Begin Again(93)

The words fall out of me too quickly for them to be anything but the truth: “I’d rather be miserable with you than happy without you.”

For a few moments, he doesn’t speak.

“I should have known that then.” He flattens his palms out on the top of the table like he’s grounding us in this moment. Pressing it somewhere into himself so we can’t cast it away. “I wish I could change it. And I’m not asking to start over. But I’m . . . I’d really love a chance to start something, Andie.”

When his gaze meets mine, some of the lingering bitterness falls away. I see it plainly now—the grief. The regret. And deeper still, the shame. It clouds his eyes, but makes something else all the more clear. The part that he’ll never really be able to say, because I don’t know if he fully understands it himself; he never wanted me to see this weakness. It just took all these years, maybe, for his need to fix this to be louder than that part of him that wanted me to think he was strong.

But this—it’s the strongest I’ve ever seen him. I wish there were a way to tell him that. But at least now it seems like I’ll have plenty of time to find one someday.

“I know I haven’t made it easy,” I admit.

My dad presses his lips together, collecting himself. “I’m not expecting you to. And for what it’s worth, I’ll keep trying. As long as you’re okay with it.”

My eyes well up unexpectedly. That’s the crux of the whole thing. I’ve been pushing him away before he can leave. Even now I’m scared—even as this supposedly adult, eighteen-year-old version of myself who shouldn’t need him, who shouldn’t be in a position to be disappointed by him anymore. But part of me is peering over the same edge I did at eleven and fourteen and seventeen, waiting to be let down.

“I don’t know if it’ll ever feel fully normal,” I admit. “But I never gave up on you. So . . . don’t give up on me, either.”

“Never.”

He pulls me in gruffly, wrapping an arm around my shoulders and pressing me into his. Then he relaxes his grip, the two of us just leaning on each other, watching another group of little kids pile out of a station wagon and sprint for the slides.

“I really do want to meet Ava,” I tell him.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

He taps the table with his finger. “I don’t want you to think you have to be a part of that just for us to be a family. I’m going to be here no matter what. Okay?”

I nod, too overwhelmed for a moment to answer. For so long the word “family” has loomed over me like a threat, like something I stood to lose. But the way my dad says it, the word doesn’t feel like something I have to earn. It feels like something that just is.

Maybe it’s not so scary now that I’m starting to recognize that families take shapes of their own, and I’m lucky to have more than one. It’s like Milo said. I have my grandmas. My friends at Blue Ridge. This town that’s still here for me, even when I’m far from it. Things I never took for granted, of course, but maybe didn’t appreciate for what they were—the peace of being known. Of always having soft places to land.

If I’m lucky, Kelly and Ava might just be another one of them. But I’ll never find out if I don’t let myself move on from the past and give them a chance.

“Thank you for saying that,” I say sincerely. I needed to hear it. “But really. If you’re still free next weekend . . . I’d love to see them, too.”

My dad just nods, wisely not making any plans, giving me space to change my mind. It’s the kind of thing I’d be thinking about, too—trying to see into the future for someone else, into all 360 degrees of the decisions they’re making or trying to make. It’s weird to see this similarity in the two of us. For so many years I’ve been so fixated on following my mom’s footsteps that it never occurred to me that mine might be closer in shape to his.

I feel a sudden surge of questions I want to ask him, but there’s a relief in letting them come and then letting them go. In knowing I don’t need to ask them right now, because the door isn’t going to close. He’s back, and I’m finding my way back, too. We finally have time.





Chapter Thirty


As I’m setting our giant Big League Burger milkshake in the drink holder I accidentally knock my backpack over, the ribbons spilling out from the front pocket again. “Oops,” I mutter, pulling them out from the console. But not before my dad lets out a hearty laugh.

“What?” I ask with a self-conscious smile.

“Oh, nothing. Just—of course you have more ribbons than you could possibly know what to do with,” says my dad, helping collect a few that scattered over to his seat. “Truly your mother’s daughter.”

I take the ribbons from him, securing them back in my front pocket. “Yeah?”

“Oh, yeah. She was insufferable about them,” he says, wiping a tear of laughter from his eye. “Got more than anyone else in her year.”

I balk at him, so stunned that my body decides to forget how seat belts work. “You remember that far back?” I demand, finally getting it to click on the third try.

“Course I do.” He pulls out of the lot, the laughter dissolved into a sly smile. “I was one of the students who started the ribbon tradition in the first place.”