Chapter Twenty-Three. Sam
chapter twenty-three
SAM
Caspar Quentin is making pancakes in my kitchen.
Lizzie and Kara must have just gotten back from New Jersey, then. We packed up Ben to hang out with his grandmas for the day so he can take a step outside without getting shouted at by a bunch of assholes with cameras parked in front of our building.
I wait for the shock to register. But after all the messed-up things that have happened in the last three days since the news broke, I can take a famous rock star breaking into my apartment in stride.
“Hi,” I manage.
He flips a pancake with a smiley face spatula. The whole scene is so domestic that I feel like I was dropped onto the set of a sitcom. It only gets weirder when he hands me a stack of mildly charred pancakes in a large, flat salad bowl.
“Couldn’t find the plates.”
“Thanks,” I say warily. “But, uh—what the hell are you doing here?”
He takes a seat on one of the tall stools by the kitchen bar, gesturing for me to do the same. Leave it to Caspar Quentin to walk in somewhere uninvited with the ease of someone who owns the place.
“Figured it’s the least I could do after fucking up your life,” he says.
My jaw ticks. If this is some performance of guilt to win me over, it’s a bad move on his part. I wouldn’t tolerate it on a good day. But he’s got me on a day when I’m so worried about my own kid that I haven’t slept more than two consecutive hours since god knows when.
Ben, at least, has taken the whole thing in stride. Poor kid already found out he had a dad he didn’t know about. By the time the three of us sat him down to tell him about Caspar, all he did was blink in mild surprise.
“I have another granddad?” he asked us. “But that’s so many.”
It was the first I’d laughed since the shit show began.
We’ve kept him distracted with soccer practices and the mushroom Funfetti cupcakes he insisted on making this week, so I don’t think he has any idea about the chaos going on outside our door.
But it’s only a matter of time. And if it’s not this, it’s something else down the road.
Turns out it doesn’t matter how careful I am. Caspar was right. I’ll be just like him, in the end—the kind of dad whose kid will always deserve better than what he got.
Caspar clears his throat. He’s waiting for an answer.
“This wasn’t your fault,” I mutter.
His shoulders slump. I turn, irritated, thinking this is another part of his act.
But there’s no bravado anymore. He seems older than he did only a few days ago, stripped down in a plain black T-shirt and faded jeans, his signature hair and the studs in his ears obscured under a worn-out baseball cap.
“Yeah, well,” he says, his voice gruff. “A whole lot else was.”
Maybe another man would be more understanding, but I am not that man. Everything I’ve got belongs to the people I love right now, not to this man who knows the staff of some bar in Boston better than he knows his damn son.
“I don’t need any apologies from you,” I say plainly. “I don’t need anything from you. And if you need something from me, well—tough.”
I expect him to leave then. Hell, I want him to. I can’t stand seeing the guilt on his face. Can’t stand the way it looks like a reflection of mine.
But Caspar doesn’t go. He doesn’t look at me, either. Just stares ahead and then back down at his plate and says, “You asked why I got in touch, back in Boston. And I bullshitted you.”
“That’s one way of putting it,” I say.
His lips thin ruefully. “I said a lot of stuff to your mom she said I should just say to you. It’s not pretty.
But it’s the truth.” He hazards a glance at me.
“I wasn’t going to be a good dad. I know that sounds like a shit excuse.
But I’m just saying it to explain. That’s the kind of thing you do all the way, and I think I would have just fucked you up if I’d tried. ”
I don’t bother arguing with him on that. It is a shit excuse. But I’ve seen enough to know that he’s probably right.
I’ve lived enough to know he was probably right. Hell, that was the same reason I avoided relationships for so long. I knew it meant the kind of commitment that back then, I just couldn’t give.
But avoiding a relationship with someone you choose is a whole lot different than avoiding one with your kid, who didn’t get to choose a damn thing.
“I thought maybe when you were older,” Caspar continues. “Then your crew hit the big time, and it just didn’t feel right. You earned that on your own. Didn’t want anyone thinking any different, and I—didn’t want you to think I only cared because of what you were doing.”
It’s true what I told Mackenzie back in the day. When Candy Shard started getting traction, I thought maybe my dad would recognize my name. Look me up. Maybe even get in touch.
It never occurred to me that Candy Shard would give him one more reason to stay away.
“I wish you had said something,” I tell him. “I was still a kid when that was happening. I was in over my head. It would have been nice to have someone to talk to about it—someone who understood.”
Mackenzie may have judged me for all the partying back in the day, but she doesn’t even know the worst of it.
I was so fucked up in the beginning, thinking I might let the band down.
I tried my fair share of things to turn off the noise.
Nothing that turned into a habit, but plenty that could have ended in disaster.
