Page 77 of Try Me
She seemed shocked, and part of me felt like a traitor to rattle her this way, but growing up, I’d felt like she was my ally and now she felt like a stranger.
“Honey—” She reached for my wrist as I stood, but I tugged it gently away and headed back to the bar. I stayed there, watching her stare out over the lawn, until she stood stiffly and went inside the house.
“Care for a touch of whiskey?” Dad held out the bottle, a tick of his chin indicating the mug of coffee I’d switched to.
“Nah. I’m about to head home.”
He leaned against a nearby post and inspected a cigar he pulled from his breast pocket before lighting it up and puffing on it. The acrid smoke turned my stomach.
“You and John seemed to have a nice time.”
I barked out a laugh. I couldn’t help it. And I definitely needed to stick to coffee.
“No?”
“Wow. Relentless,” I muttered under my breath, then steadied my gaze. “We had a nice time, and he’s a nice guy. I just find it a little funny that you’re so invested in this.”
“You find it funny?” There was a dangerous edge in his voice, but the alcohol tempered its effect on me.
“A little, yeah.”
“Hmm.” He tapped a scrim of ash from the cigar. “You know when I was your age, I would’ve killed to have the opportunities I’ve provided you.”
“There’s a difference between providing opportunities and trying to control someone’s life, Dad.”
“Indeed, and there’s a difference between screwing up on accident and deliberately trying to make some unnecessarily rebellious point.”
I stared at him. “What are you talking about?”
My dad set his cigar in a nearby tray, pulled out his phone, and scrolled through. Then he offered it to me. I rested my mug on my thigh and took the phone with my other hand, fingers stiff, blood cold.
“I got another call from Nomes recently. He thought I should let you know that the certain areas of campus are well equipped with cameras and that you might want to be more careful. A charge for public indecency would be alittleembarrassing. Not only for you, but for your mother and me as well, no?”
I stared down at the grainy image. The right side of my face was pressed against the library’s fire exit. Chet’s fingers were buried deep in my hair, his face just behind mine, teeth clamped on his lower lip. I resisted the urge to wipe at the sweat that had broken out over the back of my neck and waited for my hands to stop shaking before I thrust the phone back at my dad.
“Nomes suggested I wouldn’t like to see the full frame. It made me wonder…are you purposely self-sabotaging here or—”
“Just because you don’t like Chet’s dad doesn’t mean—”
“Yes, it does. It means very much. Father, son, the whole lot. They’re societal black marks. What would it look like for my son to be hanging around with the son of the man I blew the whistle on, the man who bilked millions from innocent investors. It’s more than a little embarrassing, son. It’s foul.”
Foul?I gritted my teeth. “He’s not his father.”
“He’s an opportunist,” Dad snapped. “His father was too—you don’t know the half of it—and what better way to send a fuck-you than by fucking my son?” He clenched his fist, then relaxed it after a deep breath.
“You sound crazy right now, you know that? That’s not what’s happening.” I set my mug down near his smoking cigar. “I’m not doing this. I’m going home.”
“Are you? I wonder if you’ve considered who pays your rent. Your car note? Your tuition? How about your inheritance? Law school? I went along with the change in career plans, though I find it disappointing. But I won’t stand for this kind of behavior. I refuse to be associated with it in any way, shape, or form. Is a”—he lowered his voice—“piece of ass worth giving that up for?”
I knew this moment. I’d seen it in movies. It was the moment where the hero puffed up his chest and defied the threat, told the villain where he could shove it. Triumphed with his pristine sense of values.
But thefuck youdied in my chest because the truth was, he was right in some ways. And it terrified me. Watching Chet’s life get dismantled, imagining mine going the same way. Being cast out by my family, such as it was. The shame felt enormous and lonely.
My dad spared me a look that was almost pitying. “I experimented myself a couple of times. Might even go so far as to call myself bi, too. That’s neither here nor there, of course.” He scratched the stubble at his jaw, not even giving me a breather to take in this revelation. “Try to think of the future rather getting stuck on things and people that are inconsequential and likely harmful.”
I wondered how long he’d known about that video, because I suspected it was longer than he was leading me to believe. I suspected it was his ace in the hole.
The idea made me furious.