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“If it means I get to take my time kissing you, I’m already sold.”
Case drops me off at home late, but not too late. We kiss in the drive and then again at the door before I shoo him away and tell him to text me when he’s home safe. It’s too tempting to run back to his car and beg him to take me with him wherever he goes until the end of time. I manage to collect myself and walk into my own house with some semblance of dignity.
Shockingly, my dad is awake in the living room, alone. He sees me and turns off the TV, getting to his feet. He looks meover, and I can feel my cheeks flaming at his scrutiny, but I refuse to back down. I’m a grown woman, and anyway, he’s never paid attention before. Why start now?
“Hey, Dad. I wasn’t expecting you to still be up. I would have called if I’d known you were waiting.”
He shakes his head. “Nah. You’re fine. I wanted to talk to you without the other two around.” I glimpse the light still on under Jesse’s door, but guess this is enough privacy for my dad’s sake.
Please, God, don’t let this be an afterthought of a sex talk.
“Oh, um, well, if this is about Case—” I start, and my dad straightens like a shot, turning red.
“Uh, no. Sorry.” He coughs. “Not that kind of talk. Case is a good kid. I trust you two to… whatever it is you do. I don’t want to know.”
“Oh. Good,” I say, sinking into a chair at the kitchen table with relief. “What did you want to talk about?”
He doesn’t sit. “I had an interview this morning for a supervisory position at the plant. Day shift. They offered it to me on the spot. I start training in two weeks.”
“What? Dad! That’s incredible! I had no idea you were even looking! That’s huge. Congrats!”
“Yeah, well. Thank you. That’s what they said, too. It was nice to hear. That’s not why I interviewed, though.”
“It’s not?”
My dad finally moves to the table, sitting stiffly. I’m tempted to offer him a glass of water, but I let him work it out. He’s the one who called this meeting, after all.
“You’re incredible, Win. The way you ride… it’s… it doesn’t even make sense, it’s so good. Your grandmother, my mom, she rode like that. Did you know that?”
I shake my head. I know next to nothing about any of mygrandparents. My mom’s parents were never in our lives, and my dad’s parents both died when I was young.
“She grew up on a ranch, similar to the one you work at. She was a natural, and so are you.” He hesitates, reaching for the saltshaker and wrapping his fingers around it. “Listen.” He clears his throat and restarts. “Jesse came to me a few weeks back and gave me a bit of a talking-to.”
“He what?”
My dad looks sheepish. “I deserved every word that came out of his mouth, of course. He told me how you threatened to file for guardianship if he didn’t stay in school. He said you were flying through the rodeo ranks and people were talking about you making a national run and going pro… but you weren’t going to do it because you needed to stay here and take care of us. Is that true?”
I’m dumbfounded and, for a solid minute, can’t find my voice. I had no idea Jesse had put all of that together.
Finally, I say, “The guardianship part is true, but I swear I would have talked to you first. It was mostly a last-ditch effort to get Jesse in line. I was at my wit’s end and—”
“Let me stop you there,” my dad says, holding up a large hand between us. “That’s where I went wrong. You were at your wit’s end trying to get your brother to stay in school. To the point you were going to throw away your future to lock the kid down and force him to do the right thing.”
“It was a gamble, sure, but—”
“I’m the dad,” he cuts me off. I’ve never heard him use this tone before. At least not on me. It’s as though he’s scolding me. Which… what the fuck?
“I tried to ask you to help! I went to you, and you kept telling me boys were boys or whatever! Meanwhile, the school iscallingmyphone and telling me they were going to call the police for truancy. Police, Dad! Which, in case you have forgotten, also means CPS! You think the DCFS would waltz in here and be like, ‘This is fine’? I couldn’t even get you to talk to the school!”
“That doesn’t mean you should throw away your future.”
“You say that like I wasn’t facing an impossible choice! How many times did I have to leave work early because you or Jesse didn’t get Garrett? And let’s not even talk about what happened when I left town for the first timeeverand Garrett walked home alone. How many times did I have to pay late fees on our utility bills because you would forget to pay them that month? How many times have you made dinner or paid for Garrett’s robotics competitions or Jesse’s cell phone? You haven’t!” I slap the table. “So while it’s great for you to act like I’m the martyr, where would this family be without me?”
I’m panting now and feel pretty sure my raised voice has Jesse listening at the door, but I don’t care. “Everyone acts like I chose this. Like I’m sitting here micromanaging your lives on purpose because I love being responsible so much. Well, fuck you. I know that’s disrespectful, but I am who I am becauseyoumade me this way. You chose to make me like this by refusing to take care of shit. I begged you to do something for years, but eventually, it became easier to cut you out of the equation. I didn’t have time to be the parent to you, too!”
My dad is silent for so long, I wonder if he’s going to go to bed. Eventually, he speaks. “Be that as it may. It ends now. I accepted the promotion and will be working daytime hours. You don’t need to be the parent anymore. You can go now.”
I stagger back in my chair as if he’d slapped me across the face. Tears spring to my eyes. “I cango now?”
