“Well, I was hoping for something sexier than a moral compass, but okay. I like you for her,” he said, clinking his beer against mine. “But I smell an iota of bullshit and . . .”
“And I leave the Camelot.”
“Glad we understand each other,” he said.
The waitress came back with our pizza and set it down on the stand between us. My stomach growled, but something else Eben had said bothered me. He took a plate, doled out a slice, and handed it to me.
“Dude, do I really fling my hair?”
Three beers and four slices later, I left Leaning Tower buzzing with something that felt like good cheer. The Chrysler was safe on a side street for the night, and I walked the ten blocks home, trying to stuff down thoughts of Wren and Caleb. Together. Somewhere warm. You told her to go, idiot.
So much for good cheer.
My house was dark, but I made no attempt to walk in quietly. Dad and Tiff were most likely out at some function, playing the part of the power sales couple. I went to the fridge, determined to reignite my buzz, and reached for a can of whatever beer my father chose to stock. I popped the lid, walked over to the great room, and screamed like a second grader when I saw a shadowy figure sitting on the sectional.
“Pop, what the hell?”
His throaty “Gotcha” cackle made me smile in spite of my heart, which was ready to tear out of my chest. “That was a good one.”
“Why are you sitting in the dark?”
“Eh, don’t know. I’ve been sitting here awhile. It’s peaceful. Tiff’s out at a Black Friday blowout sale with her friends. Where’ve you been?”
“I got a job. At the Camelot,” I said.
“Really? Why?” he asked, tipping his nightly glass of Bushmills to his lips. I sat down on the opposite end of the sofa.
“Don’t know. Seemed like a good thing to do. A way to keep busy,” I answered.
“Guess it’s better than pounding those drums.”
“Yeah, guess so.”
“Your mom called.”
I swallowed, hard, the cold beer burning the back of my throat. The taste of grease and cheese snaked its way up, not as good the second time around. Pop and Tiff had been out when I got in the night before and were still sleeping when I’d left in the morning. We hadn’t discussed Thanksgiving at all.
“Why did you hightail it out of there before dessert?”
I shrugged. “Watching my figure.”
Pop took another sip of Bushmills. “Your mother told me about the lacrosse thing. Grayson, if it bothers you so much, there’s got to be some league you could play in.”
“Pop, it doesn’t bother me,” I said, not wanting to get into a conversation about how I missed St. Gabe’s, which would just set him off into stories from his glory days. Today had been a good day, a day I’d forgotten about all that other crap.
“Then why’d you leave? You know how much this stuff upsets your mother. You have to take one for the team now and again.”
“What team? I’m definitely not an Easton.”
He swirled the whiskey in his glass. “Grayson, you know, if the tables were turned and you agreed to live with her, there’d be no way I’d put up with your bullshit. They are your family. It’s about time you came ’round to it.”
The day my mother left wasn’t monumental. My parents’ divorce was sickeningly amicable. That’s the word I heard them use when talking to friends. I remember looking it up. Peaceful. And on the surface, it was true. There were no shouting matches. No glasses thrown across the room. No heated debates over who got what. They simply woke up one day, decided they didn’t like the life they were living, and said, “Okay, done with this . . . next.” But the one thing they couldn’t split down the middle was me.
My mother had wanted me to live in Connecticut with her and Laird. This was before I figured out they’d probably been together before she broke up with Pop. I was in sixth grade and didn’t want to leave my friends. That was natural, she’d said, but I’d make new friends. Have better opportunities. A whole new world. And a dog.
I’d been groomed by Pop to go to St. Gabe’s. The silver and crimson Crusaders. Sat and froze my butt off during every Turkey Day game with him telling me, “That’ll be you someday, kid.” And even though I had no interest in football, the way he took such pride in it, the way he talked about the good old days, made St. Gabe’s sound like the only place for me.
But the dog . . . the dog was a tipping point. My mother had given me an out clause: If I completely hated it, I could come back and live with Pop. I would have weekends and holidays in Bayonne and summer vacations wherever he chose to take me. It would all work out great, she assured me. And I had decided as much. It was after school, on a Friday at dusk, when I’d padded down the stairs to tell him I’d give the Connecticut thing a try.
He’d stood with his back to me by our sliding doors to the deck. We had this thing about scaring each other, and I was stoked, because damn, this was a good one. He’d been so deep in thought, he hadn’t even heard me walk across the living room floor. I was about parallel to him, ready to pounce, when I noticed he was crying. Not sobs, just quiet, wet streams on his face. He was holding his glass of Bushmills, swirling the ice in the glass. And in that instant, even at eleven, I knew that if I left, this was what his life would become. When he saw me, he staggered back and dropped the glass of whiskey. The moment became about mops and blotting and vacuuming the shards, and it all took a good ten minutes to clean up.
We’d had a frozen Red Baron pepperoni pizza that night, and I’d told him I wanted to stay with him.
My mother already had Mr. Motherfucking Home Wrecker and a wedding date and a house in Connecticut. Pop had me, Bushmills, and frozen pizza. Maybe it all would have gone down the same if I chose to live with my mother. Maybe Pop would have found Tiff, and his real-estate business would still have boomed. But maybe it wouldn’t have.
“Screw them,” I said, standing up. Sick of the darkness, the beer, and the depressing direction this conversation had taken, I clicked on the lamp and squinted in pain. My father put his hand over his eyes.
“Hey, don’t talk that way about your mother,” he said.
“Why? If she cared so much about keeping the family together, why’d she go create a new one?”
My father made an attempt to stand up, but he kept sliding down, losing his footing. He slammed down his drink on the end table; a splash of whiskey came up over the side.
“I hate this effing couch; my ass keeps slipping!” he yelled. A beat passed where neither of us said anything, just stared until we both cracked up. I reached out, gave him a hand, and pulled him to standing. He squeezed my shoulder.
“They are your family, Grayson. Even Laird.”
“Whatever.”
“Don’t whatever me. I won’t be here forever.”
“That’s the whiskey talking. Stop.”
“Maybe. But promise you’ll make an effort at Christmas.”
“Yeah, sure,” I lied.
NINE
WREN
“SO TELL ME AGAIN, WHAT WAS WRONG WITH Caleb?” Maddie asked, handing me another piece of tape.
In an attempt to build some community-service hours, I’d joined the Sacred Heart Spirit Club. The club must have been a holdover from the century when most Sacred Heart students got married right after graduation. The bylaws were an old-fashioned decree about learning how to beautify the world at large, beginning at home. I was pretty sure that hanging glitter stars and snowflake garlands along the hallways after school wouldn’t impact the world at large, but if it counted as community service, then I was determined to beautify. Mads was along for moral support.