Fourth Comings_ A Jessica Darling Novel - Megan McCafferty [86]
“Thanks,” I said, popping off the bottle cap.
“Let’s sit outside while it’s still warm,” he said, grabbing two more beers before leading the way to the patio.
We both settled into the cushions of two side-by-side deck chairs. It was dark, and the only lights came from the neighboring windows, a citronella bucket candle, and the moon. Earlier in the evening there had been a few small motorboats puttering past their dock, but now, at nearly ten P.M., the channel was calm and quiet. Too quiet, in fact. I was no longer used to the total absence of white noise here in the remote out-reaches of suburbia, the blurry background buzz that muted all aural attention-getters. Without it, every sound called for attention. The teak furniture scraping across the cement. The empty beer bottle clanking the glass-topped table. The voice inside my head screaming, “SAY SOMETHING! ANYTHING!”
“It’s so quiet,” I said finally.
“We’ve got the perfect neighbors,” my dad said. “They cleared out after Labor Day.”
“For good?”
“For our good,” he replied, propping his legs up on another chair. “But only until Memorial Day. Most of these condos are summer homes that are empty the rest of the year. That’s why it’s so quiet around here.”
(Empty. Shunyata. Boundless. Open. Quiet…)
“What?” my dad asked.
“What, what?” I replied.
“You’ve got a constipated look on your face.”
“Well, that’s appropriate because I’m dealing with a lot of heavy shit right now,” I said.
My dad laughed, then asked, “Like what?”
“Well, we could start with what happened today,” I said. “Did you really crash your bike on purpose?”
My dad rolled the beer bottle back and forth between his two huge hands. “I didn’t set out to crash my bike when I left at four A.M.,” he said. “But about five hours into my ride—”
“Four A.M.? Five hours?” I asked, shocked.
“Sure,” he said. “I wake up before dawn with nowhere to go. I try to go back to sleep, but I just toss and turn and annoy your mother. I’ve gotten into the habit of just getting up and riding, no matter how early it is….”
I kicked off my flip-flops. “I used to do the same thing when I couldn’t sleep,” I said. “I’d go running in those borderline hours between late-late night and early-early morning.”
My dad nodded. “I remember,” he said. “You sprained your ankle and ruined your running career on one of those runs….”
“No,” I replied, tracing circles in the air with my foot. “My ankle was fine. It was my head that was all messed up. I didn’t like the pressure. In fact…” I trailed off, unsure as to whether my dad was even interested in having this kind of conversation.
“What?” he asked.
“Well, I fantasized about orchestrating an accident, sort of like the one you had today. Only I wanted you to crash into me with your bike.”
“To get attention? I thought you wanted me to leave you alone.”
“I did,” I said, planting both feet back on the cement. “I figured that if I couldn’t run anymore, you would just get off my case. And if you had caused the accident, I’d have an excuse to scream and yell at you, too.”
“I didn’t want your mother screaming at me,” he said, “I just wanted her to see that I still needed her.”
It was so unspeakably depressing that my dad had believed this—even in a temporary state of dehydrated psychosis—but more so because his desperate tactic had totally backfired.
“I’m not the one with the Ivy League degree in psychology,” my dad said. “But it sounds to me like we’re both nutcases.”
“Apparently so.”
And then he held out his beer bottle, and I clinked it with mine. After a few swallows, my dad said, “There’s something else I should mention about today.”
“Okay,” I said, stretching my toes to retrieve my flip-flops and slip them back on my feet, feeling safe that there’s nothing my dad could possibly say that could be stranger than that which had already been said.
“I saw Marcus’s father,” he said. “Mr. Flutie.