I continued to explain. “He wanted us to question the how and why, and I couldn’t have cared less. I wanted to make money” – I shrugged my shoulders – “go to parties, and have fun.”
She continued listening, not moving a muscle.
“And then,” I continued. “I remember like it was yesterday. He looked me in the eye, and he said, ‘Tyler, if you’re going to be a burden on the world, then just die now. We don’t need you.’ ”
She blinked, looking a little shocked. “Wow,” she whispered.
“Yeah.” I nodded. “He shut me up. And he made me open my eyes,” I added, remembering the moment my outlook on life changed.
“I was a nobody,” I explained. “Expendable and useless… I was a loser who took and never gave.”
I glanced up, seeing the waiter approach, and waited for him to take the plates away.
“Would you like coffee?” he asked.
I shook my head, waving him off.
“And so” – I looked at her again after he’d gone – “in my last year of college, I finally started studying. I read books about prisons, poverty, religion, war, gangs, economics, even agriculture,” I explained, “and the following fall I went back to school for my graduate degree, because I wanted to make more than just money. I wanted to make a difference and be remembered.”
Her eyes dropped, and a small, thoughtful smile peeked out as if she understood just what I was talking about.
“I realized that if I wanted to effect change,” I told her, “and be a person others could count on, then I needed to start with my own kid. He was two years old at that point and had seen me…” I shook my head. “Very rarely,” I confessed. “Brynne, his mother, didn’t want to have anything to do with me, though.”
I took in a hard breath, the weight of regret making it hard to talk. “She took the money my father sent every month for Christian’s sake, but I’d burned my bridges with her. She told me that our son had a father who loved him already and I’d only confuse him.”
“And you agreed with her,” Easton ascertained.
I nodded. “I was scared off,” I admitted. “I was working hard to contribute to the rest of the world, but when it came to my kid…” I dropped my eyes, shaking my head at how easily I’d talked myself out of his life back then. “I was too afraid of failing.” I raised my eyes, meeting hers. “So I didn’t even try. I saw her husband with my kid, and I didn’t know how the hell I was going to compete with that. I wanted to be in his life, but I’d still just be the weekend daddy.”
At the time, it had made sense.
I’d wanted him to know me, but what if I didn’t live up to his expectations? He’d already had a full-time father and a life that was familiar.
What if he still hated me?
No, there was time. Later. When he’d grown up enough to understand. Then I could be his father.
“As he grew, I tried to keep in contact with him,” I consoled myself out loud. “I never pressed for any kind of custody, because my traveling was sporadic and unpredictable, and Brynne let Christian go with me from time to time as long as that’s what he wanted,” I explained. “But he started having friends, sports, extracurricular activities, and so I let him have his life. We grew even further apart.”
“But he’s with you now,” she pointed out, sounding hopeful.
But I couldn’t summon her optimism. Under the same roof, I felt more distanced from my son than when he wasn’t there.
“I was supposed to pick him up for dinner one night last June,” I explained, “and he stood me up. He went to a baseball game with his other father.” I accentuated the word “other.”
“I got pissed and went to collect him, and Brynne started yelling at me on the phone to leave them alone,” I went on. “I was just making everyone unhappy, she told me, but he was my son, and I wanted him with me that night.”
I blinked away the burn in my eyes, remembering how fucking sick I’d gotten of her telling me he wasn’t mine.
“And I was pissed, because I had no right to be pissed,” I told Easton. “Brynne was right. I was the outsider. I’d given him up. And I was making everyone unhappy.”
The waiter brought the bill, and I dug my wallet out of my breast pocket and handed him a couple bills.
“Keep the change,” I said, and didn’t watch him leave.
Easton leaned her chin on her hand, her eyes never leaving me.
I picked my napkin off my lap and dropped it on the table.
“When she said they were going to Egypt for a year,” I continued, “and that she was taking Christian, I said no. I told her I wasn’t letting my son leave the country, and we fought. A lot.
“But I was done being a coward. I wanted my son with me.” I didn’t know why, but I wanted Easton to understand that. “I thought it was too late when he was two. I thought it was too late when he was ten. And now that he’s fourteen I’ve finally fucking realized that it’s never too late,” I told her.
I swirled the brown liquid I had yet to drink, knowing that I was still failing with my son and wondering what Easton was thinking of me. Maybe she’d learned too much, and I’d fucked up.
I’d gone to her apartment tonight because, after what I’d seen online, I didn’t want to bring her any unhappiness. I wouldn’t be so arrogant as to think I could make her life better – she seemed to be doing pretty well – but I was reminded that what others let us see is very little. There’s a lot I didn’t know about her, but I did know she was hiding something.
She deserved to smile, and for some reason, I wanted to give her that.
But telling her my own shit might’ve pushed her away.
Women didn’t tend to like weakness and mistakes in men, but when she’d looked so interested, something compelled me to spill everything.
I guess I hadn’t really told anyone all of that before.
She sat there, watching me, and I tipped my drink at her, blowing off the whole thing with a smile and suddenly feeling like I’d made a huge mistake in telling her.
“Anyway,” I joked. “That’s why I want to be in politics.”
ELEVEN
EASTON
What is he doing to me?
I’d sat there, silent nearly the entire time, and listened to the things that had brought him to where he was now. The mistakes of his youth, the teacher who’d pushed him, the son who thought nothing of him, and all the things he didn’t know how to fix.
And all I wanted in the world was for him to keep talking.
I liked how his experiences had shaped him and how he was committed to succeeding. He didn’t give up. When I saw the moments he’d looked away from me or heard the hesitance in his voice during his story, I knew he still felt like that twenty-two-year-old kid down deep.
The midthirties construction mogul who dominated conference rooms and crowds still didn’t think he was a man.
I had no doubt that Christian’s mother had every reason to be angry and not to trust him. She’d been young, too, I was sure, and he’d left her holding the bag.
But I could see the regret and pain Tyler tried to hide on his face at all the lost years with his son.
And he wouldn’t give up again.
A man who endeavored to be better was already superior to the men who claimed to be great.
He took my hand, leading me out of the restaurant, and I threaded my fingers through his, holding back the smile at the chills spreading up my arms.
We stepped out of the restaurant and onto the sidewalk, stopping to take in the sight of the rain pouring down in buckets and yet doing nothing to deter the party in the street.
The heavy drops hit the ground in sheets upon sheets, and I had to squint to make out people’s faces, dancing in the midst of the celebration.
Trumpet music played off to my left, and I looked over, seeing an older man with graying hair swaying to and fro under the canopy as he played “When the Saints Go Marching In.”
Peering back out to the crowd in the streets and lining the sidewalks, their black and gold football jerseys glued to their drenched skin, I realized that it was Monday-night football. The Saints must’ve won.