"Wes."
"Yeah."
"Check your phone."
I looked at him.
"Just check it," he said.
I took out my phone. Unlocked it. Looked at the screen.
The most recent call in my history was outgoing.
Dad. Two minutes, fourteen seconds.
I stared at it.
I stared at it for a long time.
"Shit," I said.
"Yeah," Dylan said.
"I mean, fuck. Shit."
"Yeah."
"Shit. Shit. Shit."
"Yes."
I had pocket-dialed my father. My father, who I just knew was in his armchair right now, or was asleep, who had picked up his phone and gotten two minutes and fourteen seconds of bar noise and his son performing for strangers in a place neither of them had ever been.
"He didn't say anything," I said. "He just—"
"He hung up," Dylan said. "And called me."
I closed my eyes.
"How did he know to—"
"Wes." Dylan's voice was very flat. "He could hear you."
I opened my eyes.
I looked at the bar. At my water. At the four-page menu. At the lighting that had been carefully designed to make this feel like the kind of place where things happened. I thought about Rob Morrison in his armchair, listening to me do the Jenkins story for a bar full of strangers at midnight on a Tuesday.
"Fuck," I said.
"Yes," Dylan said.
We sat there for a while. Dylan finished his water. Got another one. Didn't get anything else. He had still not looked directly at me, which was new, which Dylan was doing on purpose, and I had been Dylan's brother for long enough to know exactly what it meant when he was doing something on purpose.
"You're mad," I said.
"I'm—I’m tired, Wes."
That landed differently than mad would have.
