Eight Years Ago Freshman Year
Declan and I escape the bustle of students leaving school and start along our well-worn path toward our homes.
It takes us along the town’s cobblestone streets, past the local stores and coffee shops, and ends with a stroll near the ocean’s edge.
Close enough to hear the sound of waves crashing on the shore.
“—but I don’t know if Coach will approve my idea.
It would be risky, but I think it would be really worth it.
” Declan’s voice is the melody we walk side by side to.
“Just picturing the look on my dad’s face if we won the game and I got to tell him those routes were my idea?
” He shakes his head with a wistful look. “It would be priceless.”
I chuckle at his boyishness. It’s refreshing after a long day of school.
Declan’s phone buzzes in his pocket and he pulls it out. Looking at the screen he says, “Oh. Speaking of my father. He must have heard a ringing in his ears.”
His previously light demeanor seems to fade as he reads the text on his phone.
“Everything okay?” I ask.
“Uh, yeah. I just—” He runs his hand down his face, blowing out a breath. “Sorry. It’s just—classic Randall stuff. Nothing is ever enough for the man.” He uses his father’s first name like they’re less close than they are.
“What happened? What did he say?”
“It’s nothing new. He’s just lecturing me on the chores I didn’t do to his liking, and then there’s a list of items I need to help my mom with, and on top of all that, he’s sending paragraphs about how we need to have a serious chat tonight about the importance of every game leading to championships.
As if I’m not already spending every waking hour stressing about that while trying to keep my grades high too. ”
I go quiet at his frustration. Despite my efforts to fight it, I feel a twinge of jealousy that his father cares enough to bother him so much.
“I’m sorry,” I mumble. “He only asks so much of you because he believes in you, though. Right?”
“That’s one way to look at it,” Declan scoffs. “It just never ends with him. Right when I think I’ve finally done enough to earn his approval, he gives me a list of critiques instead.”
“Maybe he seems harsh, but I think he’s proud of you. Even getting a long text like that shows he spends tons of time thinking about you. I wish I had that.” I add the last part without thinking.
Declan pauses and turns to look at me. “Is this about something else?”
He looks into my eyes like he’s noticing my fragility for the first time. It catches me off guard and I find myself unable to respond.
“I know we never talk about your dad, but we can,” he offers.
I’d avoided discussing my dad with Declan for years now.
Early on in our friendship, he came over to my house and asked if my dad was at work.
I told him, “No. I haven’t seen him in a while.
” And that was that. He never brought it up again, and neither did I.
The longer we went without discussing it, the harder it seemed to start.
At my silence, Declan steps toward me.
“Are you okay?” He places a gentle hand on my arm. “You don’t have to if you don’t want to, but I’d love to know more about your dad if you’re comfortable talking about it.”
That one simple statement made me feel a lifetime closer to him.
Sometimes, Declan simply being who he was felt like a character attack on everyone else.
He just existed and in comparison, everyone paled.
People were an average amount of friendly or thoughtful, and then Declan came around and convicted them all of mediocrity by being the type of friend he was to me.
Everyone in Seabrook knew I lived with my mom and great-aunt, but no one ever asked where my dad was.
I came to the conclusion that they didn’t care to find out.
Or that if they did ask where my father was, the explanation would reveal some character flaw I had no control over.
I felt I owed Declan the truth simply for being the first person to ask for it.
“Yeah, uh. I’m comfortable talking about it. I mean, I think it’s about time you finally knew the full story.” My heart leaps to my throat.
Declan’s eyebrows soften with tentative hope, and the look is so sweet that it feels possible to go on. We wordlessly agree to start walking again. I let my thoughts race back to the night that changed everything for my mom and me.
“Keep in mind, I was probably four and a half years old. So, everything is pretty fuzzy,” I start, too nervous to glance over at him.
