AllFreeNovel
Share Us
His question throws my mind straight back down the path I’d avoided thinking about on the train ride home with Mack—a path of considering my future, my choices, and what I might have to sacrifice to make a change.
Maybe the mugging did flash my life before my eyes, in a different way. Maybe I am having second thoughts about how I’m spending my time … with my “mortal life” …
I may have my own set of farewells to make.
I guess all good things come to an end.
I’m robbed of any further conversation when we round the corner and approach the front steps of Piazza Place. Standing there with his hands in his pockets is a sturdy bearded man with a neutral sort of frown on his face.
I stop cold.
Lex is in the middle of telling Mack a story when the sight of the man cuts him off. “Oh, it’s the hot daddy from the club!” Lex exclaims. “Hi, there, daddy-daddy! Oh, are you here for Zakky-Zak-Attack? Couldn’t get enough last time? Come to get some more?”
“This is my dad,” I state to no one specific.
Lex blinks. “Oh. Oops. Weird.” He grimaces, then give’s Mack’s arm a squeeze. “Come inside with me, will you? I have, uh, something to, uh … Let’s just leave these two alone, for fuck’s sake.” And with that, he politely skirts around my father on his way up the steps. Mack gives me a calculative look before deciding to leave me here with my dad, as does Connor, who gives me a nod of farewell before slipping into the building with Alan.
And then there were two. I’m the first to speak. “What are you doing here so late?”
“I hate how we left things,” he goes right in, his eyes heavy and his jaw tight. “I nearly turned right around halfway home that night. It was killing me, thinking of those words I said. They kept circling around my brain, haunting me. I couldn’t sleep. Your mom was worried. I … I just had to …” He notices my bandages. “The hell happened to you?”
Maybe it’s the night, my mood, or my brush with death, but I decide to accept his olive branch. “Come up with me, Dad. I’ll tell you the story.”
20
I tell it to him over cans of cold beer at my tiny dining room table by the window in the kitchen. He listens astutely, never interrupts, and reveals no emotion on his face. He barely even sips his beer.
When I finish, his eyes drop to my arm. It’s only when he speaks that I hear the fear in his voice. “You could’ve been killed tonight, Isaac.”
“I doubt that,” I mutter. “Even if I had been alone, the guy was clearly freaked out, maybe high. He just wanted money. He didn’t mean to do it.”
“He was a … a thug. Some … street rat. People like that wouldn’t think twice. He’d gut the Queen of England for a bag of crack.”
“Well, you might find a lot of queens on these streets, but I doubt it’ll be the one of England.”
He goes for a sip of beer, hesitates, then sets his can back down thoughtfully. “I don’t know what to say, Isaac. I … I feel heartbroken somehow. Like I should’ve been there.”
Are we really doing this? “You are here.”
“I mean for all of it. Your life. Even the parts I don’t agree with. Like you … taking off your damn clothes on a stage. Making other men … pay you for God-knows-what at that dirty place.”
“We aren’t that kind of club,” I point out.
He goes on, uninterrupted. “I could have been a wingman of sorts. Like, punching you in the arm and laughing it off, partaking in the fun, making you feel … feel loved.” He squints at me suddenly, pained. “Is this my fault, Isaac? Did I not love you enough as a kid? Are you … compensating … for a deficiency in your childhood?”
I blink. “Someone’s been reading.”
“A lot,” he confesses, tone unchanged. “So?”
“So? You’re really asking those questions?” I let out a tiny chuckle of disbelief, then stare down at my beer. “I don’t think anyone can accurately … quantify their parents’ love. I know you love me. I also know we haven’t ever seen eye-to-eye, exactly. You more or less tossed me aside when you found out what I do … without really hearing the rest of it. Like why I do what I do. And what my goal is in the end.” A streetlamp sputtering suddenly through the window catches my eye, turning my face to the glass. “It may seem like I’m fooling myself, but … I see what I do as kind of … noble.”
“Noble.” He tastes the word on his tongue for a moment. Then he tilts his head. “Are you really seeing a fifty-two-year-old?”
