21. Nate

TWENTY-ONE

NATE

W ith the reception in full swing, everyone hit the dance floor, and Tabby lasted about twenty minutes before she required a chair. We sat and chatted with a rotating roster of people, Dylan and Gen, Jude and Liam, all the kids wanting to show us what they were coloring at the kids table set up with lots of crayons and paper.

But eventually, everyone faded away, and we needed a refill on our drinks. At the bar, I watched Tabby from across the room, unable to keep the smile from my face. I knew she didn’t like the dress she wore, but I thought the ruffles were cute. Plus, it showed off her belly and hit her mid-thigh. Easier for me to sneak my hand up her skirt during dinner. Each time, she smacked my arm, shooting me her sternest eyebrow arch.

As if that would dissuade me.

She was so tired I doubted we had much more than an hour left before I would take her home. And maybe, possibly, hopefully, wear her thighs as earmuffs.

After receiving my order of ginger ale for me and sparkling water for Tabby, I turned to find my dad in line right behind me.

We’d barely spoken all night, one single short conversation with Summer and my half-siblings, Addy and Carter, about their summer plans. The kids appeared suitably bored for young teenagers, and Summer tried to get my dad to say a few more words besides “Yes” and “No” and “That’s good.”

Now, we stood a mere two feet apart, him appraising me with the same gray-blue eyes as mine.

“Hey,” I murmured, stepping to the side. The same awkward tension filled my gut. The same anxiety I’d always felt, waiting for him to acknowledge me. Pick me.

I motioned to my table with our drinks. “I gotta get back.”

“Is she doing okay?”

I froze.

My father was asking me a question? About Tabitha?

Is she doing okay?

I nodded. “Yeah. She’s okay.”

“Good.” He cleared his throat, head bobbing. “That’s good.”

We stood silent again. His hands in his pockets. Mine still holding these fucking drinks.

Why couldn’t we ever have a normal goddamn conversation?

I doubted he knew how to have one. He didn’t know enough about me to say more than a few stilted words.

When I tried to move around him again, he cut me off. “I, uh, wanted?—”

“Excuse me.”

Dad and I both turned to another guest, waiting for the bar, and my father gestured for her to go ahead of him then stepped toward me, forcing me to step back so the two of us stood in a quiet corner.

With his focus on the floor, he still didn’t say anything, and I couldn’t keep my temper out of my voice. “What, Dad? What do you want?”

He opened his mouth, a cracked sort of sound releasing instead of any actual words, and I leaned back reflexively.

Was he going to puke?

Maybe that was how it felt for him. Standing here with me.

Like he could vomit.

The ridiculous yet plausible idea pulled a smile out of me, and I found myself laughing derisively up at the ceiling. “Why are you doing this?”

Then my father said the last thing I expected. “I’m sorry.”

I wrenched my gaze to his, though his eyes flitted away almost immediately. “You’re what?”

“I’m sorry,” he repeated, so quietly I almost couldn’t hear him over the music.

Stunned, I had no retort.

“I guess…” He lifted one shoulder. “Everyone has times in their life they look back and…reflect. I’ve been doing a lot of that lately. I want you to know I’m sorry.”

I blinked a few times, still unsure what was happening here. I’d never heard my father apologize. Not to my mother and certainly not to me. He was not a cruel man, simply…cold. Indifferent.

I searched out Tabby, and when I spotted her at the table, her eyes were already on me. She slanted her head in silent question, a knowing arch of her brow. She had her hand on the back of her chair, as if she might get up and come to my rescue at my signal.

I did kind of want to signal her.

And yet, I didn’t.

I also kind of wanted to hear what my father had to say. If anything at all.

Call it masochism. Constantly seeking out my father’s attention, only to be disappointed. Why not do it again?

Dad took a deep breath. “It was hard being the son of an immigrant. We felt a lot of pressure to excel. My father’s trauma…” Dad dragged the tip of his index finger across his upper lip, something he did a lot when in thought. “He had high expectations of us, and I had even higher ones of myself. The man survived Nazi Poland—it’s not like I could ever bring home a bad grade. Sorry for all your troubles, Dad, but I got a C in chemistry. I couldn’t do it.”

I set the drink glasses down, needing to have my hands free to… I didn’t know. Cross them over my chest.

I felt like I needed to do jumping jacks or something. Release this growing strain in my chest. I’d taken off my suit jacket during dinner and loosened my tie, but I was sweating now.

I knew close to nothing about my father’s past. He so rarely spoke. About anything. But especially his childhood.

Dad went on. “My father worked very hard for the life he provided for my brother and me, and I had no other… I didn’t know what else to do besides work hard and provide for you and your sister. That’s…” He rubbed his finger over his lip again, his eyes resting on some place over my shoulder, a place in his mind. “I know it wasn’t enough for you, but it was all I knew how to do, and I’m sorry I wasn’t enough.”

