“She called the fucking cops on me,” I retort. “That’s not nuts that’s—”
“It’s nuts,” he rebuts.
“It’s fucked up.”
“That too,” he says. “But what do you expect when you stick your dick around a fifteen-year-old girl when you’re twenty-two.”
I glare. “I didn’t—”
“I know,” he says. “Like Greg, I believe you, son. But Daisy is their youngest daughter, the last to leave. You’re encroaching on Samantha’s fucking territory.” He checks his watch. “Like I said, you’ll be out of here shortly. She has a few fake statements that’ll hold you in here for another ten minutes.”
“They’re going to book me soon.”
He nods. “They’re backed up in there. I’m sure they’ll want to fingerprint you in a half hour.” I do the math easily. He’s saying I’ll be out of here before they can even fucking charge me. He smiles at me, knowing I understand.
“I resisted arrest—”
“I talked to the officer. They’re dropping it.”
I breathe through my nose, my heart beating quickly. I don’t know why all of a sudden I feel so fucking overwhelmed. I realize that I’m thankful that he’s here. And the sad thing—I don’t want to feel that way. I’d rather stay angry. Why do I have to hate all the good parts of a person? My mom—I think she fucking taught me that. Every time I thought about my brother in a good light, she’d crush that vision, she’d focus on the bad, and so I did too.
I can’t do it anymore.
I rub the back of my neck. “What about Lo?” I ask my father, not willing to dodge this topic.
“What about him?”
“You’re fucking terrible to him,” I say in a deep breath. “What you say to him—it makes me sick. You beat him down, and then he returns to you like a wounded dog. I can’t be around you when you treat him like that.” I’d rather Lo not be around him either, but we’ve tried that way, and look where we are now. Lo loves our father, and he’s going to keep going back, even if it kills him.
My dad absentmindedly unclips and clips his Rolex watch on his wrist. “He’s not you, Ryke. He dropped out of college. He can’t even fill a resume. He shit his life away, and if that means I’m a little tougher on him, fine. But I’m not going to fucking watch him continue to throw his potential down the drain.”
“So tell him like a normal human being!” I scream. “Stop saying things like he shit his life away.”
“This isn’t about Loren. This is about you and me,” he refutes, cutting off that topic. As if there’s no room to even discuss it.
Fuck him. “If you love him, like you say you do, you’d support his sobriety and you’d stop tearing him down every chance you get.”
He glares. “If I didn’t motivate him, he wouldn’t be where he is. That’s love. You’ll understand when you have your own children.”
No fucking way will I ever raise my kids like him. Fuck that.
I stare at my father for a long moment. He will never change. He is so fucking rooted in his beliefs. It’s either I accept him like this or do what I’ve been doing—try to forget he even exists.
He opens the door further for me. “Are you ready to put this bullshit behind us, or do you still want to hold onto the fucking past?”
I’m frozen again. Stuck to the middle of the floor. There’s no nasty retort on my tongue. It’s those words that get to me the most.
Do you still want to hold onto the fucking past?
I’m living back there. Where my dad leaves my mom. Where I’m lying for years and years about who I am. Where I feel lost of an identity to call my own.
But I have all of that now. Fuck, I have more than I ever dreamed of.
I have a girl I love.
I have a brother.
I have a mom who loves me, even if she fucks up.
I have a dad who wants to be there for me…I look up at him. Who is here for me.
And I’m Ryke Meadows. I’m a free-solo climber. I’m a celebrity. I’m a fucking sober coach. I have an identity that’s mine. No one took it from me.
I glance over at my dad again, and I want to see the villain, but I think, maybe, all this time the villain was me. For not moving past this, for not realizing that he’s free to make mistakes too. I don’t know if I’m willing to forgive him right now, but he’s not asking for that.