Begin Again(35)

“I do hope you’ll get out to some of the parties. Responsibly,” he emphasizes. After the smallest of beats, he adds, “Not that I ever worry about that with you.”

Usually I’d be annoyed that he feels like he gets to worry about me at all. But tonight feels different. Maybe because we aren’t talking just as father and daughter—we’re talking as father and grown-up daughter. Not quite equal ground, but closer than it’s ever been up to this point.

“I’ll take your unholy bagel pairing into consideration,” I say.

My dad lets out a chuckle. “You’re welcome in advance.”

“Any other food recs while I’ve got you?”

“Oh, too many,” he says. My sweet tooth probably came from all sides of this family, but my dad takes it to the next level. Cookie Monster would bow down to him. “How much time do you have?”

“Plenty.” I pull up the Notes app on my phone. There’s a smile on my face so sneaky and wide that the conversation with Connor’s mom might have never happened at all. “Hit me with them.”

“Okay, first of all, in the historic district of town there’s a candy shop with giant peanut butter cups. It’s bright pink, you can’t miss it. And if you walk a little farther from it, there’s a hole-in-the-wall crepe place—your roommate probably knows it, most of the students there—What’s that? What happened to your bunny?”

I blink. “Sorry, what?”

But my dad doesn’t hear me. The pitch of his voice is slightly higher. I recognize it; the memory goes so far back that I feel like I’ve been snapped into another time. A time my mom was still alive, and I was little enough that I could still stand on his toes, and he used that same voice with me.

“Don’t worry, that’s an easy fix. We can sew it right up.”

And then I hear the sounds of sniffling. More specifically, little-kid sniffling. I freeze with the phone still pressed to my ear, my heart beating like a drum. It realizes what’s happening a few crucial seconds before my brain does.

“Whiskers will be fine. Trust me,” says my dad.

There’s a muffled reply. I can’t make out the words. Or maybe I just don’t want to.

“Sorry,” he says, using his normal voice again. “A stuffed-animal medical emergency.”

“Whose stuffed animal?” I ask, even though I already know. Even though my throat’s already thick, and I already feel guilty for it. Even though I already resent this kid I’ve never met, knowing she’s done absolutely nothing to deserve it.

“Kelly’s daughter, Ava,” says my dad, as if to remind me.

A tear streaks down my cheek. “Right,” I say, my voice so perfectly even that the tear might not even exist, if it didn’t just stain my coat. “I, uh—didn’t realize she had a daughter.”

There’s a pause. “Your grandmas didn’t mention it?”

I bite my tongue so I don’t say, Wouldn’t that have been your job?

And this right here is a bitter taste I know all too well. Every time we have a conversation that seems normal, we hit one of these snags. Like we have all the construction of what could be a normal parent-child relationship, the walls all secure, a roof overhead, but if I let myself step in, it’s only a matter of time before I take a step that opens a hole in the floor. We never built a foundation to stand on.

But this feels different. It feels personal. We’ve spent so long being cordial with each other, this surface-level getting along—part of it is because we barely know each other, but another part of it was so I would never have to worry about something like this. So none of his choices would feel like they had anything to do with me, and they couldn’t affect me.

It’s hard to let myself keep pretending that when there’s some other kid he’s playing dad for. Some kid who brought back that voice of his I barely even remember myself.

“Guess not,” I say. “But, uh—I just got a text to grab dinner with my roommate, so I actually have to run.”

He sounds surprised, but not enough to think I’m lying. “Oh. Where are you headed?”

“Dining hall,” I lie, booking it out of the stairwell so I can make it to our room. None of the usual tactics are going to work. I am going to cry, and I am going to cry hard, and I can practically feel my body counting down to it like a ticking time bomb. “Talk to you later?”

“Yeah, I’m around whenever,” he says. “Keep me in the loop.”

It’s the closest he’s ever come to telling, not asking, me to stay in touch, but my brain can’t even register it. I’m too busy trying to keep my face intact. After we hang up I manage to make it to the door when the key gets jammed, and even that second costs me—a tear slips out, and then another, and then finally the stupid door opens. The room is pitch-black and Shay-less, so I heave a breath of relief, shut the door behind me, sag into my bed, and just let myself cry.





Chapter Twelve


“I’ve called him like, fifteen times,” says Shay, pacing the tiny space of the recording studio. “He’s not picking up.”

“Maybe because he’s driving?” I wish out loud.

“As much as I admire your unflappable optimism, he clearly overslept. I’ve been calling for almost a half hour, and his parents’ house is a ten-minute drive from campus.” She pulls the phone away from her ear, letting out a groan. “And we’re five minutes from doomed.”