“She was just here for the summer before heading back to Nashville. It was never meant to be anything serious. Not that — okay, that’s enough, that’s all you’re getting from me on it,” says my dad, pointing a finger at me. “No smirking.”
It’s so rare I ever get to hear about my parents’ pre — Jack and Ethan days that I can’t help myself. “You scoundrel.”
My dad shakes his head. “I fell in love with your mom within a minute of meeting her. Nothing in the world was gonna stop it.”
Then all at once he gets misty-eyed the way he does sometimes when he talks about Mom. This time, I don’t feel the usual rush of secondhand embarrassment. This, maybe, is the real anchor, the one that’s always been there — knowing I have parents who love each other so much it was never a matter of if, but always a matter of when.
“But you pissed off — Ronnie, was it?”
My dad presses his lips into an exasperated line. “Yeah. I got a few angry phone calls. She, uh — she was working at the deli that summer. Trying to learn the ropes because she wanted to open her own place. That’s how we met. We hadn’t quite called it off when she went back to school in Nashville, so things were a little … tangled in that regard.”
My dad’s eyes aren’t fully with me when he says it, so I know there must be more to the story than that — but whatever it is, he doesn’t offer it up.
“So rather than working it out, you just waited until your kids were old enough to duke it out on Twitter instead?” I ask.
“Hardly,” says my dad. “That’s why I didn’t want you on it at all. That whole Grandma’s Special stunt at Big League Burger had Ronnie written all over it, and if I’d had my way, we would have just ignored it altogether.”
I feel a pang of remorse. “Well.”
My dad nudges his shoulder into mine. “But then it got half the city buying our sandwiches. I’m not going to lie — we were in a tight spot a few months ago. All this Twitter insanity … it’s made a huge difference to our bottom line.”
For a moment I almost pretend this is a surprise to me, but we both know I’m way too invested in the deli and its goings-on not to know we were in the red. I nod quietly, and my dad cuts his gaze to his lap, obviously not expecting it. I can feel the slight puncture to his pride so immediately that it feels like my own.
“So all this was thanks to your spurned college ex, huh?” I ask, to take some weight off of the silence.
“No. All this was thanks to my very clever son, who is nothing if not loyal to this family. And would probably make an excellent social media manager one day, if he wanted to be.”
I open my mouth, but it’s suddenly drier than it was after trying to eat the stale rye loaves my mom used to make our lunch sandwiches from when we were kids. But I can’t chicken out now. It’s my opening. I know it’s not now or never, but it’s now or some other less appropriate moment when I don’t have my dad’s full attention.
“I know this whole Weazel thing kind of blew up in my face, but — I think that’s what I want to do. Develop apps, I mean.”
My dad considers this. “I really didn’t have any idea you were even into that,” he says, leaning forward and propping his elbows on his knees.
I pick at a loose seam on my jeans. Years and years of work — of teaching myself to code, of stumbling through online tutorials, of watching the weird things I’ve envisioned come to life on screens — and now that the moment has come to justify all of it, to explain how much it means to me, I’m at a complete and utter loss for how to do it.
“I’m — it’s something I think … I could be good at,” I say.
The words aren’t right, maybe, but the understanding must be. My dad breathes out a sigh that is just as much in resignation as it is pride.
“I believe you, if those screenshots your vice principal sent me are any indication.” There’s a subtle edge in his voice to let me know I’m nowhere near off the hook for that, but it doesn’t do anything to dampen my relief. “I just wish you’d told us.”
It’s somehow easier and harder to say than anything I have in my whole life, coming out of me too quickly for me to overthink it: “I didn’t want to let you down.”
He puts a hand on my knee. “Of course I’m disappointed you don’t want to stick around here. But only because I don’t think I’ll ever find anyone half as good as you to run this place,” he says. “I’d be much more disappointed if you didn’t go out in the world and do something you loved because you wanted to make me happy.”
I clench and unclench my fingers. “I don’t want to — get away, or anything. I want to be here.” I don’t understand just how much I mean it until I’m saying it. There are all kinds of lives I’ve envisioned for myself beyond the corner office of the deli, but none of them have ever been too far from home — from this city that raised me, from the block that knows me better than I know myself. “I just … want it to be on my terms.”
My dad nods, and it’s an unfamiliar kind of nod. There’s a respect in it beyond the respect of father-and-son; it feels for the first time like he’s looking at me as more than that. As someone who is less of a kid and more of a peer.
“Does this mean the Twitter war is over?”
My dad and I both snap our heads up to Grandma Belly, who is leaning against the very much open door of her bedroom and peering at us critically through the thick lenses of her glasses. We both open our mouths at the same time — me to ask how the heck she knows about the Twitter war I thought I’d gone to great lengths to hide from her, and my dad clearly to ask why she’s up when she should be resting — but she raises her hand to silence us both.
“I’m fine,” she says to my dad. Then she turns to me. “And as for you — I’m old, not dead. I’ve been following this saga since the beginning. Have you and that Patricia girl made out yet or what?”
I somehow manage to choke on oxygen. I lean over to my dad mid-cough, expecting him to say something to stop her, but he’s gone redder than I am and already leapt to his feet.
“Let’s, uh, get you back into bed, Mom.”
“That girl is a hoot and a half. You two got me through an entire two months of waiting for new episodes on my favorite soaps,” says Grandma Belly, with a wink. “You tell her she’s welcome to let that sassy mom of hers copy my recipes any day of the week.”
I wait until she’s safely in her room with her back turned to bury my smirk into the palms of my hands.
Jack
“So.”
“So,” I echo.
We’re walking down the street, just me and Pepper, both of us armed with aluminum foil — wrapped grilled cheeses, plastic cups full of lemonade, and a giant Kitchen Sink Macaroon to split. It was easy enough to be around her for the two or so minutes when my mom was setting us up with the food, insisting on Pepper taking a lunch break, but now that we’re alone, every single one of the wits I used to have has left me.
“I’m sorry,” we both blurt at the same time. We pause, momentarily stricken, and then laugh — hers breathy, and mine an accidental cackle, loud enough people move an extra step out of our way when they pass.
“What are you sorry about?” I demand. “You didn’t do anything.”
“I–I don’t even know, really. I feel like I kind of did. I’m — sorry for thinking you were Landon, first of all.” She takes a long sip of her lemonade, her face scrunching like she’s trying to wash the taste of that thought out of her mouth. “And sorry for — well — thinking the worst of you, a few times, when I didn’t have the full story.”