Page 38 of Finding Noah

“What are you up to over there?” Dad asked, tearing me away from my thoughts of Meg, her curly blonde hair, and her sky-blue eyes.

“Huh?” I asked, glancing at him.

“You've been quiet all night. What's going on?”

I shrugged. “Nothing. I mean …” I gave my head a quick shake.

“He's being a grumpy teenager,” Mom said playfully. “We tortured him today by making him have fun.”

My nose wrinkled as I turned in the recliner to face her with an exasperated expression. “What are you even talking about? I'm fine.”

They infuriated me with their jabs. They thought they were funny. They thought they were being cool, like one of my friends or something. But all they did was make me not want to be around them. Not all the time, but … sometimes.

“He doesn't sound fine,” Mom mumbled to Dad, her lips tipping into a teasing smile.

“No, definitely doesn't sound fine at all,” he mumbled back.

“Oh my God,” I groaned, pushing out of the recliner and hurrying toward the stairs. “You guys are insufferable sometimes—you know that?”

“Ooh, we're insufferable, babe—you hear that?” Dad said with a taunting, albeit good-natured laugh.

But, God, it didn't feel good-natured.

It felt horrible.

Like they didn't take me seriously.

Like they didn't care.

***

“Hey.”

I turned my head away from the TV to see Dad standing just inside my room.

Sometimes, even all these years later, it surprised me how big he was. Like now, when his tall, muscular body fit almost perfectly in the confines of the open doorway.

Every now and then, I'd fantasize about what it'd be like if I grew to be as tall as him.

Especially when people looked at Miles and made comments like, “He's going to be tall, like his daddy.”

But that was never going to happen to me.

Soldier wasn't my dad.

Not really anyway.

“Hi,” I muttered in reply.

“You okay?” he asked, his hands gripping the top of the doorframe.

I chewed at the corner of my bottom lip, considering my options.

I could send him away. Brush him off. Lie again and say that I was fine.

Or … I could talk to him.

He always made it easy to be honest and open, more so than Mom sometimes. Maybe it was a guy thing. Maybe it was that he had been my friend before he was my dad. I didn’t know. But whatever it was, it called to me now, and I lifted one shoulder in a half-hearted shrug.