line of thinking. I’m doing that thing again.
Where a lot of people might try and see the best in people, for years, I’ve been gravitating toward looking for flaws. It’s been my armor from the world. In order to protect myself, I need to be able to anticipate the blows, so I need to locate people’s bad sides. Just in case. If there aren’t any? Don’t even worry. I’ll find something minor and blow it way out of proportion.
It’s how I made myself feel safe for years. With paranoia and low expectations.
Only then… Then, Ryker.
He’s not like that.
And after all this time with him, it’s possible, somehow, some way, that I’m not like that anymore either. At least not entirely.
“Do you come to New York often?” I ask.
He tilts his head to the side the tiniest bit.
“Often enough,” he says.
I nod. “You can, you know, text me or something when you do, and we can grab dinner, maybe? Catch up.”
“I can do that,” he says. Then he adds, “Thank you, .”
“I’m not making any promises,” I mumble, because I’m still me and also a bit uncomfortable by now.
“That’s not what I’m after. Just a chance is enough for now.”
He pulls his abandoned cup of tea toward him, lifts it to his mouth and takes a big sip. He screws up his face almost immediately after.
He swallows audibly and pushes the cup away again. “Not a fan,” he says in a choked voice.
Despite myself, my lips twitch into a small grin. I guess this is technically a shared experience, so something we can bond over?
“The coffee was terrible too.” I shrug at the look he sends me. “If it’s any consolation.”
“Good to know.” He gets up. “Come on then. We’re going to find someplace with decent food and nice chairs. Experience tells me conversations flow better when people are comfortable, and I’m certainly not right now.”
I hesitate for a second because the realistic side of me says this might be one of those situations where it’d be sensible to part ways while we’re on a high note.
In the end, I follow him out the door anyway.