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Okay. I guess I should toast. I meet him at the table; I take the glass; I tap it against his.
"Congratulations, Damon. I mean it. I'm proud of you."
"You are?" My voice breaks. It's the one thing I can't stomach hearing. The one thing I'm desperate to hear.
He nods. "I don't say it enough. I should. I know how hard this is. And you're killing it." He takes a long sip. "You're up to eleven songs total."
It feels good; it does. But—"How come you and Mr. Steele know before we do?"
"People owe us favors," he says. "Or they think they can curry favor with a congratulations."
That does sound like the music industry. There is a lot of bullshit. Maybe too much. "Cassie's dad doesn't want us together."
Dad swallows hard. "Is that why you ended things?"
"How do you know I'm the one who ended things?"
"I can tell," he says.
Maybe it's obvious. Or maybe he knows about Cassie pouring her heart onto her paper twenty miles away.
I want to take that pain away. I want to hold her and make it better. And let her hold me and make it better.
But that's why I need the distance. Because that's not right for either of us.
"I'm sorry about Tom," he says. "Cassie's Dad. It's not your fault. It's mine."
Huh?
"He's worried you take after me."
"I do, don't I?"
Dad doesn't say anything. He just holds my gaze, waiting for me to continue.
I don't want to have this conversation with him, but I need to do it. I need to face the truth here. "My entire life, everyone has looked at me like they know it's only a matter of time until I follow your footsteps. You. Mom. Cassie's family. Teachers. Mentors."
"Damon—" Dad runs a hand through his messy hair. "You're right."
"Fuck, we should check that thermostat." This is new.
He half-smiles. "I've been worried since your mom told me she wanted to start a family. When we met, neither of us were sure. We'd both lost so much. I was terrified I'd pass on bad DNA, destine you to this life. But then I saw that plus sign on the test, and it didn't matter. I wanted to be a father. I knew I had to protect you. I thought I was."
Is that really why he never explained it?
It almost makes sense. All the conversations we had when I was a kid about how sometimes people eat so much candy, they get sick, and sometimes adults drink so much they get sick.
Then he slipped and those conversations ended.
"Maybe you'll get it one day," he says. "If you have kids. I wanted to keep the world pure for you. But it's not. I should have seen that. Your mom wanted to, but when I fucked up I…"
"When you went back to rehab?" I ask.
He nods. "I don't know how much you remember. I had surgery. At first, I thought I'd be okay with aspirin and NSAIDs. Then, the pain was too much, and I thought I was recovered enough to try something stronger." He doesn't add I wasn't.
It fills the air anyway. "Mom cried every night."
"You saw that?"
"Heard it."
"Fuck." He sets his glass on the table and shakes his head. "I thought it was better to keep that reality from you. And Daph especially. She was so young."
"Was that all of it?" I ask. "You were protecting us?"
"No. I didn't want to change the way you looked at me, either. I was still Daph's hero. But something changed after that. It was different."
I shake my head. "She never looks at you like a fuckup."
"Maybe not. But she knows I've slipped. She saw it. There were a few years, she was on edge around me."
There were?
"You were already drinking all the time," he says. "I didn't know how to help you then. I thought maybe you'd get it out of your system. But… I'm sorry, Damon."
For so long, I blamed him. I hated him. I pinned it all on him.
And some of it was him. The genetic predisposition. The influence. The inability to talk about what was really happening.
But the rest was me.
So I look my father in the eyes, and I say the thing I've needed to say for a long time, "I forgive you."
The tension in my shoulders dissolves. Then my chest. Some deeper part of me.
There's still anger in my veins, but I'm starting to let go.
Dad tried his best.
It wasn't enough.
That's life.
Sometimes we try and fail.
There are a million reasons why I turned to alcohol to ease the existential pain. It's easy to turn to it again.
We live in a society that romanticizes self-medication and blackout drinking.
I'm in an industry with a fucked-up relationship to moderation.
But I'm in charge of my life.
I have to put sobriety first. I have to heal first.
So I do the one thing I thought I'd never do.
