Dylan’s wife – who insists I call her Liz, instead of by her full name, which is Elizabeth – is freaking out, trying to get the house in order for her parents’ arrival, while she tries to cook everything all at once. The kitchen smells like burnt toast and the air is heavy with smoke, causing the smoke detectors to go off sporadically.
‘Does she need help?’ I ask Dylan. We’re sitting at the table playing cards, which blows my freaking mind because it’s so normal and makes me uncomfortable, since I’m not used to it. What I’m used to, at least, the last time I was at a family event, was yelling, fighting, hitting, breaking.
Dylan assesses his cards as he takes a gulp of his beer. ‘You can ask her, but she’ll flip out on you.’ He sets two cards face down on the table and gives himself two more from the deck. Dylan looks a lot like me; brown hair, tall, with a medium build, and is probably my future. Well, except the whole teaching thing. I can’t see myself doing that. Honestly, I’m not sure I can picture myself doing this either, sitting at the table while Callie cooks dinner. It seems so fucking rude to make her do it. Plus, Callie doesn’t like to cook very much.
‘Do you need any help?’ I finally ask as Liz rushes back and forth between the stove and a bowl she’s mixing something in. She’s got blonde hair, blue eyes, and is wearing an apron over her jeans and T-shirt, and she doesn’t look very comfortable in the kitchen.
She waves me off, scurrying for a towel when she spills milk on the counter. ‘No. You’re the guest and you should sit back and relax.’
Dylan chuckles under his breath as he rearranges the cards in his hand. ‘Don’t worry. She’s going to give up here in about a half an hour and we’ll end up going out.’
‘So, this is your tradition?’ I examine my cards. I don’t have a very good hand, but we’re not playing for money, just fun. I know why, too. When we were younger, our father would make us play for money. If he won, he’d take all his winnings and if he lost, he’d beat the shit out of us because in his words, ‘we were cheating bastards.’ So really, we’d always lose.
Dylan nods, laying his cards down and I do the same. I think I like Dylan a little bit more when instead of bragging about winning, he says, ‘Yeah, if she’d just let me help, though, it wouldn’t be a problem. I’m an excellent cook.’
As Liz whisks by the table, she whips Dylan in the side with the dish towel she’s carrying. ‘That’s such a lie. You equally suck at cooking, which is why we have at least five takeout places on speed dial.’
‘One for each weekday?’ I joke, gathering the cards.
Liz nods with a serious look on her face and it kind of makes me smile because they have their own thing going here that doesn’t seem at all like my parents. They’re not nasty to each other. They smile. Laugh.
It’s nice, and kind of a relief because it gives me the tiniest ray of hope that I won’t turn out like my father, that I can have this normalcy, this happiness, that I can have a future filled with what I want, and with who I want.
‘You want to go watch the game?’ Dylan asks, nodding at the living room as he picks up his beer and scoots his chair back from the table.
‘Sure.’ I get up and we wander into the living room and settle on the leather couch in front of the flat screen. The wall is covered with photos of the two of them – at their wedding, the beach, on the top of a mountain. It makes me sad because I don’t have any photos where I look happy. Callie and I don’t even have any photos of us on the wall.
‘So, you think you’re ever going to do this?’ Dylan asks after we sit in silence through a couple of plays.
‘Do what?’ I ask, tipping my head back to take a sip of my soda.
He picks at the damp label on the beer bottle. ‘Play professionally …’ He leans forward to set the beer on the coffee table, then turns to face me, leaning against the arm rest. ‘Liz says you’re pretty good.’
I drum my fingers against the side of the soda can, a pucker forming at my brow. ‘When has she seen me play?’
‘She watches your games on the internet.’
‘All of them?’ I’m dumbfounded. She watches me play? Really? Why?
‘Most of them,’ he says. ‘And I’ve watched a few, too. I’d watch more, but I’m working on getting my master’s degree right now, so I don’t have a lot of free time.’ He gives me a pat on the arm. ‘Don’t look so surprised. We care about you, Kayden.’ Suddenly, the mood shifts as he blows out a loud breath. ‘I know it might seem like I don’t, since we didn’t talk for years, but if I had known what was going on in that house … that he’d gotten that bad … that he would actually try …’ He can’t even get the words out and he ends by giving up, raking his fingers through his hair before he says, ‘I wouldn’t have been absent for so long. I shouldn’t have and it’s one of my biggest regrets.’
‘I kind of understand why you did it, though,’ I say, staring at the soda in my hand. ‘I had a hard time just coming here … The whole family thing is strange to me because it’s good, yet it reminds me of how bad things can be. And I don’t mean you. You were never bad. And Tyler, well, he was great until he started doing drugs and turned into a mess. But I mean Mom and Dad.’
Dylan reaches for his beer again. ‘It is hard, isn’t it? It took me forever to figure out how to be in a house with Liz, how to act like a family because I didn’t have a freaking clue. I felt so lost, you know?’
‘And now?’ I wonder. ‘Is it better now …? Because it seems like it is.’
He nods. ‘Now I’m happy.’ He gives me a smile then takes a sip of the beer before he asks, ‘So what about you, Kayden? Are you happy?’
I shrug. ‘Sure. I guess.’
He frowns. ‘You guess?’
I shrug again. ‘Sometimes I am, but I wish I could figure out how to be all the time, you know.’ He gives me a sad look and I explain further. ‘It’s just that I have no idea what I want to do with my life. I mean, football’s great and I’m good at it and enjoy playing it, but I only got into it because of Dad. And that’s the thing. It all …’ I blow out a breath. ‘It all comes back to him. I don’t want to have anything to do with him and every time something is connected to him, I’m not happy … I swear to God, I can sometimes hear his voice in my head when I’m out playing … I just want to be able to play for me …’ I stop talking, unsure why I decided to say that aloud – I haven’t even told Callie about that yet.