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As she set the bags on the table, she looked around. A few dirty dishes in the sink, but overall, everything was fairly tidy. She went deeper into the house, and found the typically disused living and dining rooms and a slightly mussed family room. All the curtains were drawn and the house was bathed in gloom, but otherwise things looked much better than they had since his latest arrest. The consequences of which still hovered over their heads, their extent undetermined.
His court date was coming up soon, and there was no agreement yet on a plea. The DA was ‘offering’ two years in state prison, a permanent revocation of his license, and a $2,500 fine. Mr. Vermeyer said that hard line suggested the state thought they had an even stronger case than he’d realized and had counseled Dad to consider the deal. But Dad was terrified to go to prison. Petra was terrified of that as well. Neither of them was sure he could survive it. So Mr. Vermeyer was continuing to work on a deal.
At his arraignment, he’d pled not guilty, but since then, he’d said he wouldn’t fight the charge. He simply wanted a deal he could survive. He was asking only for jail and not prison. But if he got to his court date without a deal, the worst-case scenario was five years in prison.
Her staid, boring, banker father. Locked up with criminals.
Because he, too, was a criminal. Who could have killed someone. Like her mother had been killed.
Petra shuddered and pushed those thoughts aside. She was close enough to the main staircase to hear that the shower was running upstairs, so she opened the drapes in the family room, and then the living room and the dining room, and returned to the kitchen to lay a nice table for their lunch of gyros and tabbouleh.
When she opened the trash bin cupboard to toss the wrappings, however, a glint of cobalt caught her eye in the recycling bin behind the trash. It was buried a little, but she pushed the Pellegrino and Diet Coke bottles out of the way and pulled out an empty Skyy bottle.
Vodka. A full liter. She’d emptied the recycling two days ago. Her father preferred dark liquor. If he’d moved to vodka, he was trying to hide it.
“Daddy,fuck,” she muttered and leaned back against the counter, staring at the bottle of betrayal in her hand.
At first, she set the evidence on the table, right in front of the place setting she’d just laid out for him. Then, as the pipes groaned when he turned the shower off, she changed her mind and returned the bottle to the bin. On top, though, so he’d know she’d seen it.
There was no point in further confrontation. She’d said everything she could, every way she could, repeatedly. He wasn’t going to change until he wanted to change. And if facing actual prison time wasn’t enough catalyst, maybe he never would change. If doing the exact thing that had gotten Mom killed wasn’t enough catalyst, maybe there was nothing at all in the world anyone could do but watch him self-destruct.
The irony of it all, how losing Mom to a drunk driver had knocked her alcoholic father out of a decades-long recovery and caused him to perpetuate the same cruelly reckless behaviors that had stolen her from them, was like a bur in Petra’s brain. A constant irritant snagging in everything it brushed against.
A floorboard creaked, and Petra looked up in time to see her father step into the room. He looked like her father, washed and combed, dressed in professionally laundered khakis and a sky blue golf shirt tucked into them. A sleek oxblood leather belt around his ample waist and a pair of Bass Weejuns on his sockless feet. Some extra stuffing in the bags under his eyes, but otherwise, he looked good.
If not for that cobalt-blue bottle, she might have felt hopeful.
“Hello, Petey!” he said with a sincere grin. “Lunch smells great. You know I love Taziki’s—and look at the pretty table you set! I love lunch dates with my girl.”
“Hi, Dad.” She went over and hugged him. His big arms wrapped around her, and he kissed the top of her head.
She pushed the blue bottle out of her thoughts. All she could do was love him. Everything else, he had to do for himself.
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~oOo~
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When Petra got to thebar that afternoon, Dre’s bike wasn’t parked in back. As she was running late, that meant Dre was still on their bullshit. The bar opened at four, which was less than an hour from now, and the head bartender, whose shift started at three, wasn’t there? They had a thirty-second commute down a flight of stairs.
It used to be that Petra knew Dre’s whole schedule, and vice versa. Even when one or the other of them was in a relationship, they’d kept each other apprised, not out of any regimented expectation but because they were best friends who texted throughout the day.
Until Jake. He wasn’t the first man Petra had dated, but Dre despised him—and apparently despised Petra, too, for dating him. Jake was no fan of Dre, either. It put Petra in a position that would eventually become untenable, stuck between two rivals and feeling like the knot in a tug-of-war rope.
Except that Dre had dropped their end of the rope and stormed off. They’d still been sulking but had seemed to be coming around in the almost-week between Jake running from Petra’s loft and last Tuesday, when they’d had their first real date. Then, on Wednesday, Petra had told Dre that she and Jake had fixed things, and he planned to come by and hang out with her until closing.
Dre had tossed a bar towel at her and stormed out of the bar. They’d stayed away on Thursday and Friday, too. Ignoring all texts, calls, and actual knocks on their apartment door all the while. Petra would have been worried that harm had befallen them except that Max and Katie had both been in touch with Dre.
They were pouting. Pure and simple.
It was so fuckingfrustrating. Petra needed her best fucking friend right now! And all this was because, what? Dre didn’t like her new boyfriend? It wasn’t like Dre wanted Jake for themself, or that Jake was their boyfriend or even their ex—which wasn’t possible anyway; Dre was only attracted to women. It wasn’t like Jake had done Dre wrong. They’d met him at precisely the same time.
Dre didn’t like Jake because they thought Jake was too much like them? What sense did that even make? Not only did Petra still not see it, but even if it were true,what sense did it make? They were blowing up a years-long friendship, close as siblings, over this?
Petra slammed her office door, stomped to her desk, and dropped into her chair with a huff.
