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“So that’s it, then?” She turns her back on the window. “You’re just going to move to Los Angeles?”
“Like I said, I haven’t really thought about it.”
“But you want to go.”
I shrug. “Maybe.”
Truth is, I don’t want to go. I want to stay wherever she is. But that runs in the complete opposite direction from everything I’ve ever wanted before. Idon’tstay. It’s not in my nature. And I’m convinced that if I tried to stay with her, that old familiar restlessness would only be biding its time. Waiting for a chance to strike on our one-year anniversary, maybe, or ten years down the road.
I mean, shit, I’ve just broken the only promise I ever made to her: I’m ruining Christmas.
“I just think we should take this for what it is,” I tell her.
“What do you think this is?”
My dad clears his throat, scowling. I taste the lie in my mouth. Acrid and stale like rancid oil.
“I thought we were just having fun,” I say. “I’m sorry if I gave you the wrong impression.”
I grab my coat, shove my feet into my boots, and walk out onto the deck. I feel like shit, but it’s better this way. Now she won’t care if she never hears from me again, once our parents inevitably split.
I’m not outside for more than a minute when I hear the screen door slam against the side of the house.
“Hey,” my dad barks. “What the hell was that?”
I groan, not remotely interested in having the truth of his words rubbed in my face. “I did what needed to be done, okay? Noelle needs to remember that I don’t do relationships.”
“Right, you just bring women home for the holidays. Cook them breakfast. Snuggle with them by the fire. Then make them feel like idiots for thinking you might be interested in more than a good time.”
“Don’t act like you know anything about my sex life. I come here once a year—”
“And your bad habits haven’t changed one bit since you moved out.” He shakes his head. “No, you don’t get to play house with her, and then make her feel bad when she interprets that as you giving a shit.”
“I do give a shit,” I snap. “I give lots of shits.”
“So what is it, then? You’re scared?”
“Fuck off.” I gaze out at the tree line, my breath obscuring the view. If he keeps pushing, I’m gonna lose it. Right now, I’m barbed wire, poised to bite into anything that tries to grab hold of me. And he knows better than anyone how to turn that wire into a fuse.
“You’re afraid of letting her become important, because then you might get hurt.”
“And you’re just tired of being a lonely old man with nothing to live for.” I whip around to face him. “A nineteen-year-old girl lets you fuck her, and now you’re hoping she’ll give up her future to shack up with you in your log cabin. But she already has a life. Don’t ask her to put it on hold just because you’re afraid to start living.”
“You don’t know anything about my life, Sawyer. Like you said, you’re hardly ever here.”
“And every time I come back, you’re still doing the same shit. Chopping wood, plowing snow, fixing broken water heaters.”
He smirks. “Did it ever occur to you that a girl like Noelle might be attracted to that kind of consistency?”
I keep my mouth shut about what she said last night. All that stuff about wanting to stay here with the two of us. I remember how it felt to slide inside her, tight and slick with cum and her own juices.
Part of me wanted to give her everything she so desperately wanted. To promise that we could stay here, make a home with the three of us, become a family. Thankfully, I recognized those thoughts for what they actually were: the crazed musings of a man about to nut.
“Running this place is monotonous,” my dad says. “It’s part of the fucking job. But I guess you think I’d be better off drinking like a fish and fucking anything that moves.”
“At least you’d have a little variety in your life.”
“That’s not a life. That’s the shit you pull to avoid having to face reality.” He brushes a swath of snow off the railing so he can rest his forearms there. “I didn't raise you like this, Sawyer. Your grandparents certainly didn’t, and I always figured your mom wasn’t around enough to rub off on you.”
