Chapter 21 #2
I want to leave. I want to get in the car and drive the two hours back into a house where nobody's keeping a seat warm for the man they wish I'd be instead.
But it would gut my mother to watch her son walk out before the roast hits the table, and I'm not going to do that to her.
So I don't leave. I push through the side door off the kitchen onto the back porch.
I can at least put a wall and some air between me and that room before I have to come back in and pass the potatoes like a man with nothing to say.
Nate finds me within a minute. Of course.
He doesn't say anything at first. Just comes out, letting the door swing shut behind him, and stands next to me at the porch rail, looking out at the dark yard, the silent fountain, the manicured lawn, the pergola with the built-in entertainment center. He's quiet.
“For the record,” he says finally, “I didn’t know this was an ambush. He only mentioned dinner.”
"I know."
"I wouldn't have come if I'd known he was gonna use me like a—" He stops. Tries again, lower. "I'm not on his side. You know that."
"Yeah."
We stand there. A car goes by in the distance, headlights sweeping the side of the house and gone.
I can feel him working up to the thing he actually came out here to say, and I let him, because Nate doesn't get to these things fast. He circles it like a man trying to back a truck into a tight space.
"Something's up with you," he says.
"My dad's always like this. You've met him."
"Not that." He turns so he's facing me, one shoulder against the post. "You.
You don't come to The Quack anymore. When you do, you're checking your phone like there's somewhere better to be.
" He says it plain. Not wounded, exactly, but close enough that it's worse than hurt. "Knox started taking Declan with him to the club and God-knows-where-else. Keeps complaining that Deck isn’t as good of a wingman.”
I almost laugh. It doesn’t quite get there.
"And Nora." He drags a hand down his face. "Nora’s got it in her head that it's her. That you started pulling back when she and I got serious. That you don't like her, or you don't like us. She said that to me. Laid in bed and asked me if I thought you hated her now."
That lands somewhere it shouldn't. Nora, who’s never done anything but love her sister and tolerate me, lying awake deciding she's the reason I disappeared.
"It's not Nora," I say. "Nate—I swear to God it's not Nora. I'm happy for both of you. I mean it, man. You found someone who can stand you. That's not nothing. I've watched you strike out for six years."
"There he is." A flicker of a grin. Then it drops. "So what is it?"
I want to tell him. Nate would get it. Nate would get it faster than anyone else. He's already halfway into the family. He could help me figure out the part I can't figure out alone.
But it goes through Nora to Audrey, and it’s Audrey’s to tell. She’s got a reputation to hold. Kids to protect from gossip.
"I can't," I say.
He waits.
"It's not a bad thing." I look out at the silent fountain. "I just can't tell you yet. I need you to trust me that there's a reason. But it isn't you or Nora. Can that be enough? For now?"
Nate studies me, and for a second I see him run the math, watch him get close to something, his eyes narrowing the way they do when a pitch comes in slower than he read it. Then he lets it go. He's known me long enough to know when the vault's locked.
"Yeah," he says. "Okay. Whatever it is, I’m here if you need me." He sets his glass against the rail. "I don’t care about you ditching us at The Quack. Much. Just… don't disappear on me, man. That's all. And give Nora a fucking break. Tell her you don’t hate her.”
"I don't hate her.” I tilt my head. “I hate that shedding menace of hers... But I don’t hate her.”
"I know. Tell her that. You, not me."
"I will."
He nods, satisfied, and the air between us eases back into something that fits us. He picks his glass back up, and when he speaks again, the weight's out of his voice.
"So… are we still doing a guys’ trip this year? Or are you gonna ghost us on that too?"
"Heck yeah. We’re doing a trip."
He gives me an odd look.
Language. Freaking language.
I breeze past it and start thinking of the schedule, the whole season laid out flat in my head after reading it once.
There's a stretch in August. West Coast swing, the long one.
There are two off-days sitting back to back in the middle of it, a Thursday and a Friday, the kind of gap that's a waste to fly home for and come right back.
We could post up out there. Rent a place.
String it together with the series on either side and make it most of a month, the way we did three years ago when it was the best three weeks of the year.
"August," I say. "The West Coast leg. We can rent a place instead of coming home and make a month of it.
Coast, beach, the works." I can already feel myself reaching for it, planning it, needing to give him something big to make up for the small ways I've been gone.
"I'll handle the whole thing. The house, the flights, all of it. You guys just need to show up."
"A month." Nate whistles low. "Nora’s gonna kill you. Just when she’s gonna think she’s back in your good graces.”
"Nora would never say that. She’d say I never had them to begin with."
“True."
We laugh. Easy, lighter.
This is good. A month on the coast, all of us, the way it used to be.
I'll plan it all—hikes, camping, beach days, dive bars, restaurants, whatever insane excursions I can find. I owe him that, owe all of them that. For the booth I left empty, the calls I didn't return, the easy version of me that's been off somewhere they couldn't find.
The one thing I think to check—the only thing that feels wrong when I picture being gone that long—is Audrey.
I'll have to ask her if she's okay with it.
A month is a long time. I make a note to bring it up gently, to tell her I'll fly back if she needs me, that I can easily get on the next plane back to her.
“Is it okay if Mom brings Owen up for a weekend or two?”
“Yeah, of course.” It makes me want to bring Eli along. The boys would love that. But I can’t.
"Okay, yeah. August,” Nate says, and the grin is all the way back now, the worry gone out of him. “God, I’m gonna need that.”
"Whatever. You’re gonna be the best captain, Nate.”
“You think?”
“Yeah. But I’m not saying it every day, man. Cry to Nora, not to me.”
"I wasn’t crying, you ass. Let’s go. Roast's gotta be ready."
"Probably."
He claps me on the shoulder, heading for the kitchen, and I take one more second at the rail before I follow him.
Behind me, Mom’s voice carries through the open door, the smell of roast drifting past, Felicity already complaining to Nate.
And in there my father is certain his son is building nothing.
I might not have it all figured out, but I’m building something that feels more important than any career path he’s presented me. It's almost funny, except it isn't—because I can't tell him. I can't tell Nate. I can't tell my sister.
But I can go back inside like a man with nothing to say.
And everything to lose if he does.