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I nudge him with my elbow and stab my own straw into my drink. The most satisfying thing about bubble tea is the sharp edge of the straw and the way it slices through the filmy lid.
“Too late now,” I say, and Nathan laughs.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
ROME
My new clothes feel fucking weird, but that’s the nature of being bailed out. If you’ve been kidnapped and tortured for months and then go directly to jail, you get new clothes. I shift uncomfortably in jeans a size too big in the San Francisco sunshine while my dad pulls up the car.
My dad.My fucking dad?He’s the one who came to my rescue and bailed me out on day two in the hole? Honestly, when the guards came in and pulled me out of solitary five days early, I was convinced they were taking me somewhere to shoot me and dump my body. Instead, they let me take a hot shower in the guard’s change rooms, brought me brand-new clothes with the tags still on, gave me a fucking razor to shave my face, and presented me with a hot, gooey cheeseburger and fries washed down with an ice-cold Pepsi while they hovered nervously around me. Then they handed me a clear plastic trash bag full of my personal effects and two hundred bucks gate money and wished me well, dumping me out in the parking lot to figure out what the fuck just happened.
“Get in,” he says, leaning over the bench seat of a shitty brown station wagon that looks like it’s been lifted straight out of a 70’s gangster movie.
“Dad?”
I haven’t seen him in years. He’s traded in his flashy car for a beater, something brown and ugly as fuck, and he’s trundled up in it with his too-long hair pulled back in a messy bun at the back of his neck. I don’t know what to make of that. His business suits are long gone, replaced by a pair of bright yellow fishermen pants, the baggy type that wrap around and tie at the waist. And a brown t-shirt that matches the hue of his car, adorned with what looks like a messy rainbow painted by a five-year-old learning to use fabric paint. The car reeks of pot, and I’m not even close enough to stick my head in yet.
A newly-made hippie, coming to give his criminal son a ride.
Life doesn’t always present us with the best choices. That’s fucking clear. It’s either go back inside or walk home. After all this time imprisoned, the open blue sky seems huge and threatening. So I get in my dad’s car and settle into the awkwardness.
He reaches out a hand and pats my shoulder while I put my seatbelt on. The last thing I need is to get thrown back in jail for the crime of not taking my life seriously.
“You good?”
I want to stare at him, open-mouthed, until he looks ahead, pulling the car away from the prison loading dock. What a question.
“Could be worse, I guess.” It’s a terrible joke. He doesn’t laugh. “I see you’re back in the city.”
“Heard you were back in jail.” He shrugs one shoulder and shifts into drive. “Figured you’d spent enough time there already.”
Shit is complicated with me and my dad. He left town pretty much as soon as the house fire was extinguished and what remnants of ash and bone remained of my dead baby brother were scraped up from the nursery floor and laid to rest. He didn’t take me with him. He checked my mother into a mental hospital and left me with friends. I know why he needed to flee. The cops were breathing down his neck, insisting he was the one who’d set fire to our house to collect the insurance money after his business empire collapsed, inexplicably killing my brother in the process. I never really knew any of that shit until I was older, and to be honest, with the corruption I grew up around, I never really believed he did it. But I do believe he abandoned me, his only surviving son, and never came back. So there’s that.
And yet...there’s some part of me that needs for him to know. That, at the very least, needs to understand why he did this for me, now, after all this time has passed.
“I was in on a murder charge. You know that, right?” My shoulder still aches from the bullet wound and my chest aches from missing Avery fucking constantly. That, and the one hit Joshua Grayson managed to land. “Why would you come here and bail me out?”
For the first time, he looks me in the eye. “Like I said, I think you’ve done enough time in prison. Word was they were going to transfer you to a maximum security prison. Couldn’t have that.” He shifts his eyes back to the parking lot and puts on the turn signal. It feels fucking surreal, riding in a car. It’s the little things, you know?
“I didn’t murder anyone.”
He keeps his eye on traffic and merges onto the freeway.
“All right, Rome.”
All right, Rome. That’s what I get. After six weeks of torture and another several weeks of hell. Cage to cage, and my own father can only manage anall right, Rome. Out of the corner of my eye, I catch his jaw twitching, which makes me look again. His eyebrows are knitted together. He swallows hard. He’s scared as fuck. I don’t know if it’s because he’s scared of being in the car with me, an accused murderer, or because he knows I’m innocent and shit is about to get crazy. Either way, I have to control myself. I can delay being an asshole for a few minutes despite all those old urges coming back again.
“Okay. So, how’d you do it?” I look out the window as the San Francisco blocks roll by. Bubble tea shops. Boutiques. A Chinese restaurant. An underground club. A girl strolls down the sidewalk in front of the sunken street entrance, her purse swinging merrily from her fingers. With her dark hair, she could be Avery. Avery from before, I mean. I bet Avery doesn’t walk like that anymore, all happy and carefree. Iknowshe doesn’t walk like that anymore.
I have to swallow a lump in my throat.
“Drove,” my dad says.
I let out a half-laugh. “I mean the bail. Did you borrow money from your wife?”
He manages to look even more uncomfortable while still keeping his eyes locked on the road. “I used family money.”
My stomach sinks. There is no family money. Not anymore. Not since the Capulets ruined us. “What are you talking about?”