His words felt like a punch in the throat, and I had trouble swallowing past the rock there. I pulled at my collar, the puzzle pieces coming together in my mind, and I didn’t like what I saw.

“You thought you weren’t good enough?” I asked, my voice too high-pitched. “I thought I wasn’t good enough. Not what you wanted or expected.”

My father’s eyes shot toward mine, his brows deeply furrowed, the wrinkles there overpronounced. He looked angry, and my instinctual reaction was fear. Not that he would hit me, but that I would be ignored or pushed aside once again.

“No.” He shook his head. “That’s not true. That was never true.” He took a step toward me. “Nathan, I never, not once, believed that.”

He set his hand on my shoulder, and I horrified myself when my eyes welled up with tears so badly I couldn’t see clearly. I’d stopped crying over my father long ago.

Or so I’d thought.

I couldn’t get any words out, but I didn’t need to, because he kept right on going.

The dam had broken.

“I knew what you wanted and needed. I heard you, but I…I didn’t know how to give that to you, and I was afraid to try and fail, so I didn’t. I know now that was wrong, and you deserved better from me. You and your sister both deserved better from me, and I’m sorry. I’m truly sorry.”

His fingers squeezed the muscle of my shoulder, though he didn’t move to hug me. I couldn’t remember the last time he had, but I didn’t want him to either.

I wouldn’t know how to react, and I didn’t know if I would want to accept it or not. Especially with my mind reeling from his confession.

“I see the man you’ve become,” he said after removing his hand, settling it back in his pocket. “I see how you run your business and how you take care of those around you, and that is all I could have asked of you. To be happy and be a good person.”

I nodded, rubbing my thumb and index fingers along my eyes, grating out a ragged, “Thank you.”

“And I think you’ll be a great dad. A hell of a lot better than I was to you and Evie.”

When I finally lifted my head, meeting his gaze, he offered me an uptick of his lips. His version of a smile. “I’m proud of you, Nathan.”

I cleared my throat, but my voice still sounded like it had been through the garbage disposal as I answered, “Thanks, Dad.”

He leaned away, glancing over his shoulder, clearly wanting an out, so I gave him one. Picking up the drinks I’d ordered, I pointed to Tabby. “I’ve got to get back.”

He nodded, I nodded, and then we parted ways.

From the strangest and most enlightening conversation I’d ever had with my father. One that broke open old scabs and offered some resolution.

“Everything okay?” Tabby asked as soon as I reached her.

“Yeah. No. I don’t know.”

She pulled me right up next to her, ignoring the water I placed in front of her. “Are you going to throw up?”

“No. I don’t know. Maybe.”

“What happened?”

“My dad talked to me. Like, talked .”

“Are you okay?”

I hauled her into my lap, sitting her sideways, her legs draped over mine. She turned to mold her hands to my jaw, her thumbs smoothing over my beard, her fingertips stretching up to the hair at my temples and behind my ears. I closed my eyes, taking a few breaths through my nose, and she pressed her forehead to mine.

And this— this —was what I needed. All I’d ever need.

“I want to be good to you,” I rasped, my emotions still so high I didn’t know how much more I could say without exploding.

“You are. You’re so good to me. You always have been, and it fucking wrecks me to know you’ve felt like you haven’t. As if you bending over backward for me hasn’t been enough.” She gripped my hair at my scalp, urging me to look at her. When I did, her eyes were glassy too. “I don’t know what happened just now, but I suspect you finally learned the truth about your dad.”

I nodded, holding on to her wrists to release her hands from my hair and bring them to my mouth, kissing each of her palms.

She licked her lips, breathing hard. “I understand why you’ve never felt good enough, but I want you to know that I have not ever and will not ever feel that way about you. You’ve been really patient with me, and I know you need words. I know.”

I smiled against her fingertips, enjoying her nervous babbling. Yes, I did need the words, but I also knew she needed time. I felt everything I needed from her. She wouldn’t be here, at my sister’s wedding, if she didn’t love me. She wouldn’t have let me be so demanding and all but kidnap her to live in my house. She wouldn’t have kept coming back to Walt’s year after year if there had not been a spark inside her.

The same one that kept burning inside me, urging me to keep her around, keep cracking the hard shell, fitting her puzzle pieces together.

“I’m trying,” she said, drawing me to her for a kiss, and I knew that too.

That’s why I loved her, I thought.

“That’s why I love you,” I said, not expecting to hear it back, so it didn’t hurt when she responded by pressing her face against my neck, making my skin damp with tears.

After a minute, I sat her up, dabbed at her face with a napkin, and then took her hand in mine. “Come on. Let’s go home.”