I see him nod in my peripheral vision. “It was nighttime, and I remember hiding under my covers because I heard screaming in the kitchen. Or, I think it was my dad screaming at my mom, mostly. That went on for a while. And then the front door slammed, and it was silent.”
Declan doesn’t speak but I can feel his gaze on me. I keep mine pinned to the exact point where the ocean meets the sky, not really seeing as I continue.
“Sometime later my mom crept into my bedroom and made me pack some things in my tiny, pink, sparkly suitcase. And then we were on the highway in the middle of the night.”
I rush through certain parts of the story.
The insignificant things are the most vivid in my memory.
Like telling my mom I was scared of the dark from the back seat, so she offered her hand for me to squeeze while she drove.
I could still remember the way her eyes flickered to me through the rearview mirror every few seconds.
“Do you remember your great-aunt Lottie’s beach house?
” she asked. “We’re going on a little vacation there for a little bit, okay? ”
“We drove over to Seabrook and here we are. Just me, my mom, and Lottie, as you know,” I finish quickly, trying to sound upbeat.
I leave out the subsequent events. The ones that really made an impact.
Like when two months in I started to realize it wasn’t just a spontaneous trip to Lottie’s beach house.
Or the conversations I overheard from upstairs when my mom would rant to Lottie about how my father promised she’d never have to work a day in her life, and yet, here she was, living off the kindness of her aunt and taking care of me alone.
How I’d ask my mom if my dad wished me a happy birthday or wanted to see me, and she would roll her bottom lip into her mouth to nervously bite while she figured out how to let me down gently.
Or when I was six and my mom was trying to juggle working at the convenience store.
She couldn’t afford summer childcare, so I’d sit in the back room of the store on an upside-down crate and watch her work all day.
She tried to hide it, but she had this nervous, always-about-to-burst energy about her.
“Do you remember all those summers that I hung out at your house in elementary school?” I tack on, the warm memory alleviating the knot forming in my throat.
“Of course I do. Those were the best summers,” he says, voice low and smooth like a gentle caress on the back of my neck.
“That was such a huge help to my mom.” I nod, head bouncing with too much force. “I don’t know if you ever knew that, but you and your family played such a big role in us being able to stay here.”
The goal is to distract myself from getting emotional about my father leaving, but the memory of Declan’s mom making us warm chocolate chip cookies while we sat on their huge living room couch and watched TV shows is more threatening.
I don’t even remember talking to him that much.
We’d just sit side by side in silence while we devoured the entire plate of cookies, and at some point, my mom would pick me up after work.
“Gosh, that’s horrible,” he says while shaking his head.
It was Declan’s first time hearing the events that led up to me sitting on his couch those first summers.
I could see the information unspooling in his mind.
And for some inexplicable reason, I feel shame creep in.
It was my first time having to say the words out loud to someone else.
Words explaining how easy it was for my dad to never see me again.
Technically, it was my mom who left him.
But he stayed gone every year after, which felt like a leaving in itself.
Showing Declan I was unwanted by my own father felt like a risk—what if it made him start looking for reasons not to want me too?
He stops walking and puts a hand on my shoulder, spinning me toward him. “Thank you for telling me that, Blair. And I don’t know if I’m allowed to say this, but I think your dad is a certified idiot.”
I cough a surprised laugh, the tension exiting my body with it.
“I’m sorry. I probably shouldn’t have said that. But—” He looks away, lips pressing together. “You guys didn’t deserve that. At all. And now you’re turning into this amazing person, and he doesn’t get to witness it. I mean, how much dumber could you get?”
My eyes have tears forming, and yet I huff another shaky laugh.
“Oh, wait,” he says. “Sorry. I wasn’t going to call him stupid again.
My bad. But you know what I mean.” This is the most high-school-boy response of all time, and yet it’s really working for me.
He goes on, almost like he’s talking to himself as the story sinks in.
“He doesn’t know how much you like dystopian books.
And writing your own stories when you should be paying attention in class.
