Chapter 18
Joelle
There’s noise coming from somewhere outside my head but the dream is too good to give up, so I bury my head under my pillow and let it claim me again.
It’s Elliot and Alex, and we’re gearing up for round two. Or maybe three or four. I can’t remember at this point. All I know is I’m not done with them yet and it’s so damn hot in here I need to kick the covers off but it’s cold out there and I’m not ready to face that stupid alarm.
Alarm.
That’s not an alarm; that’s a phone call.
I shove the pillow off my face and scoot to the end table, snagging my phone off the shelf just as the call goes to voicemail.
I groan, scrubbing my face with my hands. Figures. I think long and hard about crawling back under the covers and trying to get back to that glorious dream. But that never works and anyway, I don’t need dreams anymore.
I’ve got memories.
But then the memory of how last night ended—with Elliot glaring daggers at Alex for some reason and then both of them beating a hasty retreat on me—hits and the lingering arousal I’d woken with begins to fade. Okay, so technically, Alex didn’t run off. I left his place. But he didn’t exactly try to stop me, did he?
And just like that, I’m back on the looping train of thought that kept me up the second half of the night.
I’m staggering zombie-like into the bathroom when I finally check the time.
Shit!Shit shit shit. I’m so late.
I’d assumed the missed call was a telemarketer because, seriously, nobody calls me. But I pull up the missed call list and sure enough, three missed calls from Duckbill.
I tap out a text to Anna, the manager on duty this morning.
Overslept. I’ll be there in thirty minutes or less.
After the world’s fastest shower—one that brings crystal clear flashbacks of last night’s debauchery, which is absolutely not what I need right now—I dress quickly, yanking my hair into a bun and foregoing all makeup.
“Hey, Dad, I’m going to have to borrow the car this morning,” I say, passing through to the kitchen without stopping to hear his reply. I grab my travel coffee mug, a snack bar from the box on the counter, and head back to the living room.
“I didn’t hear you, sorry,” I say around a mouthful of the breakfast bar.
“You said you were staying out last night,” says Dad. He’s frowning, harder than usual.
“Yeah, I changed my mind and came back instead.” I really don’t have time for this but Dad’s clearly got something on his mind.
“Sleep well?”
“Well enough,” I say.
“I should hope so, since the day’s half gone. I had to make my own breakfast,” he gripes. That explains the smell near the microwave, I think, but my head’s really not in this conversation, so I apologize just to get my ass out the door.
“I’m sorry, Dad,” I say, pulling on my coat.
“I don’t believe you,” he says. I stop what I’m doing and turn to look at him.
He’s angry. He’s actually angry about this.
“Okay. Look, I really am sorry,” I say, pressing my fingers to my eyes. I’m insanely late, but he’s my dad so I summon patience from some corner of my brain and take a deep breath. “I’ll work out a menu and get some things prepped for you for this week, okay? That way you won’t have to worry about fixing anything.”
“I’ll believe it when I see it,” he gripes. “You’re hardly ever here, and when you are, you’re in your room.”
“I’m working, Dad,” I say, then stop. Raising my voice won’t get me out the door any faster.
A knock on the door covers up whatever reply he was about to make. I check the peephole and pull open the door.
“It’s colder than a witch’s tit in February out there,” says Connie, shaking rain off her coat before she steps inside.
Good. Reinforcements. Maybe she’ll distract Dad and we can sort this out when I’m not an hour late to work.
Connie looks at Dad who doesn’t say anything, then looks at me.
“Okay,” she says, hanging up her coat on the hall tree by the door. “What’s going on here?”
“What’s going on is that I’m very late and I have to get going,” I say, giving her a quick hug.
“Don’t you walk out of here yet, young lady,” says Dad from his chair. “We’re not done with this conversation.”
“Dad, I have to go to work,” I say, my voice rising again. “I have a job, remember?”
“Maybe you ought to try remembering that yourself next time you want to stay out playing all night long.”
It’s the wrong card to play, mainly because I know he’s right.
“I’m an adult, in case you’ve forgotten,” I tell him. Dad’s still sitting in that damn chair. I’m going to chop that stupid recliner to bits one of these days. He can’t even get out of it to yell at me properly.
“Then act like it,” he says, yelling now for real. “I raised you to take care of your responsibilities. If you can’t handle it—”
“I am handling it fine.”
Connie’s made herself comfortable on the sofa, watching us argue with mild interest.
“Joelle’s right, you know,” she says to Dad. “She handles herself beautifully. You should see her in the kitchen.”
“I see her in the kitchen all the damn time,” says Dad. “It’s all she does anymore, unless she’s out partying all night.”
This scores me a smirk from Connie.
“Out all night, huh?”
“Don’t encourage her,” snarls Dad. “She slept half the day away because of it and now she’s late to the only job she could get.”
“It’s not the only job I could get!”
“Sure looks that way to me,” says Dad.
“And anyway, at least I have a job. When’s the last time you went to work, huh, Dad?”
I regret the words even as they’re coming out of my mouth. Connie holds up a hand. Unbelievably, Dad stops whatever he was about to say.
