Chapter 4
I don’t end up falling back asleep. I try for a little while, but I’m jittery, restless, and finally I kick the covers away and get up to take a shower.
After, I log in to my work computer. We’re offseason at the moment, but there’s still prep to do.
We have most of our cast figured out, but our itinerary is still up in the air.
Love in the Sun showcases four to five different cities a season, and arranging flights and resort sponsorships and activities for the couples to do at each location takes up a good amount of my time.
The audience doesn’t like it when we get too repetitive, but due to the nature of the show we have to pick cities that give fun, beachy vibes, and after twelve years running, it’s getting difficult to find anywhere new.
It’s getting difficult to try anything new.
I’ve been working on this show since I was fresh out of college, nearly ten years ago.
I started as a production assistant and worked my way up, and my boss, Natalie, who’s now the showrunner, and I always talked about updating the show.
But our suggestions, including reducing the number of couples so we can go deeper with each one, or staying in one city so we can show more of the area and its culture, have all been rejected by the network.
We’re a beach show, we’ve been told. We’re meant to be light, offering armchair travel, swoony romance, and drama.
I guess there was something to what that man was saying earlier, about style impacting substance.
My stomach growls, and I close my laptop, slipping it into my backpack. I get dressed quickly and leave the hotel room to find some food.
It’s quiet outside, midmorning on a Friday. The sky is gray and overcast, but still bright somehow, light filtering in through the clouds. I find a teahouse a short distance away and settle in at a table in the corner, ordering a scone and a pot of tea.
I haven’t really allowed myself a moment to stop and think since I’ve gotten here, but in the silence of this half-empty place, I finally ask myself: What am I doing here?
The invitation to my father’s wedding was a surprise.
I’ve always had minimal contact with him, just occasional calls for birthdays and important holidays.
When my parents split, he stayed here, in the UK, and he didn’t come to the U.S.
often to visit. My mom said he made annual trips when I was younger, but I hardly remember them.
He’d repeatedly asked for me to come visit him in Scotland, but my mother hadn’t wanted me to make the journey alone.
Still, I’d begged every year to go, and the summer I was ten, my mother finally gave in.
I’d been so excited to see my father, to spend some real time with him, only to arrive and realize the man was basically a stranger.
And he didn’t seem to know what to do with a kid in the house.
At meals, he asked me the same questions in a cycle, the same ones he always asked on the phone: “How’s school going?
” It’s summer vacation. “Do you like your teachers?” It’s summer vacation.
“Tell me about your friends.” Liz and Marcus.
We all play soccer, but I haven’t seen them because it’s summer vacation.
Maybe I’d been a little surly when responding, but I’d been a child who was homesick, missing my mother and my friends and the food I was used to.
My father didn’t know me, and it felt like he didn’t know how to get to know me.
For the rest of that two-week vacation, he plied me with books and television, and I counted down the days until I could go home.
The next summer, he invited me back, but I didn’t want to go, and as I grew older, the phone calls became less frequent.
We exchanged emails, but what did the two of us have to talk about?
Conversation was always stilted, and I began to come up with excuses when his calls came, saying I had to run or sending them to voicemail, ignoring them entirely.
About a year ago, the frequency of the calls started increasing, but I was busy with work, with travel, with trying to keep a failing relationship afloat. It was easy to ignore, until my mother called me six months ago.
“Have you not been checking your old email address?” she asked.
I frowned. “No. Nobody’s using AOL anymore, Mom. I just use my work email for everything.”
She went quiet, and I felt something shift, immediately sensing that something was wrong.
“What is it?”
“Your dad, he called here.” She paused. “He said he’d been trying to get ahold of you.
That he wanted to let you know that he’s…
he’s been sick. He’s been in and out of the hospital for a while and he just wanted to talk to you.
So, whenever you get a chance, maybe just send him a message or give him a call? ”
“Sick? What kind of sick? Like…” I sat down, my head reeling.
“He didn’t say. But…just give him a call.”
I hung up and immediately dialed his number.
He answered after only one ring, telling me he’d been diagnosed with bladder cancer.
They’d done some rounds of chemo a few years ago, and he had been in remission for a while, but now it was back.
He’d recently gone through surgery and had the tumor removed, and they thought he’d be fine from here on out, but he’d wanted to tell me about it.
Guilt flooded through me.
I couldn’t stop thinking about all the missed calls I’d ignored, the ones I’d never returned.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t know. Can I—can I do anything? Is there anything you need?”
He waved the offer away. “No, everything’s okay. Recovery is slow, but I’ve got good people around me. I just wanted you to know so you could update your medical history if you need to.”
My guilt transformed, my stomach dropping like a stone.
I’d thought—hoped—that this might be a moment of connection with my father.
I’d thought that maybe he was reaching out.
As soon as my mom had said the word “sick,” I’d concocted a whole narrative in my mind.
My father had had a brush with death, and he was desperate to get ahold of me so he could tell me he was sorry.
Sorry for being an absent father, for being so uninterested in my life.
Tell me that he knew it was too late, but he wanted to do better now that he’d been given a second chance.
But my father wasn’t apologizing, or making some effort to reconnect. He didn’t ask to see me or for me to visit him, even though he’d just undergone a serious medical crisis. He was just being practical, providing information so I could update my medical files.
We haven’t spoken much over the phone since then.
I gave him my new email address, but we’ve barely corresponded.
He’s only asked the standard questions he’s been asking since I was a child, and I’ve provided some slightly more mature answers.
I’ve asked about his health, how he’s doing, but he’s never offered much more than “fine.”
Then three months ago, he emailed to say he was getting married, and that he’d like my current mailing address.
I sent it, along with a quick “congratulations,” but I was stunned.
We’d been corresponding cordially for months.
I’d been making more of an effort. I’d thought again—stupidly—that he might be trying to repair our relationship, but he hadn’t ever mentioned that he was seeing someone, that he was engaged, that he’d be getting married soon.
I told him I wouldn’t be able to go all the way to Scotland for it, and when the invitation never arrived in the mail, I figured he’d decided he wouldn’t waste one on me. But then last week, it arrived.
I must have made a mistake and given my dad the address to the old apartment I’d shared with my ex.
He took forever to forward it to me, and when I opened it, my first instinct was to book a flight.
It was odd, but there was no reason I couldn’t go.
It was the offseason, so I didn’t have to go in to work.
Anything I needed to do could be done remotely.
And I couldn’t help thinking about my dad being sick.
What if his cancer came back? What if something happened to him?
I hadn’t seen him in years, and I wondered if I’d regret missing out on this moment.
If I’d ever have a chance like this again.
I packed, made arrangements, and now, a few days later, I’m here.
I spend the rest of the afternoon working in the café, then walk back to my hotel. I slip on a plain navy-blue dress that I’ve worn to a number of my friends’ weddings over the last few years, and take my time getting ready for the rehearsal dinner tonight.
Anxiety thrums under my skin. There wasn’t any sort of wedding website listed on the invitation, and there wasn’t enough time to send back the physical RSVP.
I sent my dad an email saying I was coming, but he never responded.
I’m sure he’s been busy with pre-wedding prep, though. I wonder if he’s even seen it.
I smooth my hands over my dress and head down to the front desk. I ask for a cab and nervously tap my foot as I wait outside.
God, I hope it’s okay that I’m here. I don’t know how my dad is going to react to my showing up like this. I don’t know how I’m going to react to seeing him. But it’s just two days. Tonight, and the wedding tomorrow, and then I’ll be going back home.
I can get through this.
When the car arrives, I take a deep breath and climb inside.