Nick
NICK
I DON’T PAUSE to think when I receive Zo?'s text. I react immediately. I turn off the TV and put on my shoes. I’m in my car before I even start to question my actions.
But whether it’s a good idea or not, nothing could stop me from rushing to Zo?'s side.
It’s not that I think my son is dangerous in any way—of course not. But the abrupt tone of her text, especially after what happened between us today, signaled urgency to me, one way or the other. The idea that Zo? needs me sends my pulse racing. And the idea that Tate is at the club, maybe confronting her about something, has my anxiety at red-alarm level. I need to be there, whatever is going down. I need to manage the crisis I’ve caused.
I tear into the parking lot and rush to the door, but then pause a few feet away to take a deep breath and compose myself. I’ll never get past the bouncers if I seem agitated. When I enter the club, I pay my ten-dollar entry fee and smile calmly. Two young guys walk past me on their way out, strangely familiar. I’m sure I’ve seen at least one of them at the house.
“I want a lap dance from her, too,” says the one I think I recognize, laughing.
“Forget it,” says the other, as they step through the exterior door. “Tate is probably inside her right now.”
The air goes out of the small vestibule, and my vision tunnels. I’m seeing red as I step through a curtain into the main room.
I make a beeline onto the floor, ignoring the host who tries to seat me, and scan the crowd for Tate or Zo?. Finally, my eyes alight on one familiar face: the dark-haired girl we spoke to on my birthday when I was here with the boys—Jazmyn.
“Where’s Zo??” I ask abruptly, touching her arm.
She whips her head around to me, and then recognition passes over her features. She points to the VIP area without needing any explanation.
“They’re back there.”
I take the small flight of stairs up to the VIP area in two steps and stalk down the corridor, throwing back curtains to shouts and outrage, indifferent to the gyrating bodies inside, until I find what I’m looking for.
Tate and Zo? sitting side by side on a bench, both looking wretched.
“What are you doing here, Tate?” I roar as I tear the curtain back.
What a sight. My son, my boy. It seems only yesterday he was an infant dressed in dinosaur onesies, a little boy with a favorite Spider-Man top. Now he’s a giant sitting next to a scantily-clad girl and glaring back at me with pure thunder in his eyes.
“Me? What am I doing here?” He looks at Zo? in disbelief. “The fuck? Did you… call my dad?”
“Get up.”
“Fuck, no. What the fuck?”
Zo? stands up, just a suggestion of flesh and iridescent fabric in the corner of my eye. I can’t let myself look at her, or I’ll lose all focus.
Tate isn’t looking at her, either. He’s locked on me as he stands up and demands, “Just what the fuck is going on here?”
I can see the suspicion forming in his eyes, the shocked whirlwind of his thoughts trying to make sense of what I’m doing here. What my involvement is in all of this.
Even I don’t know. Am I trying to keep him away from Zo? out of sheer protectiveness, or am I trying to manage the narrative?
Maybe both.
“Let’s go outside,” I suggest, wrestling with myself to stay calm. “We can talk in private.”
“The fuck we will. None of this,” he indicates himself, Zo?, the booth, “is any of your fucking business, old man.”
Old man.
The fury that I’d just managed to get under control leaps up again like an uncontrollable fire.
Tate is a big guy, six feet and broad, but not as tall as me. When I step towards him, I still tower over him by three inches.
“You don’t want to make this my business,” I threaten, in a tone that surprises even me.
This is my son, after all, but on a base, instinctive level, he feels like a competitor.
Fuck.
We’re interrupted before he can reply by a big bald man with a goatee, dressed in a t-shirt that says Security across the front.
“Excuse me,” he barks. “What’s happening here?”
“I’m escorting my son off your premises,” I snap, turning to meet the man chest to chest. While tall, he, too, is shorter than I am.
“Holy fucking shit,” Tate exclaims, with all the exasperation of a spoiled teenager.
He steps into the hall with no fear of the security guard. It’s the alcohol, maybe, making him belligerent, but still, it’s such a contrast to the shy little boy I remember. He’s a man now.
“I will see my self fucking out,” he snarls, striding past both of us.
“You okay, Zo??” asks the security guard.
“I’m fine,” she answers, and I realize she’s right behind me. My attention tears away from Tate, and I look over my shoulder at her for the first time.
