Felix Ever After(57)
I swat his hand away, trying not to grin. “Thanks, I guess?”
“So I take it you’re staying up until sunrise because you’re talking to someone on the phone?”
I scrunch up my face. Guilty.
“You teenagers,” he says, “always thinking you’ve invented the wheel. I’d spend hours talking to your mom when we were kids.”
My smile fades. There’s always an automatic stab of pain to my chest whenever my dad mentions my mom. When I was younger, I’d hoped they would get back together. It was a few years before I realized it was never going to happen. I could never understand how my dad seemed okay with that. How he decided to move on. She was supposed to be the love of his life, right? I’d asked him if he didn’t love my mom anymore once, and he told me that of course he did.
“I probably always will love her,” he’d said. “But it was a tough lesson to learn, realizing that I couldn’t wait for her to decide she would love me again. It wasn’t healthy. If I fall in love again, it’ll be with a woman who loves me also—not someone who I have to convince to love me. It’s easier, I think, to love someone you know won’t love you—to chase them, knowing they won’t feel the same way—than to love someone who might love you back. To risk loving each other and losing it all.”
He lets out a heavy sigh as he drops the toast on his plate. “Anyway—I’m happy that you’re happy. That’s all that ever matters, right?”
“Right.”
He picks up a glass of orange juice. “Is it Ezra?”
“What? No!”
He narrows his eyes, like he doesn’t believe me. “You two spend every second together, so I just assumed . . .”
“Bad assumption to make. Bad, bad assumption.”
He raises his hands defensively. “Okay. All right. Who is it, then?”
It’s not like he knows who Declan Keane is, but even so, it feels strange to say his name out loud. “No one you know.”
He nods slowly. “And . . . I take it that you’re being—ah—safe?”
I stare at him blankly. “Really? You’re going to give me the talk? Right now? Over breakfast?”
He clears his throat. “Well,” he says, “you should just be prepared. There are—um—specific things I can’t really help you with . . . I don’t know a lot about the pill . . .”
I clench my jaw and look away. He’s right, I guess, technically. He might not have a lot of information on birth control options, if that’s something I wanted to start—testosterone might make Shark Week disappear (thank God), but it wouldn’t stop me from getting pregnant, if I were actually having sex—which, obviously, I’m not.
But the way my dad said it . . . Once again, I get the sense that my father categorizes me as his daughter, and not his son. There’s always a flare of anger whenever he misgenders me, but at the spark of that anger is hurt, a dull ache in my chest.
My dad chews for a while. “Maybe the Callen-Lorde center could help,” he says. “They could give you more information, if you need it. Though I sure as hell hope you don’t. You’re only seventeen, and fine, I’ve lost the fight in you not hanging out with Ezra so much, but—”
“I don’t,” I say loudly, just to get him to shut up. “Need the information.”
“You don’t?” he repeats.
“Nope.” Not yet, anyway.
He mouths, Thank God.
It’s still pretty early by the time I get to St. Catherine’s. The sky is a bright, clear blue, sun shining yellow, birds twittering. Only a few students linger around outside the building. I get through the front sliding glass doors and pass into the lobby. My heart doesn’t hammer as hard as it usually does in this space, and my hands don’t get as sweaty, so, I guess, progress?
I get to the acrylics classroom about an hour before Jill’s supposed to give her usual morning checkin. I have two self-portraits now: one where I look like I’m on fire, and another that I’m still working on from time to time, where it looks like I’m underwater. My latest painting is in the space I occupy with Ezra. I’m excited to get back to it. I haven’t worked on the painting in a couple of days now, but the memory of holding the brush, finding peace in the colors, inspiration in the strokes . . .
Paint on the palette, brush in my hand—oranges today, then swaths of red. The red sinks into a darker purple of shadows, which filters in the light of blue, shifting to a color as bright as the sky outside. The bell echoes, but I don’t stop. The classroom door opens and closes, voices filter into the room, laughter and chatter, the scraping of stools. The blue meets yellow, then gold.
When I feel someone standing behind me, I assume it’s just Jill—she always likes to observe, will offer advice before moving on—but I startle when the person speaks.
“That’s good,” Declan says.
That’s all he tells me. A simple, two-word sentence—but my heart feels like it’s about to break out of my chest. He moves on, heading for his regular seat in the back of the classroom. I watch him go as he nods at James, already at the table and talking to Hazel, who lets out a loud laugh. Declan hops up onto his own stool and pulls out his phone, checking the screen with a quick glance—probably looking for a message from me. From Lucky.