Page 41 of Tito

Reggie

Standing at the kitchen countertop, my father stirred his coffee. “After you left here on Sunday you went home and had a bonfire in your back yard. Tell me how that was a good—”

“It wasn’t a bonfire,” I argued. “We weren’t roasting marshmallows and hotdogs or having a kegger.”

He faced me and took a sip of his coffee. “You had a fire in your back yard. Big enough that someone called the police. Bonfire or not, what’s the difference?”

“Huge difference,” I said. “If it was a bonfire, it would be an irresponsible act. The fire in question? It was an evil necessity.”

He gave me his signature stink eye. “Evil necessity?”

My father and I had a rather unique relationship. He was undoubtedly my parent—and acted as such—but we were also friends. I couldn’t imagine a life without him in it, nor could I fathom having a relationship with him other than the one we had.

“It was Jared’s stuff,” I explained. “The stuff he left in the house. All of it was crap I hated.”

“Those facts made it an evil necessity?”

I hadn’t lied to my father about Jared, I simply chose not to tell him the complete truth. From the beginning, he didn’t like Jared. His cop intuition wouldn’t allow him to. He explained that he saw through Jared no differently than if he were transparent, and that he didn’t like what he saw.

Admitting the truth would allow my father to say I told you so.

Clutching my cup of coffee between my hands, I let out a long breath. Sooner or later, he was going to say it, anyway.

“Do you remember Brandon?” I asked. “The guy that’s marrying Tina?”

“Big kid? Kind of dopey acting?”

“He’s nice. He’s just. I don’t know. Slow to react.”

He chuckled. “He’s slow.” He sat down across from me. “Let’s leave it at that. What about him?”

“They were having a bachelor party at that strip club in Oceanside, because that’s what guys do. When they were leaving, Brandon saw Jared in his car in the parking lot. He was with one of the strippers—”

“With one how?” His posture straightened. “What were they doing?”

“They were having sex, dad.”

The veins on his neck jutted out. His fist clenched the coffee cup so tightly I felt that it would shatter any second. His face flushed crimson.

He stood.

Following a few audible breaths through his nose, he cracked his knuckles. “I’m going to break that little prick’s neck.”

“I’m over it, and you should be, too,” I said. “Sit down. Please.”

With reluctance, he eventually did as I asked, and sat. “If I ever see that little prick, I’m going to…”

He shook his head but failed to complete his sentence. He didn’t need to. I knew what he’d do, and it wouldn’t be pretty. He earned his nickname, Tank, for a reason.

“That’s why the fire was an evil necessity,” I explained. “I was bringing our relationship to a close. I told him whatever he left at the house would be burned, and that’s what I did.”

With his eyes fixed on the center of the table, he sipped his coffee. I knew to give him his space and allow him to digest my breakup with Jared however he must. I watched the clock on the microwave tick away the time. After three minutes passed, he looked up.

“You’ve never been one to make idle threat,” he said.

I raised my index finger. “If I say it…”

“I mean it,” we both said at the same time, reciting the second half of the phrase my father used repeatedly.