Chapter 4
DARE
We were still best friends when I scored that goal. Still safe. Still us. I didn’t realize how close we were to losing it all.
I scored the final goal in the last thirty seconds, threading the ball between two defenders and slamming it past the goalie so hard he didn’t even dive.
The team swarmed me. My name rang through the air—“Dare! Dare! Dare!”—like I was some kind of hero. Coach clapped me on the back. Kids screamed. Parents stood to cheer.
I turned toward the bleachers, heart still pounding.
No sign of my dad.
No sign of my mom.
But there was Tru in the front row, standing up on the metal bench to get a better view, cupping his hands around his mouth as he shouted my name. His mom sat next to him, clapping as if her hands were on fire, waving a little paper sign she’d clearly made last-minute.
It said #9 with crooked hearts.
They were the only ones I wanted to see, anyway.
But when the crowd thinned and the lights went dim, the rush drained out of me fast. The cheers echoed in my ears as if they belonged to someone else, some other kid with parents who showed up.
I peeled off my cleats on the sideline, staring at the empty space where my mom and dad should’ve been, and the weight of it settled hard in my chest. Even at twelve, it still mattered to me.
Tru’s mom had cheered loud enough for all three of them—his, mine, and the ones who couldn’t bother. She clapped until her hands turned red and smiled like the win belonged to her, too. For a second, it almost seemed as if nothing was missing. Almost.
Ms. Jameson took us for ice cream at the place with the sticky tables and the arcade game that was broken and stuck on the hardest level. She made a big deal about my ordering two scoops, pretending she was going to fight me for the second one.
“You earned it,” she said, tousling my hair. “Game winner.”
I smiled, even though my stomach was twisted up.
My family had a way of tainting the good moments in my life I wanted to hold on to.
My mom cared more about keeping up appearances than keeping track of me, and my dad…
well, he believed softness was weakness.
A goal was just proof I hadn’t wasted my time at practice.
Nothing I did ever stayed good for long.
That night, I stayed over. The movie playing in the background barely registered. We camped out in sleeping bags on Tru’s bedroom floor. I stared heavenward while he picked at a granola bar.
“You excited about the win?” he asked.
“Sure,” I said.
He glanced over. “You don’t sound excited.”
I shrugged without feeling. “I guess I thought I would be.”
“What’s on your mind?”
I held my tongue until the hush pressed in on both of us. “Do you ever feel like everything’s changing? Or it’s about to? And you don’t know if it’s good or bad?”
His brow furrowed. “What’s changing?”
Everything! Next year we’d be teenagers. I twisted to face him, appreciating how the lava lamp lit his face in a warm golden hue.
“I don’t know,” I said. “That girl Lauren likes me.”
Tru blinked. “You don’t like her back?”
“Not really.” Not the way my Dad wants me to. I laughed under my breath. “She kissed my cheek at lunch, and everyone freaked out like we were engaged or something.”
Tru grinned. “Gross.”
“Exactly.” I tugged at a loose thread on my sleeve, jaw tight. “Now my dad keeps asking if she’s my girlfriend. If I’m finally interested in someone. He says it every night at dinner, like it’s some kind of scoreboard he’s waiting for me to put points on.”
I hesitated. “And… the coach from the high school team came to my last game. Said he wants me to play junior varsity next year. He already called my dad.”
“That’s great,” Tru gasped, eyes going wide. “Right? That’s huge!”
“Yeah,” I said. “Except…”
“Except what?”
“You’re not gonna be on the team,” I told him. “You don’t even like soccer. What if we get pulled into different circles?” Tru had quit the team last year, and he didn’t seem sad about it.
Tru sat up a little. “We won’t.”
“You don’t know that.”
His blue eyes bored through me. “Do you want that to happen?”
“No,” I uttered way too fast. “I want this. All of this… forever.”
He went quiet. I rolled onto my back again, arms crossed behind my head.
“I just have this weird feeling,” I muttered. “Like everything’s already shifting. And I don’t know how to stop it.”
