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I shrug and stare out the window. I’m not sure if I’m insulted or just relieved that he doesn’t believe me. Both, perhaps.

“You were serious?” he asks.

“Whatever.”

“You? You, Erin Doyle, ride motorcycles.”

“Is it really that unthinkable? You’re making it sound like I’m Queen Elizabeth.”

“Come on, Erin… I mean, you’re not exactly the type.”

Okay. Now I’m offended. “In what way am I not the type?”

“Perky little blondes in marketing don’t drive Ducatis. They drive something sensible, like a Prius.”

“Yeah, well, Rob agrees with you, so please don’t say anything.”

Rob’s like a grandmother about a lot of things. If he knew about this, I’d never hear the end of it. He’d come home with a report about the dangers of motorcycles, peppering every conversation with crash statistics.

“There’s nothing wrong with driving a motorcycle.”

“There’s nothing wrong with lots of stuff,” I reply. “It doesn’t mean you want the whole world knowing.”

“Except Rob’s not the whole world. He’s your fiancé. And that isn’t something you should feel you have to hide.”

I say nothing, but the truth is this: Rob is a big part of my world, and he would not accept this or so many other things if he knew.

* * *

Thanks to Brendan’s tendency to drive at least 20 miles over the speed limit, we are in Denver in less than an hour. With shame rising in my chest, I direct him to a particularly rough section of the city, a section neither of us would choose to enter under normal circumstances.

“Let’s try Slaney’s first,” I say, sounding, unfortunately, like someone who’s made this desperate search before. “You can wait here, and I’ll run in.”

“Are you high?” He scowls. “I’m not letting you go in there at this hour alone.”

“I’ll be fine.”

He ignores me. And when we walk in and the bartender clearly knows who I am and who my father is, yet another lie is exposed. I’m so fucked. Of course Brendan’s going to tell. Since the moment we kissed at Will and Olivia’s wedding, he’s been gunning for me, the hypocritical bastard.

After three bars and 20 minutes of searching, we find my dad, slumped in the corner of a booth while the staff cleans up around him.

“It’s Erin, right?” the manager asks.

I avoid Brendan’s eye. “Yeah. I’m sorry about this.”

“We’d have called you, but I didn’t have your number. You want to write it down so we have it the next time?”

I continue to avoid looking at Brendan. “Yes. Thank you.”

Sometimes I feel like a sandbag with a pinhole leak. I’ve spent my entire life trying to erase the small trail of debris, evidence, I’ve left behind. Tonight that leak has become a full-fledged tear, and it’s as if I’m hemorrhaging now. I wonder how much more I’ll prove unable to contain.

We load my father into the passenger’s seat with some difficulty, and I direct Brendan to my parents’ neighborhood. Their standard of living dropped a fair amount after my dad lost his job in New Jersey. It’s not as if Brendan grew up with a ton of money, but I’m embarrassed anyway—by how they live, by my mother’s tears and by the way she reacts when she realizes I’m not alone.

“I didn’t know you were bringing company,” she says, as if this is a social call. She wipes her face on the inside of her robe. “You could have warned me. I’m not even dressed.”

I’ve broken the cardinal Doyle family rule: don’t let outsiders see the ugly underbelly. People who’ve met my parents generally come back raving about them. Back when my dad was still doing okay, my parents would fly out for track meets, take me and my friends to dinner. My dad was the life of the party. “You’re so lucky,” people would tell me when it was time to go. “Your dad is so much fun.” They never realized that my mother or I had cut the night short at the precise moment we saw my dad teetering on the edge, about to descend from fun and irreverent to sloppy and irresponsible.

“He’s not company, Mom. We’re not staying.”