And that you’re really, really bad at math.
But I do. So, he’s the unlucky one in this situation. Not me. And not you.”
He emphasizes the last two words with an urgency I’ve never heard in his voice. I can’t form words. Can hardly force my eyes to meet his. But when I finally do, we both just stare at each other, like we’re both suspended in this moment, neither of us wanting to burst the rare bubble we’ve entered.
He throws his arms around me and pulls me into his chest. With my head squished up against the warmth of him, I hear the faint thump of his heart beating. Or maybe it’s my own. The hush of the ocean persists in the background, harmonizing with the subtle rise and fall of our heavy breaths.
He pulls back sooner than I’d like and we keep walking. I wait for the shame of opening up to creep in, but to my surprise, it doesn’t.
“By the way, I’m still sorry for how your dad treats you,” I say abruptly.
Declan tilts his head at me with a slight smile. “Thanks, Blair. That’s nice of you.”
I nod at him. “I still find myself wishing I had a dad who pestered me with his expectations sometimes.” I chuckle to distill the potency of that confession. “But I see how hard he is on you and that sucks.”
“Trust me, I don’t think you’d wish for it after experiencing it for a week.”
I look down at my Converse as we walk down the street.
“No…” My voice is flimsy as I try to straddle truth and levity. “I think I would still trade situations with you if I could.”
“Really?” Declan asks.
“I mean, yeah? I don’t mean to make your relationship with him sound easy, but at least you have a relationship to struggle with.”
He looks out at the middle distance in thought. A hardness creeps into his eyes.
“He doesn’t just, like, ‘expect a lot of me.’ He practically does not and will not love me unless I get perfect grades and win every football game so that I can get into an Ivy League school and go to the NFL one day.
Every time he’s up late at night working, he reminds me that he’s making sacrifices for me to live my dream.
But… the dream was his to begin with. I love football, don’t get me wrong.
But if he thinks I’m talented enough for the NFL, schools will hand me free rides.
Money wouldn’t be the problem. It’s just a nice scapegoat for his addiction to work, claiming it’s all to make his son’s dreams come true. ”
“Okay, but you do live up to all of his expectations. You’re a freshman in high school and there are already college coaches interested in you. That’s unheard of,” I retort, arguing an opinion I didn’t know I had.
He scoffs. “That’s my point. I do everything right, and it’s still not enough. The goalpost moves the second I reach it, but I just keep running to the next one. It’s pathetic.”
Our eyes scan each other’s faces, trying to understand how we got here so fast. The sound of our footsteps punctuates the tense silence.
“It’s not pathetic,” I say in an attempt to diffuse the tension.
“It makes me feel evil for craving my father’s attention after knowing how much he hurt my mom.
But it’s just like you said. You can’t just stop craving your father’s approval.
But at least you’ll get the reward of his love when you accomplish those things.
I have to succeed because my dad isn’t here to take care of my mom.
And I still won’t earn the reward I really want,” I finish, voice low.
So much for diffusing the situation. A tear threatens to make itself known but I harden my face in resistance.
The side of his mouth falters and I can’t tell if he’s sad or angry. He looks at me for another moment, a thousand expressions passing over his face like a sped-up time lapse. Finally, he mumbles, “I’m sorry, Blair. If it means anything to you, I’m here.”
It feels like my chest truncates with the unexpected warmth of his words.
“I’m sorry too, Declan. I shouldn’t have said that—I’m saying things I don’t know anything about.” I press my lips together.
His eyes soften and his shoulders relax. Mine do too. We stare at each other while we wordlessly unfurl our white flags.
“I’ll like you even if you don’t make it to the big leagues. If that’s any consolation,” I say.
His expression is wary for a moment, but then my dry tone lands and a grin blooms across his face. He releases a disbelieving chuckle and pulls me into his chest. His voice rasps softly by my ear and I have to force myself to keep still. “I know. That’s why you’re my favorite.”