Page 44 of String Boys

The smile that said his father loved him.

Seth’s breath caught.

There was something important going on here.

“I’m not asking you to choose,” Dad said again, softly. “There’s iPhones and texting and emails and Skype. There’s me going down to visit you and bringing Kelly with me. There’s you coming home for holidays and you and Kelly having time to yourselves. I love you, Seth. If Kelly’s the person you want, I don’t want to take him away from you. But I want you to have the world too. Is that so bad? This is a way for you to have the world at your feet, son. If you want to take Kelly on that ride with you, I’m fine with that. I’ll help.” He swallowed, his eyes growing red-rimmed. “I’d be proud to help you become the man you’re growing into. Every minute you let me be your dad is a blessing I don’t deserve. So think about it right now, and ask yourself. Can you do it with my help? If you know you’re not leaving him for good? If you know you have support—at least my support—here at home? Is that something you think you can do?”

Seth stared at his father, his mouth open, trying to find something,anythingto say.

What came out was stupid and obvious and painful.

“How did you know?”

Seth’s dad let out a strangled half laugh and gestured to the plain brown curtains that came with the apartment and mostly sat there and gathered dust unless he or his dad remembered the vacuum attachment on odd cleaning days. They were open about two inches, because the pulley was broken and blocked, and they never seemed to shut on their own.

“Do you guys think you’re invisible? Like, youtriedto pull the curtains so I can’t see what you’re doing?”

Seth stared at the gap in the curtains in horror. “Uh… uh… I mean… uh….”

His father laughed softly. “You were young. And in love. I’m right? In love?”

Seth swallowed and nodded. “You saw the right thing if you saw that,” he said.

His father’s smile… gah! Seth would remember it forever. “Well, it was obvious, even if I didn’t get the X-rated version,” he said. “You two—the way you look at each other.” He grinned then, like he was inviting Seth in on a joke. “It was so sweet, I totally needed insulin. You guys are like buttercream frosting. It’s gross.”

Seth laughed, embarrassed, and sank down on the arm of the couch, relief pulsing out his body.

“So gross,” he agreed, remembering when Matty had used that word, and it wasn’t funny at all. But this was his father, and his father had just given him… well, everything.

His father had told him it was okay.

That he was loved.

And that his father loved Kelly too.

“What if…?” Seth swallowed, and listened for the sound of Kelly’s footsteps up the stairs.Shouldn’t he be back by now?“What if Kelly and I… I mean, what if we don’t make it?”

His dad stood and ventured toward him, arms out a little. Seth nodded, and Craig Arnold stepped into his space and held him, tight, like he had when Seth had been a little kid and his father had been safety and kindness and all the things they’d lost but found again.

“I can’t say it’ll last for sure,” Dad whispered. “But I can do what I can to help you guys, okay? I know Kelly’s been nagging you to do this too. Imagine how badly he wants an opportunity like this. He loves art more than anything, Seth. Except you. You’ll hurt him if you don’t take this chance. He knows it. I know it. Please. Sleep on it. Talk to him when he gets back….”

They both pulled apart.

“Shouldn’t he be back already?”

Seth nodded, and worry slammed down on him like a jackhammer. “Want to walk to the store? We can just sort of… make sure he’s okay.”

Dad nodded, and they both grabbed their phones and keys and went off into the night.

They walked quickly, avoiding the vacant field for the same reasons Seth and Kelly avoided it in the daytime. Yuck! By the time they’d gotten to the gas station, they were jogging.

Seth saw it first—a bag full of sodas, lying by one of the gas pumps. There was a quart of ice cream in it, vanilla, lying on its side and melting onto the pavement, and a two-liter plastic bottle of root beer rolling fitfully nearby.

And a bag of ice, halfway to water, on the pavement right next to the pump.

“Oh God,” Seth whispered. “Kelly. Dad?”

Dad already had his phone out and was calling Kelly’s parents. Seth ran into the gas station, where a grizzled guy with a lot of tattoos was looking outside in alarm.