Begin Again(90)

My dad doesn’t miss a beat. “Well then, let me take you.”

I stare down at the mess of pink and denim in my suitcase. “Don’t you have work?”

“Eh. It’s a slow day. Half hour from now sound good?”

I’m too stunned to question it. “Um—yeah. Meet you at Bagelopolis?”

“Sounds like a plan,” he says cheerfully. “See you in a bit.”

The whole thing is so seamless and so . . . casual. Like the way Shay talks to her dad on the phone, or the way people talk to their dads on television shows. I know we’ve had a complicated history, but it didn’t occur to me that it could just be that easy. Come get me. And a dad there to do just that.

I grab a few more random things to pack, unsure of how long I’m planning to be home, then call Bagelopolis and order the cheesy garlic bagel with strawberry cream cheese and the pretzel bagel with cookie dough cream cheese. Mercifully, Milo and Shay aren’t on today, so I grab it from the pickup shelf without anyone noticing me or asking about the suitcase. My dad pulls up seconds after I grab our order, rolling down the driver’s side window.

“Top of the morning!” he calls, in this dorky dad way I’d be embarrassed by if I weren’t so grateful for it. He’s grinning that same unselfconscious grin I’ve seen more often on Gammy Nell than I’ve seen on him, and he’s wearing the flannel Grandma Maeve and I picked out for him for Christmas at Little Fells’s one strip mall a few miles from our house. I clamber into his car, immediately comforted by the smell of his beloved vanilla-flavored Dunkin’ Donuts order and gasoline.

“I got your favorite,” I tell him, setting the distinctive white Bagelopolis bag between us.

My dad immediately reaches for the bag, deeply inhales, and then—like some kind of bagel savant—lists the flavors of not just his bagel, but mine, too.

“Whoa. I’m impressed,” I say, fastening my seat belt.

“And I’m grateful. Do you want to eat them now, or get out of Dodge?”

I’m glad he asked, even if I’m a little suspicious of the offer. Last I checked, all he wanted to do was show me around campus. But he must know something’s wrong if I’m heading back to Little Fells smack-dab in the middle of a school week.

“Let’s, uh—let’s just head out for now.”

“On it,” says my dad, revving up the engine and leaning back behind me to check for traffic. It’s a familiar gesture, one I was used to seeing from the back seat when I was little. My dad checking the mirrors, then resting his hand on the back of my mom’s seat and leaning back to check behind him again.

I blink it out of my brain, and we drive. My dad asks me about Shay’s major. About what the current seasonal bagel is at Bagelopolis. About the outdoor volunteer group I’m joining. All these little things that make it clear he’s been keeping up with me, even when I’ve been tacitly avoiding him.

And for my part, I hold it together. I answer all his questions as thoroughly as I can, even though I am staring out the window, just waiting for us to get home to my grandmas so I can safely fall apart.

But when my dad stops the car, we aren’t at the house. We’re in the parking lot of the Big League Burger a few miles away from it, the one next to the outdoor playground he and Mom used to take me to every weekend when I was little. I’d split a big milkshake with Connor and a plate of fries with my mom and chicken nuggets with my dad and chase all my friends through the tunnels and slides that seemed so big and infinite to me then, a maze of technicolor and plastic, like a separate little world.

“You always loved this place,” says my dad.

I nod. He takes it as a cue to cut the ignition, to open the door to the car. I follow suit, feeling numb as we walk toward the picnic tables where my parents and Connor’s used to sit.

“I could go in and grab us a milkshake to go with the bagels,” my dad offers, jerking a thumb toward the actual building. “You still like chocolate caramel?”

The universe only knows why, but for some reason this offer is the straw on the camel’s back. My chest goes tight and my hands go wobbly, opening up the bagel bag so shakily that I end up ripping it.

“I messed everything up.”

My dad is somehow unsurprised by this emotional display after two hours of normalcy, taking a seat and pulling the bag from me to shell out the bagels himself. “I’m sure that’s not true.”

I shake my head. He sets my bagel in front of me and all I can do is stare at it like it’s some kind of evidence of my failure.

“You don’t even know,” I say miserably.

For a moment my dad doesn’t say anything. He’s never been great with emotions. Or more that he’s never been great at being around for them. I’m expecting him to sidestep the whole thing when instead he says, “Well. If you’re referring to that whole thing with The Knights’ Watch . . .”

I stiffen. “You heard about it?”

It’s mortifying enough that it’s campus-wide knowledge. Has it somehow spread to the entire state?

My dad calmly uses a plastic knife to cut my bagel into fourths for me, the way he used to do when I was a kid. “I listen to the show every morning. I heard the Knight reference something that happened yesterday, and did some prying to figure out just what.”