Chapter Twenty-Seven #2
“Dad traveled a lot for work when I was a kid,” I begin.
“I think part of why our games became so special to me was because those were some of the only times he was home. He was gone so much that every holiday became this huge event where he’d plan elaborate adventures for me and Mona.
They were so fun, I didn’t notice how the stress of all those days in between was getting to Mom.
And Dad had some other issues, but they’d never really touched us.
I didn’t even know he had a drinking problem.
Or—or maybe he never did, and it was just one unlucky afternoon of poor judgment.
I don’t know. It doesn’t make a difference. ”
I do another quick check of my car, a routine I find myself repeating all the time when I drive. Speed limit: good. Mirrors: good. Hands fisted on ten and two: good.
“He got into an accident when Mona and I were in the car. We didn’t learn until after that he’d just come back from drinks with his friends.
” I’m surprised by how even my voice is.
“I was fine, but Mona was in the hospital for weeks recovering. That’s how she found yoga, actually,” I say, like it’s a neat trivia fact.
“Afterward, it helped her get more in touch with her body. The brain injury made it so that she had to relearn so much. But she was young, which they said was good. So.”
I shake my head a little and sip in a quick breath. “We all blamed Dad, and things were already tense between him and Mom. Had been for a long time, honestly. The accident was the tipping point.”
I don’t know how long Wesley has been tracing circles on my leg, but the slow rotation calms me down. I begin to match each breath with the movement of his finger.
“I’m so sorry, Reagan,” he says eventually. “That sounds…awful.”
I remember when I first got accepted into college.
Before Mona’s accident, I always assumed I’d use college as an excuse to travel far from home and try something new.
But I couldn’t stand the thought of being so far away from her and my mom after everything that happened.
And after the way I’d bombed junior year stressing about everything falling apart, I wasn’t sure I’d have a lot of options for college, anyway.
But when I got into the game design program…
even then, the first thing I’d wanted to do was tell my dad.
He’d moved out by then, and we texted only sparingly.
But even with my mom’s openhearted support and Mona’s shared love for games, I knew my dad would have been the most excited.
He would have understood better than anyone what it meant to me.
“Do you really want to know why I didn’t go to L.A., Wes? To work at Uproar?” My voice is so soft that I don’t know at first if he hears me.
“Yes.” His voice is so earnest.
“I panicked. I’d visited Mona at college during her freshman year, and she got appendicitis.
It ended up being fine, but something about—” Even now I have to slow my breathing to try to ease my heartbeat back down.
“Something about how scary the ambulance ride was, and then being in a hospital with her again, I just…What if I hadn’t been there?
What if I hadn’t been visiting that weekend? ”
“Reagan…”
I ball both of my hands into fists, digging my nails into the cracked leather of the steering wheel.
“I just couldn’t do it. I felt like—I felt like my mom had moved on, started seeing this guy with three young kids, had her hands too full with them to really see us anymore.
And we were adults by then anyway, weren’t we?
We could handle ourselves.” I can’t help the way my tone turns bitter.
“And then Dad moved away, not that that came as a surprise.
We were barely talking to him at that stage. He was always gone—he always left.
“I just didn’t…I just didn’t want to be another person who left.”
His hand is warm where it squeezes my knee. “So you stayed,” he says simply.
“Yeah. I stayed.”
Mona had never asked me to—she would never ask me to—but I’d done it anyway.
Never mind that the car accident and the appendicitis were both freak, one-off things.
She’s fine now, she’s okay—it’s a mantra I find myself repeating sometimes, when a nightmare catches me off guard in the middle of the night—but I still feel like I want to be here, just in case.
And anyway, I love New Haven. I love how weird and complicated of a city it is.
I love how it’s only twenty minutes from Mom’s. It feels like home. It is home.
But at the end of the day, I just really love Mona. She’s never had any desire to leave, and even when I’ve had an inkling to, it’s been easy enough to bury it under a new job, a new friend group, and dozens of distracting games.
Until this year.
Finally, Wesley speaks again. “You show up for her in big ways. With the sprained ankle, and joining the game…”
“Yeah, I do. I can’t help it.”
“You put a lot of responsibility on yourself when it comes to her.”
“That’s not how I look at it,” I correct. “It’s not some hardship for me.”
“I didn’t say it was.” He nods a little, but his voice sounds far away. I wonder if telling him so much has shifted his opinion of me or created distance between us.
“That was a lot,” I say suddenly. “I’m sorry, Wes, you didn’t need—”
“Yes, I did,” he interrupts. “Don’t apologize, Reagan. I like it when you share things that help me understand you better.”
I nod a little and find myself wanting to keep this door open—to see him more clearly, too.
“Shay told me you grew up with your grandparents,” I say slowly.
There’s a beat of silence—surprise, maybe. “Yeah,” he finally says. “My parents died when I was young.”
“I’m so sorry, Wesley.”
“It’s okay. I was so little I don’t even remember them.” He looks sidelong to me and smiles a bit. “It’s okay. You can ask.”
“What happened?”
“It was also a car accident.” He must see the horror on my face, because he quickly jumps in to clarify. “Not…not like yours. It was late, and Mom fell asleep at the wheel while they were coming to pick me up from a weekend at Gran’s. Swerved and hit a tree, and—that’s it.”
“That’s it,” I echo hollowly.
He exhales a quick laugh. “It is funny, though. Gran and Grandpa told me my dad liked games, too. Gave me all of his old comic books and nerdy magazines when they thought I was old enough. I think Gran still has some of his early-edition D&D books tucked somewhere in my room.”
My hands tighten on the steering wheel in mock fury. “And you didn’t show me?”
I shoot an affronted glance at Wesley, though my expression softens as soon as I see the sparkle in his eyes.
“Maybe next time,” he murmurs.
Next time.
As we continue up the mountain and fall into a companionable silence, I try not to notice how comfortable I feel with the chillhop music playing in the background and Wesley’s broad palm tucked between my thighs.
I could get used to this, I think.
And that’s what scares me the most.