Day 52
Asher
I’m probably not in the right mind-set to talk to my dad, but I’m in a screw it, there’s nothing left to lose kind of mood, so I’m going to run with it.
He’s by the picnic table in the yard, spreading newspapers and trash bags out so he can clean the fish he caught this morning with Tom.
After what has been dubbed the fish incident, Mom hasn’t let him anywhere near the kitchen with fish this summer.
He’s hauling his cooler from the ground up onto the gray bench, when I stand across from him.
“Come to help?”
“Can’t. Traumatized.” I hold my hands up in the air. “I may never eat fish again. I was hoping we could talk for a minute before you start slicing and dicing?” I take a seat on the long gray bench.
Dad sits down next to his cooler and when he looks at me, his whole face changes. Something like fear and panic wash over him in an instant. “Oh god.” He looks up at the house and back to me. “You’re not. I mean, Sidney’s not. She’s not pregnant or something, is she?”
“She’s not—what?” I try to physically shake away the confusion and shock that has slapped me in the face. “What are you talking about?”
Dad is visibly relieved. “I’m sorry, I just—the way that you looked. I thought this was something big. Something bad.”
“And your first thought was that I knocked up Sidney?”
Dad winces. “This isn’t my finest parenting moment.”
“You knew we were together, though?” I wince. “Dating together, not accidental-pregnancy together,” I clarify.
“I know. We know.” Dad glances up at the house again. “Your mom thinks it’s adorable you think we don’t. Maybe don’t tell her about this little freakout, okay? Not unless you want to go back to an open-door policy around the house.”
“We broke up last night, so that won’t be a problem.”
When my dad is disturbed by something—really disturbed—he has a very specific look. His eyebrows collapse into sharp mountains, and his mouth twists up. He shakes his head three times. No more, no less. “I’m sorry to hear that. I really thought this was the year things turned around for good.”
“Me, too.”
“You want to talk about it?”
I shake my head. “Not now. Maybe some other time.” I give him a sideways glance. “Over a beer?”
Dad smiles. “Sure.”
“Anyway, that’s not what I wanted to talk about. I wanted to talk about the apprenticeship with Mr. Ockler this fall.”
At this, Dad is once again his cheery self. “You finally get it squared away?”
“I don’t want to do it.” I stop him before he can interrupt me. Before I lose my nerve to tell him everything. “Not just the apprenticeship. Everything. I don’t want to study finance, and I don’t want to manage anyone’s retirement fund. It’s not what I want to do.”
“Since when?”
“Since … forever?” I push a hand through my hair.
“And I know it’s easy money, and I can have this whole business just waiting for me when I graduate, but I know I’ll regret it.
I want to coach. I’ve always wanted to coach.
And I get that it’s a long shot maybe, but”—god, I’m rambling like Sidney now—“I’d rather try for that and fail than go for a sure thing that I’m never going to care about. ”
Dad looks to the house again, and I finally realize what he’s looking for.
Mom. His other half, the person he wants to face this hurdle with.
I thought I’d face this hurdle—telling my dad—with Sidney.
That I’d finally work up the nerve to tell him, and I’d get to tell her, and we’d celebrate.
I had imagined pancakes would be involved.
Or a late-night make-out session. Maybe both.
But at least she left me with something. “I want to study sports psychology. And I have a plan.” I pull out the list I made this morning in my bedroom when I was too afraid to run into Sidney in the kitchen, and I set it on the table. “Do you want to hear it?”