Tru whispered, “You don’t have to.”
I turned toward him.
“Maybe some things change,” he said, “but not us.”
I wanted to believe him. God, I wanted to believe him.
But part of me already knew… not everything was going to survive the change.
I used to think my house felt empty because my parents didn’t talk. Now I know better. It feels empty because it is. Because everyone keeps leaving. First, my mother. Now, my brother’s gone.
Ever since he left for college, the whole place echoed. His room still smelled like cologne and clean laundry, but the door stayed shut. He took his big speakers, his guitar, and his posters. All he left behind were a few old hoodies and a silence I didn’t know how to fill.
He always said he couldn’t wait to get out. Couldn’t wait to follow in Dad’s footsteps and become a lawyer. Work the same hours. Wear the same suits. Talk in the same cold, quiet voice.
I hated that he meant it. Every word. As if it was some badge of honor to become the exact person who made this house feel like a tomb.
I hated more that everyone expected the same from me.
College. Law school. Long hours in some stuffy office with no windows. Memorizing rules, toeing lines, pretending to give a shit about contracts and real estate and whatever else Dad buried himself in.
But I didn’t want any of that. I wanted out. Just… not like that.
I didn’t know exactly what I wanted yet. Not really. But I knew it was different. Everyone kept telling me who I was supposed to be, but no one ever asked what I actually thought.
I wanted to live in a place that didn’t go quiet the second the sun went down. I wanted noise and people who meant it when they asked if you’re okay. I wanted to build something that felt like mine and not some legacy someone handed me.
I wanted to be around people who laughed too loud and left the lights on and stayed up talking about nothing for hours.
I wanted honesty, even if it hurt. I wanted something real, even if it broke me.
People who didn’t tell me who I should be or who they wanted me to be, and just let me be who I am.
And if I could picture my future clearly, Tru would be in it.
Still beside me.
Still choosing me.
But I didn’t tell anyone that. Not even him. Because none of that sounded like what I’m supposed to want. I didn’t know how to say it out loud, but I think part of me already knew. Tru was the only thing I ever really wanted. And God help me if I ever admitted that truth.
The problem was, every time my dad saw two guys holding hands on TV, he’d scoff and say it was wrong.
A phase. Not real. They were probably just confused.
And words I wanted to say got stuck in my throat.
So, I stayed quiet, swallowing pieces of myself one by one, until all that was left was the secret I couldn’t stop wanting.
The only time I saw Dad anymore was over at Tru’s house, which was almost funny, if it didn’t feel like such a slap in my face.
He’d show up occasionally, saying he was checking in on me. But I could count on one hand the number of times he’d actually looked me in the eye. He barely spoke to me.
It was all about Charlotte now. Tru’s mom.
He talked to her in that voice, the nice one, the lawyer one, the one that didn’t sound close to anything he ever used with my mom. He cleaned her pool. Fixed her door hinge. Last week, he even took her car to get washed.
When I asked why, he just said, “She does a lot for you, Son. Nobody does anything for her. She doesn’t have a man around to help with these things.”
I didn’t buy it for a second.
Charlotte didn’t need a man. She didn’t ask for help. She just gave—and yeah, she did a lot. But she always had. She did before he noticed her. Before he started hanging around as if he belonged.
Tru and I could clean her pool and wash her car and fix her door hinge. We could help her bring the groceries in and take the garbage out. Why did she need him?
The thing was, I liked it better when it was just me and Tru. His mom was the only adult who treated me like I mattered.
Now my dad’s here. Standing in the kitchen, laughing, smiling, doing things he never did for us.
For me. The only place I felt seen was at Tru’s house, and now even that didn’t feel real anymore.
And no matter how many goals I scored or how many good report cards I brought home, I didn’t make him proud.
He was proud of my brother.
He was interested in Charlotte.
And me?
I was just the kid he didn’t have time to love. My dad forgot about me a long time ago. I just didn’t expect him to forget while I was still standing right there, hoping he’d notice.