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“I guess you’ll find out,” Quin said with a devious smile.
Wait, was Quin flirting with me? However he meant it, it shot a tingle through my body and shook me to my core. When that guy did something, he did it right.
“I can’t wait to find out,” I told him before walking him back to campus and awkwardly returning to my truck.
I had never wanted to kiss someone so much in my life. I knew I couldn’t and I wasn’t even sure if Quin was interested in anything like that. At least I was able to establish that he was into guys. For the time being, that was enough. I could survive on that hope for a while.
When Tasha texted that there was traffic and that she wouldn’t get back to campus until late, I drove home. It was probably for the best. After spending the day with Quin, my mind was elsewhere.
After a forty-minute drive, I turned onto the empty road that led to my house. My dad’s truck was running in the driveway with its lights on.
“Oh no,” I said knowing how the rest of the night would go.
Parking next to my father’s truck, I got out and looked into its windows. He wasn’t there. It was a worse sign that he had made it into the house. At least if he was passed out, his night would be over.
Opening the truck’s door, I reached in and shut it off. With the keys in hand, I looked back at the cabin. The kitchen and living room lights poured onto the ground outside the windows. The TV was blasting. I took a long measured breath, gathered myself, and made the short walk to the front door.
Stepping inside, the place was a mess. This wasn’t the way I had left it. The lamps shone from the floor where they had been tossed, the couch was overturned, the TV was sitting on its side, and things that used to be in the fridge were now scattered between the two rooms.
“I don’t want to hear it,” my father grumbled drawing my attention to the kitchen table.
The red-headed man looked his usual shade of ruddy pink. Like I suspected, he had a near-empty bottle of Lonehand Sour Mash Whiskey clutched in his grip. Tennessee’s finest.
“Dad…”
“I don’t wanna hear it. Do you know how much I sacrificed for you?”
“I know, Dad. You sacrificed everything,” I recited from our script while looking around to see what I had to clean up first.
“That’s right, everything! I God damn sacrificed everything. And for what?”
“So, I could become a big star,” I said skipping a few pages ahead.
“Don’t you fuckin’ do it. Don’t you talk to me like that,” he bellowed. “I should just go. I should get in my fuckin’ truck and never come back to this shit hole again.”
This was always that part that hurt the most. You would think I would have gotten used to him talking about leaving, but I never could. Maybe it’s because I knew his leaving was in my hands.
My father saw what I was capable of doing on the football field long before anyone else did. He saw that I would be a top NFL draft prospect and with it would come millions of dollars. He always made clear that he would stick around for that. There was no telling what he would do once he got his cut, but until then, I was pretty sure he wasn’t going anywhere.
“This wouldn’t be a shithole if you stopped wrecking the place.”
“Fuck you!”
“Nice Dad. Way to talk to your son.”
“You’re not my son.”
“Come on, Dad. Don’t start this again.”
This was a new subplot he had added to our script not too long ago. It went that I embarrassed him for not living up to my potential, so I couldn’t be his son.
“You’re not. You’re just some baby I stole thinking I could make some money…”
“Enough, Dad! I can’t take it anymore! You wanna leave so bad? Here!”
Pitching back my arm, I through his truck keys so hard it shattered the window and disappeared into the night.
“You wanna go? Take your fuckin’ truck and go. If you wanna stick around and milk me of everything I got for eternity, then stay. I just don’t give a shit anymore. You hear me? I can’t take this anymore.”
