I don’t answer. This doesn’t feel real. I’m a puppet on taut strings, held hostage in a nightmare. “Keegan mentioned those so-called best friends of yours declined to be part of your wedding. What were their names again? Riley and Lenny?”
“Ryker and Liam,” Keegan answers.
“They were always up themselves, those boys, thinking they’re better than everyone. I didn’t like you staying over their place when you were younger, always thought you might come home and tell me you woke up with their hands in your pants.”
Keegan makes a noise. It sounds like a smirk, and my dad grows in confidence. He’s still sitting on my chair, still physically the same, but something about himswells.He rests his elbow on the table and props his chin up on his hand. It’s too casual, too comfortable, and it reminds me of when he’d come back after months away when I was a kid and reassert his hold not only over my mum, but our house too. It’s his—everything is his—and with dawning horror I realise Keegan is becoming his too. He’s winning her over with their mutual dislike of my best friends.
“I never did like them,” my dad says, then he runs his tongue against his two front teeth waiting for me to defend them. “Strange boys.”
“They’ve never liked me,” Keegan says. “Never wanted me to come along to their meet-ups, always tried to keep Freddie away from me.”
It’s not true. The same way I don’t assert myself into her friendships, she wasn’t in mine. It wasn’t segregation, we didn’t leave her out, I just never invited her in the first place. But I didn’t realise it bothered her, and even now, she’s telling my dad and not me.
“Is that so?” my dad says. “You should’ve cut them off a lot sooner if they were disrespecting your girlfriend like that.”
I finally unstick my lips. “They weren’t.”
“They were,” Keegan says. “Ryker constantly calls you ‘babe’ in his messages.”
My dad shudders. “That’ll be it, then.” He shakes his head. “They’re jealous of you, Keegan, want what they can’t have. Freddie needs to learn to stand on his two feet. He’s not sixteen anymore, he can’t use the two gay guys on the street as his bodyguards, not without consequences.”
“Consequences?” I ask.
He looks me up and down. “People will talk. People will wonder.”
“Let them talk. Let them wonder. I don’t care what people think.”
My dad sighs and flashes a commiserating look towards Keegan. “See, this is what he doesn’t get. He’s never got it. The world doesn’t revolve around you, Freddie. Maybe you don’t care what people think, but your fiancée does. You’ve got to learn to put others first.”
“Fuck you.”
I resort back to those two words, and yet again, my dad ignores them.
“Get over here and sit down.”
“I’m not . . . I’m not sitting at the table with you.”
“What are you? Ten years old throwing a tantrum?” He licks his teeth again, unsticking his lip from them, and I can’t be sure, but I think they might be dentures. “Your fiancée has made us a lovely meal. Stop making everything about you!”
His shout makes Keegan drop the ladle into the pan. Soup splatters onto her top, and my dad’s on his feet, grabbing the tea towel on the side. “I didn’t mean to startle you,” he chuckles. “I want him to sit the hell down and stop disrespecting you, that’s all.”
“Get away from her!”
I’m moving now, crossing the room, and at first he ignores me and dabs Keegan’s top, but then I snatch the tea towel off him and he backs away with his hands up in surrender.
“Easy, son, no need to lose your temper.”
“I’m losing it because you’re here.”
My dad retreats. “What did I do that was so terrible? You’ll make Keegan think the worst of me.”
“I want her to.”
“Did I touch you? Huh? Did I lay a hand on you?”
I’m close enough to Keegan to hear her whisper, “Did he?”
The answer is no. It’s sick that I wish he had. It would be easier if he had.
