Hazel
Kye parks in the driveway, and swings an arm over the back of my seat.
“You sure you don’t want to invite me in? Looks like Daddy’s not home.”
The driveway is empty. Xavier’s Jaguar is with him at his office, and his other car, the Miata, is under a tarp in the garage, as usual.
For a week now, I’ve been taking the bus to school. After everything that’s happened, I guess, Xavier doesn’t feel comfortable spending all that time alone with me in the car.
It had broken my heart when he’d placed cash beside my breakfast plate and said, “I’ve been thinking about it, and maybe it is time you started taking the bus to school, after all.” Then he’d patted my head awkwardly and picked up his briefcase, adding, “You need to leave in about ten minutes to get there on time,” before walking out, the front door closing smoothly behind him.
Since then, I’d been taking the bus for two hours a day between Xavier’s house on Southwest Marine Drive and my high school in North Vancouver, so when Kye had passed me at the bus stop today and offered me a drive home, I’d been happy to accept.
I’d never replied to the text he sent, saying sorry for being a jerk, but it was clear in the car that we were putting all that behind us, Kye chatting cheerfully about school stuff, peppered with the occasional unexpected sexual innuendo, and already it feels like things are somehow right back to where they were a couple of weeks ago.
I shake my head politely as I open the car door. “I’m meeting Christine,” I lie. “I can’t.”
“All right.” He shrugs, looking irritated. “But when you want to fool around, Holland, let me know.”
Xavier would be furious if he saw Kye’s big Jeep Rubicon backing out of the driveway, and me waving to him.
Or then again, maybe he wouldn’t be. If Xavier cared who drove me home from school, he wouldn’t have stopped doing it himself.
I don’t leave my room when I hear Xavier come home, or when I smell dinner wafting up from the kitchen, and he doesn’t call me down, either. For two weeks now, we’ve been politely ignoring each other, never acknowledging that I walked in on him in the shower, or that we made out. Never discussing anything at all. It’s heartbreaking and sad and I don’t know how to fix what’s gone wrong. I just keep telling myself that it’s a better abandonment than being left in Melanie’s apartment, that at least there’s food and electricity here-but is this better? Are these my choices? The lesser of two abandonments?
Around ten o’clock I hear him climb the stairs; his steps familiar as he walks down the hall. He closes his bedroom door and I lie in bed on my back, staring at the ceiling. I usually don’t go to sleep this early but I’m too bored to stay awake.
I slow my breath and listen intently for some sign of Xavier-the shower running, or the creak of floorboards as he paces in his room, but this whole damn house is so soundproof.
I wish I knew what he was doing. Does he read? Does he…touch himself?
The memory of him in the shower floods me with heat, as it has so many times over the past two weeks. Xavier is a fit man. I always knew he was, but I can’t remember the last time I saw him without a shirt on, let alone naked.
And that cock. Oh my God, the length and girth of it. The slight spasm I could see in his hand as he came. I squirm at the memory, the roll of my hips causing a pleasant warmth, not tempered in the slightest by the guilt I also feel. If I didn’t keep fantasizing about him, then none of this would have happened. Things never would have gotten weird.
But right now, feeling lonely and dejected, it’s the old relationship I had with Xavier I want. I want the Xavier who loved me. The Xavier who is my father.
I toss and turn for a while longer, contemplating a scary idea. He’s right next door. Unlike Melanie, who left me to go to New Mexico, Xavier is only a few feet away. He’s right there. And maybe, instead of letting this Cold War between us go on, I need to bite the bullet and face him. Since I have no other option left, why shouldn’t I beg for his love? Certainly it’s better to try when there’s nothing left to lose anyway.
Taking Bunners with me for emotional support, I flip the covers back off my bed and pad out into the hallway to the giant wood door of Xavier’s room. The sound of my bare feet is muted by the wooden floors. ‘It’s the tension of the wood,’ Xavier had explained once. As if that would make sense to anyone who’s not an architect.
“Dad?” I whisper, as I tiptoe into his room, involuntarily invoking memories of the last time I called out his name in this room, seconds before opening the bathroom door…
The room is pitch-black, and I pick my way towards the bed by memory, blinded as my eyes adjust to the dark. “Dad?”