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I stepped back from him and shook my head.
"Would you like to?"
One last dinner with Bolivar? I wanted to. "Give me a fewminutes to get dressed?" He looked good, and I wanted to look just as nice.
"Sure. Come get me when you're ready."
He left me then, and I got ready for what I knew was likely the last time that I was going to be seeing Bolivar.
He was quiet during dinner. I had a ton of questions for him, but I held back on them. Still, I couldn't just sit in silence with him. "Are you coming back to Maine with me?"
He stopped eating his fish and put his fork down for a moment. I'd been in the middle of slathering warm honey butter over my fourth roll of the night. "I wasn't going to, no. I thought I'd stay down here through winter and then go back up when the weather is warmer. You have plenty of things at the house though, and your own key, so please feel free to stay there as long as you like. You don't even have to remove your things all at once, or even at all right now. I don't expect that room to become your storage space, but I'm in no rush to see you and your things gone either."
"I'm going to miss you," I mumbled. I'd barely known him, but I was still going to miss him.
"I'll miss you too."
He smiled at me, and then we were back to eating.
I left the Keys the next morning and went back to Maine. I'd barely spoken to my father since leaving to go live with Bolivar the first time, but now it was time to call him and let him know what was going on. He'd always been so busy at work, even when I'd been home in December, that I really hadn't been able to sit down and talk to him. But now, as I took the long taxi ride from the airport back to Bolivar's house, I decided to pull out my phone and call him.
"Hello?"
"Hey Dad," I said. I sighed and glanced at the driver. I'd have to be careful with what I said. "So, Bolivar let me go. I'm onmy way back to his house right now and then I figured I'd spend a few days there packing up and cleaning my space and stuff and then come back home. Okay?"
He was quiet for far too long before he finally spoke again. "What did you do to upset him? Can you apologize?"
It really wasn't my fault, and I hated that he instantly thought that it was. "He just doesn't need anyone anymore. It's not like before where we were really important and they needed us. So I'll see you in a week or so?"
"No. I don't think so. I'll talk to Bolivar. I'll get this straightened out. He'll take you back. This is all our family has ever done. And this, you giving up, that's not the honorable thing to do."
He hung up on me, and I stared at my phone until the driver pulled up to Bolivar's house. I paid him, with Bolivar's money, and then I went inside where I lay down on my bed and sighed heavily.
Over the next few weeks I tried to call my dad, but he never responded. However, I did get a box of my things in the mail delivered to Bolivar's house. I was hurt, but I wasn't angry. I was more confused than anything. I hadn't done anything wrong, and I was pretty sure that Bolivar wouldn't have said anything to him either, but without him answering his phone I didn't really know what to think of any of it.
I registered for classes at the University of Maine, and within a month I was moving into the dorms. I was hoping to get a degree in science, maybe studying astronomy or something. It was enough that I was going to classes. I really could have gone anywhere, but I liked Maine and, in some small way, I liked being close to Bolivar. His house on the coast was just a few hours away from my dorm room.
I ate lobster rolls and I thought about him and that first time that he'd made them for us. I'd had lobster rolls dozens oftimes since then, since they were one of his favorite foods too, but sitting there at the restaurant just blocks from my school and eating a lobster roll always took me back to that first time I had them with him.
A month into my first semester I realized that I needed friends, so I joined a crafting group. I didn't really know what to expect, but they met at the library during a time when I didn't have any classes and usually wasn't busy.
The group was ten bucks a time to cover supplies and they met every week. I figured it wasn't a bad price to pay if I was having fun and I had plenty of money from Bolivar anyway.
I found them easily enough. Two girls and a guy already making something with small metal tubes and fishing line. "Hi. I'm Wesley. Can I join you?"
The guy smiled at me and waved with a hand that had a metallic rainbow ring. He wore it on his thumb and I instantly had questions, mainly about where he'd gotten it. "Sure. Normally it's ten bucks each time because we have to buy the stuff, but we have extra this time so if you don't have the cash on you now it's no big deal."
I pulled out a ten and handed it to him, and he gave it to the girl with the braided black hair and purple eyeshadow. The other girl had brown hair and freckles. They were sitting close to each other, so I assumed that they were all friends and I envied them. Maybe they'd been friends for a long time. Maybe they'd grown up together. They probably had no idea that dragons existed, and they probably had never had any huge burdens placed on them like I had.
I sat down beside the guy and he pushed some tubes toward me. "We're making wind chimes this week. Next time we're going to color some postcards. I'm Jeffrey."
"Hey." I bent over my tubes and wires and started to copy what they were doing. I'd never made a wind chime before, but Ifigured it couldn't be too hard to do.
"I'm Megan," the girl with the braid said. "That's Sarah. We're half-sisters."
"Did your parents name you after Wesley from The Princess Bride?"
I actually had no idea. "Maybe. I don't really know." And since my dad wasn't exactly speaking to me I'd probably never know, actually. I looked at Jeffrey's ring again. "Where'd you get your ring? I'd like to get one like it too."