She looks unthinkably vulnerable, barely dressed in only a skimpy bikini, towering high heels giving her the long, skinny legs of a newborn fawn, and I just want to wrap her in my arms and bury myself in her like I did earlier today when she told me she loved me.
But I can’t do anything for this exact reason right here. Because Tate could show up in our lives at any moment, like he just did.
“This is all bullshit!” I hear him holler from a distance, sounding like a crazy person, a drunk throwing a tantrum in public. I wrench my eyes away from Zo? and walk down the corridor, followed by the burly, baldheaded man, who storms past me down the stairs and takes my son by the elbow, swiveling him towards the door.
Another man, short and fat, turns in my direction and shouts past my shoulder.
“Zo?! Head home!”
* * *
I know this is a pivotal moment, one that will define my relationship with my son.
I should be driving him home. I should be dragging all this mess and chaos up to the surface and sorting through it, painful though it might be, just so that he and I can clean it up and repair things.
But instead, I’m standing in the parking lot when Zo? walks out the back door with her giant bag slung over her shoulder, waiting for her. She doesn’t look surprised to see me.
I give her a crooked smile, the kind that doesn’t reach my eyes, because I’m so regretful about everything. I would do anything to take back what I said today, the way I ended things, except that I can’t. We can’t go on, and, clumsy and shitty though it may have been, I’ve ripped the bandaid off now. We have to find our way from here.
She gives me a regretful look back, eyes big and baleful, and when I hold out an arm, she falls into it, leaning her body against mine, her temple on my chest.
We don’t say anything. I flatten my palm against her back, wanting to lift her chin and kiss all this away, but I don’t. After a moment, she straightens. I unlock the car, and we get in.
We drive home in silence. It’s impossible to speak. The only thing I could possibly say is how much she means to me. How I would do anything for her. That if she needs me, I will always be there. And it’s too painful to articulate.
For, as unbelievable as Zo? may be, she is the biggest mistake I’ve ever made in my entire life. A father seducing his son’s girlfriend? I am as despicable as they come.
So I let the silence hang between us, and neither of us says a word until I pull into the driveway. I turn off the engine and look over at her, and Zo? says, “I should move.”
I can’t let her see the blinding agony that rips through me, because of course she’s right. She can’t live here. I should never have let any of this happen. So I only say, “There’s time to figure everything out.”
* * *
It’s still grey and misty out when I pull up to Rebecca’s house in the morning, the sun only a clouded shimmer low in the sky. She answers the door in a bathrobe, looking perplexed and pissed, and tells me that Tate is asleep. Obviously, I know that, but, “Wake him up, please,” I say. “Tell him it’s important.” And then I go back out to my car to wait.
Something about my unlikely arrival time or my impatient tone must convince her, because about ten minutes later Tate stomps out to the car, wearing a tank top and sweat pants, a heavy scowl on his face. He gets into the passenger seat and closes the door with slightly too much force, and then turns to look at me with an arch, stony expression. It’s a version of my son I saw last night, but now instead of being belligerent, he’s authoritative and righteous. For the first time, he has the upper hand. And we both know it.
I turn and look out the windshield. A light rain is starting, drizzle speckling the glass.
It’s impossible to know where to start. It could take years to explain myself. So I decide to cut to it.
“Do you love her?” I ask.
He balks. “ That’s what you have to say?”
But it’s the only question that matters. How else do I quantify the damage I’ve done? And maybe justify it, too?
“Do you?”
I turn to look at him, see him shake his head, roll his eyes. He clocks the suitcases in the backseat and then looks back at me with a narrowed, suspicious expression.
“No,” he answers defiantly. “Do you?”
In a thousand years, I could never have imagined myself in this situation. I can still remember the positive pregnancy test that made Rebecca and I cry together twenty-three years ago. How tiny and utterly defenseless Tate was when he was born. That love I felt for him from the moment I found out he existed was like nothing I’d ever felt before.
Love is powerful. It’s inexplicable. And it’s uncontrollable.
“Jesus Christ,” he curses when I don’t reply, and opens the car door.
“Tate!”
But he’s already outside, slamming the door shut, stalking back to the house. What else can I say? My silence said it all.