3 #2
Before Mom and Dad have a chance to start with the inevitable questions and concern I can see brewing under the surface of the looks they shoot me from the front seat, and before I get the chance to overthink how wrong it feels to be barging in on the side of his life Myles obviously hoped I’d never see, I’m hopping out of the car, clutching the gift I’d chickened out about giving him this morning.
I’m halfway to the front door when the sound of a voice makes me jump about a mile. “Can I help you?”
At least I’m saved from having to feel even snoopier by going up to the front door and knocking. It wouldn’t take a genius to guess that inside the house has got to be at least as bad as outside. Myles would not want me to see that.
Coming around the corner of the house is a man who has to be Myles’s father.
His face is heavier and broader than Myles’s, but he has the same determined, square-set jaw and his dark brown eyes have the exact shape and color of his son’s.
Under the weatherbeaten roughness and grimy black smear of whatever he’s got streaked across his forehead, his skin has a warm, golden-tan color and his hair is a darker, greasy looking version of Myles’s loose brown curls.
Unlike Myles though, whose skinniness makes him look even taller than he already is, this man is so thick and heavyset, he looks like a giant.
Even with the large belly straining at his too-small shirt, his broad shoulders are an instant reminder of his football playing past that Myles told me about when he explained why his dad, who never took him anywhere else or did anything else with him, dragged him to endless rec league football team practices at a park forty five minutes away, and why it had been the end of the world when Myles hadn’t made the high school team.
And also unlike Myles, the man’s lip curls, ever so slightly as he takes me in, pink Wicked tee with the glittery green and pink silhouettes of Elphaba and Glinda, ribbon and tissue paper wrapped present, and all.
I’m always careful to wear the right sort of clothes to school.
Nondescript, boring t-shirts and sweatshirts that, hopefully, anyone looking at me will just look right past. At home though?
Mom and Dad couldn’t care less what I wear as long as it makes me happy, so I save what I actually want to wear for outside of school.
The Wicked shirt is new. Gemma sent it to me for my birthday last month. I’d long since stopped worrying what Myles would think of me wearing things like it, so I’d been wearing it when he came over for birthday dinner and cake with my parents and me that evening.
“That color makes your eyes extra green,” he’d told me with a grin, making my heart flip-flop in my chest as he’d plucked at the shoulder of my shirt on his way through into the dining room.
Sometimes he says little things like that. Small compliments I know don’t mean anything, but that I’ve stored up in my head all the same. Just like each gorgeous smile he’s given me and every time he’s touched me, never mind that it’s rare and only ever casual. Friendly.
“You lookin’ for somethin’?” Myles’s dad steps closer, wiping his hands off on a filthy rag he’s pulled from his back pocket. The sneer I’d thought I’d seen is gone now, replaced by what I’m hoping passes for a smile from him.
I really don’t want to get all grimy with whatever’s all over the man’s hand, but this is Myles’s dad, and making a good impression matters way more, so I swap the gift I’m holding over to my left hand and hold out my right.
“I’m Charlie Lancaster.” He shoots me a blank, confused look, and I add, “Myles’s friend?
” pointing back over my shoulder in the direction of the forest that separates his house from the one we’ve just moved out of.
A weird expression flashes across his face, but it’s gone before I can process it. “Myles says you’re movin’?”
He’s still got that rag in his hands, and when he doesn’t move closer to shake mine, I let my arm drop. Much as I didn’t want to get whatever’s all over his hand on mine, I have to work to remind myself that he’s probably just being considerate by not shaking my hand.
I nod, looking down at the package I’m holding. “I didn’t get a chance to give this to Myles when he came over this morning. Is he here so I can give it to him now? And—” my breath hitches in my throat, “say goodbye again?”
“Thought he was still over at your place.” He shrugs, and my heart crashes right down to my toes as my next breath catches, sharper and tighter than ever. “Haven’t seen him all mornin’.”
He isn’t here. I don’t get to see him before I go.
“I’ll tell him you stopped by though,” Myles’s dad goes on.
“And if that’s for him,” he points his hand that’s holding the grimy rag at the tissue paper wrapped book in my hands.
“You can leave it here. Just set it over there. On the hood.” A jerk of his head toward the beat up old pickup truck parked on the grass a few feet away from where we’re standing.
“Will you tell him I’ll call him tonight?” I don’t actually need him to do that. Myles already knows I’m calling once we get back to our house in Seattle, but I can’t help asking.
“I’ll tell ‘im.” There’s something short about the way he says it, and his jaw looks a bit tight, like he’s had enough of talking with me, but I force myself to remember what Myles has always told me.
That apart from his work at the lumber mill in the next town over or when he used to drop him off at football practice, his dad doesn’t go anywhere.
He doesn’t talk to anyone he doesn’t have to talk to.
There’s a weird knot of anxiety pulling tight in my stomach as I click my seatbelt back into place. Out the window, I can see Myles’s dad just standing where I’d left him, arms crossed and resting at the top of his belly.
Inside the car, there’s a brittle silence.
Not even Cyril makes a sound as Dad puts the car in gear for the bumpy drive back out to the main highway.
In the rearview mirror, he flashes me a sympathetic smile that I really do try to return, but it feels like whatever muscles control that part of my face have stopped working.
Without a word, Mom reaches back and closes her hand over mine, giving my clammy fingers a soft squeeze.
I’m way too old to hold hands with my mom, but the warmth of her hand is comforting, so I don’t pull away.
Besides, it’s helping me keep from looking back over my shoulder as we reach the bend in the driveway where the thick forest will block out the view of Myles’s house.
Maybe it’s the fact that it hadn’t even crossed my mind that Myles might not have been at home, but suddenly, it feels like I’m grasping at straws to keep my connection to him.
Like the fact that he isn’t here is a confirmation of my fears this morning, when he was so strained and quiet and different.
That he’s guessed my feelings for him and is avoiding me.
It’s a stupid and ridiculous idea—he wouldn’t have any way of guessing I’d come here. Wouldn’t have hugged me the way he had if he’d realized and was too disgusted with the idea to stay my friend…
Except, he must have realized. And he was too disgusted. Because, even though I didn’t know it yet, Myles was already gone from my life before we ever even left Riverside.