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Maggie left with my mom, leaving me alone with my dad. I was beginning to wish that my mom had asked me to help her clean instead.
“Do you really think it’s smart getting in a relationship right now? You’ve never had much luck before with picking them,” my dad asked, wasting no time hounding me with questions again.
This one made my blood boil.
Who did he think he was, judging Maggie? She should never have been dragged into any of the mess I had made. But instead, she willingly signed a contract that she never should have been involved with in the first place. Of course her contract benefited her, but part of me constantly worried that the permanent effects this would have on her life would never be worth the money she was being paid.
“Maggie is not like any other girl I’ve ever dated.” Having my dad lump Maggie in with the models I had dated previously set something off in me. I leveled a stare at him that would melt diamonds. “If you don’t have anything nice to say about her, don’t say anything at all.”
“Someone has to have some common sense for you.” My dad didn’t even seem deterred by my threat.
“I am an adult. I can handle my own life.”
“Are you sure? Because it doesn’t seem like you’ve done a tip-top job of that so far.”
My fists clenched under the table, and without a second thought, I pushed my chair back and began to storm away from the deck.
“That’s right. Back down from the fight, just like you always have.” My dad’s words rang in my ears all the way to the shed, where I grabbed a golf club and a bucket of balls that he always kept stored there.
Part of me couldn’t help but think his accusation wasn’t far from the truth. I had wondered if letting Maggie agree to this whole charade in the first place was the easy way out instead of letting the inevitable happen. But I refused to let my dad win. I would prove to him that I was still capable of being the son he could be proud of.
Maggie
Linda and I worked side by side as we cleaned the plates after dinner. She asked me questions about my job and my family, interjecting to comment when I told her that my mom was an artist. She asked me to pull up some of her work and gushed at how talented she was. When she looked at some of the shots I had taken, she told me that she wanted the shot I had gotten of Tommy after his homer on Opening Day to be framed and hung in their home. I could tell why Tommy loved his mom so fiercely. She was full of so much love and sincerity that it was impossible not to like her.
But after a while, the two of us grew quiet as we worked together in silence.
“He’s a good man.”
“I’m sorry?” I paused with the dish towel in my hand as I was drying one of the plates.
“Tommy.” Linda dropped the sponge into the sink and turned to face me. “He means well. I know he made some poor decisions in his past, but that boy doesn’t have a mean or disrespectful bone in his body. He was lost.” The look Linda gave me made me want to crawl into myself because it was one that I didn’t deserve. “I see the way he looks at you.”
I averted my eyes, wanting to forget the way Linda talked to me, like there was hope for her son yet and I was exactly what he needed. His parents were good people, and we were stringing them along all because of a contract and our own selfish reasons. Tommy must have been really selling this fake relationship over dinner because I hadn’t noticed a single thing different about how he looked at me.
“You do have a nice son,” I told her after a minute before going back to drying the dishes. It was true and felt like something safe to say. Linda nodded, reading my distant response and not pushing the topic any further. I was extremely grateful for that woman. The two of us continued to clean and dry the dishes in silence.
After a few moments, Linda sighed as she watched out the window. Tommy stood out there, hitting golf balls into the ocean from his parents’ walkway to the beach. His swing was violent as he sent golf balls sailing away.
“Scott must have said something to him,” Linda said after a moment. My eyebrows drew together in concern at the tenseness in his shoulders. I glanced between Linda and Tommy before setting the dish towel down.
“I’ll go talk to him.” She gave me a grateful look before taking the dish towel from me.
I closed the door to the house quietly behind me as I watched Tommy send another golf ball into the ocean with a thwack. The muscles on his arms flexed as he pulled the club back and sent it flying down toward the ball again. Thwack.
“You’ve got a good swing,” I told him. He stopped, club at the top of his swing. He dropped his arms and pushed away the golf ball he was about to hit.
“They disintegrate when they hit the water,” he told me, like I had yelled at him for littering in the ocean instead.
“Okay,” I replied, taking a few steps closer to him. “I’ll add that you love the environment to the list.”
A smile actually broke across his face then, and my knees felt weak at the sight. It was like a little part of me was proud that I could cheer him up.
“Want to talk about it?”
“It was the same old argument with my dad. Nothing new.” Tommy threw the golf club aside and started off down the walkway to the beach. He didn’t look over his shoulder to see if I’d follow, but I did anyway.
“About what?” I asked softly after I had caught up to him. He had stopped a few feet from where the waves were and had taken a seat in the sand.