“She’s got a point, Hank,” says Connie in a calm, reasonable tone. Like we’re just debating local politics or something. How does she do that?
Dad’s face goes red and for a moment, I wonder where we stored the blood pressure cuff. Mad as I am right now, getting this worked up can’t be good for him. “What the hell are you getting at?” he asks.
“I’m just saying that I know it’s been a while since you were in the workforce,” says Connie. “You ever think about getting back to it?”
The room goes quiet and I hold my breath, waiting for his reaction. Because I couldn’t be the one to say it to him, even if my sixteen-year-old self has been asking this silent question since Mom bailed on us and left me in charge of keeping us afloat.
I’ve spent so much time trying to keep our heads above water, and now I’m so close—so goddamned close—to moving on to a part of life that’s just for me. I want to be a good daughter to him, but… sometimes I just want to be a daughter.
Not the head of the household.
I’ve buried that thought so many times that letting it play out in my own mind feels foreign, like it’s not supposed to be there.
Guess this is just the season for having thoughts I shouldn’t. Suddenly my mind is filled with Elliot and Alex, and of the three of us together, and how nothing in my whole world outside of my work in the kitchen has ever felt so precisely right. Like the universe struck a tuning fork just for us and it’s the most perfect sound I can imagine. That’s what it felt like, being with them last night. It feels that way when I get in that zone in the kitchen.
And that’s what the thought of being a daughter to my father, and only a daughter, feels like. Not being a caretaker, or a manager, or sole breadwinner.
The sense of rightness, that resonance, it gives me the courage to say something I’ve been holding back for years.
“Maybe it’s time you start doing some of these things for yourself, Dad,” I say softly, the urge to yell gone.
Dad still hasn’t answered Connie, and now I’m wishing I’d waited until he had.
“Explain yourself,” he says, damn near apoplectic. I can see the vein at his temple throbbing as he pulls himself up out of that stupid recliner. My pulse is pounding so loud in my ears it’s hard to hear.
“I only meant that—”
“You think I’m freeloading? Is that it? Just lounging around on the back of my only child.” He’s shouting at Connie now. I’ve never seen him this angry, literally shaking with rage.
Hell, now I’m shaking. I twist my hands together and try to talk him down.
“Dad, I’m just saying—”
“I think you’ve said quite enough, young lady,” he says. “I want you out of the house by the end of the week.”
The room goes silent.
“Excuse me?”
“I didn’t stutter. And you might as well go, too,” he says to Connie. “I got no use for people who think I’m some sort of mooch, not in my own goddamned house.”
“Nobody thinks you’re a mooch, Hank,” says Connie, trying to soothe him.
“That’s obviously not true, if the two of you are—what? Staging some kind of intervention.” Dad laughs, and it’s a bitter, ugly sound. “Is that what this is? Some kind of get-your-dumbass-back-to-work intervention. Like what Bill and Marsha Myers had to do with their lazy sumbitch grandson when he dropped out of college.” He laughs again and drops back into the chair.
I’m still frozen where I stand, on the verge of tears for the second time in twelve hours.
“Dad, I—”
“Yeah, yeah, I know. You have to go to work.” He picks up the remote, jacking the volume up too high. “So go already.”
I pull my coat on, dazed. Connie follows me out to the front step.
“He didn’t mean it, honey,” she says, rubbing my arms. “He’s just in a mood.”
“He did,” I say, moving now but frozen inside. “He meant every word of it. And he’s not wrong.”
“About what?”
“That I resent having to take care of him. That I’ve been thinking he needs to get back to work.”
“There’s nothing wrong with either of those things, child,” she says, too kindly. That gentle tone starts the tears falling. “You were just a kid when he got hurt. And then when your fool mama left—” Connie huffs out a breath. “Since I got nothing nice to say, I’ll stop there.”
“What am I going to do, Connie?”
“For starters, you get your butt to work. After that, you come back here, get you a bag packed and you come stay with me for a few days. Let that old coot cool off a bit.”
“Really?”
“Really. It’ll do him some good to have a couple of days to himself, anyway. Let him get a taste of what it feels like.”
“But what if—”
“I’ll still be here checking on him, don’t you worry. Even if he tries to fire me again.” Connie laughs at that. “Can you believe it? I’ve told him a thousand times you can’t fire somebody who don’t work for you, but he keeps trying anyway. Plus, those therapists will be around every so often. And Lord knows, the man can operate a cell phone.”
She sees my frown at that and pulls out her smartphone, flicking the screen open. It’s a text thread from my dad.
Memes. So many memes.
“When did that start?”
“I showed him a couple of funny ones that first day. Guess he got hooked,” says Connie. “I swear to God, he sends me ten a day.”
Dad’s sending memes. To Connie.
The world’s gone mad, but I don’t have time to sort it out. I have to go face my boss, who is now also my lover, and find out whether I still have a job after sleeping with him and then showing up over an hour late to work the next day.
I hug Connie, thanking her and promising to text her later. I back out of the driveway as fast as I dare. Now that the bridge between me and my father is burning, time to go find out whether the one between me and Elliot is still standing.