Enough that I thought I was too much of a liability to get close to anyone. To get close to Mackenzie. Instead, I just sat there and watched her get her heart broken over and over, while she had no idea she was breaking mine.
Maybe Caspar wouldn’t have been able to say anything that helped. But I guess we’ll never know.
Caspar hangs his head. “Yeah,” he says.
My throat is thick, but I swallow it down. “So what changed?”
This could very well be the last time we ever see each other. Might as well make sure it’s all on the table.
“Ben,” he finally says. He skims a hand under his baseball cap, squeezing the top of his hair. “Guess I just thought—maybe we had something in common, now. Give us an opening to talk.”
I let out a terse breath. Caspar nods, like he knows he deserves it.
“But you were right. We don’t have that in common.” He’s gone still now, finally looking me in the eye. “You’re a good dad.”
It doesn’t mean much, coming from Caspar. But I know that can’t be an easy thing for him to say. He’s struggling to hold my gaze even now, as if the words are more of a judgment of his character than mine.
They are, in a way. Because being a dad to Ben is just one more thing I didn’t get any blueprint for, thanks to him.
“Doesn’t mean I don’t get scared I’m fucking him up, too,” I admit.
Caspar lets out a breathy laugh. “Guess I’m the last person who can give advice on that.”
“Guess so.”
A silence settles between us. I don’t feel any obligation to fill it. It’s a sad thought, but a relief—I don’t need anything from him that I don’t already have in spades. He’s the one here with something to lose.
“I know it doesn’t count for shit, but I thought about you all the damn time. Still do,” says Caspar quietly. “I’d like a chance to get to know you.”
I lean back on my stool. I don’t know if I believe him, but he came all this way, and came as himself this time. I can give him the benefit of the doubt.
“What do you want to know?” I ask.
His cheeks get ruddy, his chin lowering. “Hell,” he says self-consciously. “This sounds nuts, but it’s like—I just got stage fright.”
Maybe he was just nervous. I knew Mackenzie was right, but didn’t know just how right until now.
I push my plate toward him. “We could start with how to make pancakes,” I tell him. “I wouldn’t feed these to the pigeons.”
“Well, shit.” He laughs. “All right. Show me how it’s done.”
We pull out ingredients. He asks questions. He listens. He brags about himself plenty, but there’s something endearing in it. I get the sense he wants to impress me. If not with his ability to use a pan, then everything else.
Over the next hour we talk about the bakery and odd jobs we had as teenagers. We one-up each other over who’s done more embarrassing shit onstage. We talk about how he met my mom, and how I met Lizzie. But mostly, we talk about Ben.
“Fucking wild,” he marvels.
The fridge is so littered with photos and invitations that it takes me a moment to figure out which one he’s looking at.
It’s a picture from Ben’s last birthday, a big picnic in the park.
Ben is standing on my feet and holding my hands, making me walk for him.
Lizzie and Kara are on either side of us, laughing.
All of our moms are huddled over the birthday cake on the picnic table, helping set up the candles, interrupted by blurs of little cousins running around with the balloon animals Divya and Rob attempted to make.
“Yeah,” I say. “Ben’s got plenty of fans, too.”
I brace myself. Caspar might want to meet him, and I’m not sure if we’ll ever be ready for that. But Caspar’s still staring at the photograph, his eyes misty.
“I always thought—this kind of thing wasn’t in the cards, for people like us,” he says. “You know. The normal shit. The good shit.”
He turns to me abruptly, and settles his hands on my shoulders. It’s awkward, but heartfelt. Like he’s so used to touching people out of obligation that he has no idea how to do it out of love.
“I know I’ve got no right to say it, but I’m proud of you. Not for the music shit. But for this,” he says, tilting his head at the fridge. “Knowing what was important before it was too damn late.”
He looks so lost when I meet his eyes, like he’s hoping I’ll help him find himself. Like I’m the only one who has the power to tell him he’s wrong.
Like I’m the one who needs to take care of him .
I come to a quiet understanding, then. Caspar and I will never be like a father and a son. But if I let the idea of that go, maybe there’s something else worth holding on to that we don’t know the shape of yet.
This time when I say we’ll stay in touch, I mean it. This time when he hugs me goodbye, it’s gruff and stilted, but leaves a real warmth behind. This time when he leaves, I don’t feel anything but an unexpected peace.
I spent my whole life terrified of becoming a man like my dad.
I’ll never be able to undo the years I didn’t know about Ben, but for the first time I can forgive myself for it.
It took seeing the regret of a man who lost too many chances with me to be grateful for the lifetime of chances I still have with Ben.
I won’t take a single moment of that for granted. I’ll never be perfect. But there will never be one damn day of that boy’s life that he doesn’t know how much I love him, or that he doubts that I will always, always be there.