Dad twirls pasta around his fork with focus that tells me something's coming. I glance up.
"What?"
"Here." He gestures with his fork at the room, the house, the general concept of us. "With me. You're almost thirty years old, Cal. Don't you get tired of living with your old man?"
There it is, the question he's been sitting on. I turn it over, try to find the honest answer. Dad needs an honest answer, and the honest answer is that every day, I choose this kitchen that always smells like home, and his humming, which is the steadiest sound I know.
"Not even a little."
I go back to my food. Dad makes a face, the one that means he expected the answer, likes it, and is also going to argue with it anyway. Classic Dad.
I, on the other hand, mean every single word. There's no reality in which I leave him alone, not as long as he insists on remaining alone.
"That's not a ringing endorsement of your social life," he observes.
"My social life is fine."
"Your social life is the firehouse and Ramsey's porch and the pub and driving out at two in the morning."
I put my fork down. "How do you know about that?"
Dad picks up his water glass, the picture of innocence. "You took the car out. I heard it leave."
"You were asleep. And the car makes literally no sound."
"I was resting my eyes."
"At two in the morning?"
"This is not about me, Cal." He sets the glass down and levels me with a look. "Where'd you go?"
"Drive."
Which is true, technically. A very specific drive to a very specific location for very specific reasons I'm not about to detail to my father over pasta on a random night.
"I'm serious. You should be thinking about your own place. Your own life. A family."
The hope in his voice guts me. I know he wants grandchildren. He's said it often enough over the years, usually in good fun, but tonight there's something more serious underneath. Something that sounds a lot like worry.
So I give him a white lie. "I'm working on it."
"Are you?"
I have never been able to lie to my dad. He was a present father even when Mom was alive, knows me better than anyone, and that makes lying to him harder than it should be. I can feel him reading me right now, weighing every little expression.
"Slowly, but surely," I manage over a mouthful of pasta.
"Cal." Dad sets his fork down, gives me a look that says he's been waiting out my deflections for twenty-nine years and he can wait twenty-nine more.
"You go out of town when you want company. You come home and you're here and that's fine, that's your choice, but you're not building toward anything. You're just... running the clock."
"I'm not running the clock. I'm taking my time."
"There's a difference between the two and I'm starting to wonder if you know what it is."
I finish my pasta and consider whether I can get away with clearing the table and redirecting him toward the chess set. One look at his face tells me I can't.
"I don't want to date someone here," I say finally. "It's a small town, things get complicated."
