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Slinging my bag next to the island, I headed to the oven, grabbed a potholder, and removed the hot plate covered with foil. With my other hand, I opened the utensil drawer and grabbed a fork before I sat down.
When I folded the foil aside, steam rose from a plate piled high with pasta. Some kind of fancy seafood linguine. While a lot of my friends had family chefs, Mom insisted on cooking most of our meals from scratch herself. At one time, she’d wanted to be a chef. Before she met Dad. Before she married and he made all their money, negating her need for a job, and she settled on staying home.
Part of me wondered if she regretted it. Especially now . . .
My mind flashed to Ms. Stone and my father, and my stomach turned. Regardless, I shoved the thoughts aside and dug into my food. The flavor of garlic, shrimp, and scallops exploded in my mouth, and even though Mom gave me enough to feed three people, I ate every bite, sopping up the remaining sauce with a piece of crusty bread.
After I finished, I cleared my plate and leaned against the counter, plucking a cookie off the cooling rack as my father entered the kitchen.
“Do you have schoolwork?” he asked. No pretense. NoHow was your day?or formalities. Straight down to business.
“Nope.” I brushed the crumbs from my hands and straightened. “Finished it at school.”
“Good. You have your essay to work on.”
I averted my gaze and scratched the back of my head.
“What essay?” I asked, even though I knew very well what essay he was referring to.
“For UVA,” he said like I was dumb.
Ah, yes. The University of Virginia. My dream school. JK. I had zero desire to go there. But it was the best business school in Virginia and just so happened to be only a forty-five-minute commute, which meant I could attend school, study, and still work for the family business. Lucky me.
“You should have no problem getting in, but you still need to start working on your essay and application, so we can get it in early. It shows initiative. Eagerness . . .”
My desire for higher education.Yatta yatta.
I stopped listening, drowning him out, because I’d heard it all a million times before.
I fingered the envelope in my pocket and swallowed. “What if I had another option?”
“What?” My father huffed out a laugh like the idea was preposterous. “We talked about this. I need you here, running the business if I’m going to try a mayoral run next year. UVA has the best program in the state, and it’ll allow you—”
“Yeah, I know what we talked about, but . . .”
More like whathetalked about. Like I cared if he became mayor. I just agreed to it because what other choice did I have?
“Coach gave me this today.” I stepped forward, mustering every ounce of courage within me to pull the letter out of my pocket and hand it to him despite the fact it felt like the nerves in my stomachs were doing jumping jacks.
He stared at it like I handed him a grenade. Mouth a flat line. Eyes wide. Jaw twitching.
When he stood there, motionless like he was unsure of what to do with it, I grabbed it back out of his hands and removed the letter of intent, pointing at the words. “See here, it’s a national letter of intent from Bucknell to play water polo for them. They want me to tour the campus and facilities, and if I like what I see, they’re offering a scholarship.”
I glanced up from the letter to my father’s face. Maybe if he knew how good I was. If he realized I might have a future doing something other than running his business. If he realized someone else believed in me enough to give me a chance. Maybe he would too.
But he wasn’t even looking at the letter. Instead, his eyes were planted firmly on my face. A frown pulling at his lips.
“No.” His voice vibrated between us.
“What?” I blinked at him like I heard him wrong. He wasn’t even giving me a chance.
“I said, no. I won’t have my son wasting his life on some stupid sport with zero potential for a future.”
“That’s not true. I can coach—”
“You can coach?” He scoffed. “I’m sure that’ll bring in a lot of money.”
“I don’t care about the money.”
