Page 73 of Forget About Me

He points at Puck. “Lucy trained this guy?”

“Mostly she trained me, to be honest, to give him commands in a way that would be clear to him. She could get him to run into a burning building. Me, not so much.”

“What ever happened with you and her?”

My head snaps up, and I nearly slice off a finger instead of a piece of carrot. “What do you mean?”

He shrugs. “You and Lucy. You were dating her that summer and she went off to college and that was it?”

“Uh.” I put the knife down.How did he know about me and Lucy? And how much did he know?

He dips his chin and gives me a wry smile. “You were sneaking around, but it was pretty obvious. Lucy was giving you ‘cooking lessons’?” He makes air quotes. “I’m not a complete idiot. Even if you don’t tell me anything.”

I’m speechless. I mean, he’s right. But it’s not like he ever asked. He is asking now, though. “Well yeah, we were seeing each other that summer. We didn’t tell anybody because she was a lot younger than me.”

“Three years.”

“Well, at eighteen and twenty-one, it felt like a big difference.”

“Uh-huh.”

His tone is tough to read, but there’s something in his eyes that makes me keep going. “Anyway, we didn’t exactly break up at the end of the summer, but we sort of decided to date other people.” Looking out the kitchen window, I go over what happened that fall. “I regretted it the minute she left for school. I was jealous of all those people, of the guys who were probably lined up outside her dorm room, dying to get in.”

“She was a beautiful girl.”

“She still is.”

“And then you had the accident and moved away.”

I look up, wondering exactly how much of a connection he’s made. “Yeah. But there’s more to it.” Gripping the edge of the counter, I breathe deep and keep going. “I was going crazy with missing her by Thanksgiving. I didn’t want to date other people, and I didn’t want her to either. I wanted to tell our families.” A half laugh stutters out. “I thought nobody knew.”

Meeting my dad’s gaze briefly, I power on. “Tony, however, definitely did not know. He’d warned me away from her, said it was my job to protect her from lecherous assho—uh, jerks. I needed him to know that it wasn’t like that for me. But I did it wrong. Tony lost it. He was screaming at me when we got hit.” I take in a deep breath. Unfortunately, the scent of cooked meat suddenly makes me nauseous, and I have to swallow back rising bile. “I never got to—to… explain… that I…”

“That you loved her?”

What I see in my dad’s eyes drops my jaw and frees my voice. “Yeah. That I loved them all. I lost him before I could tell him. And it was all my fault.”

“What do you mean it was your fault?”

“The accident. If Tony hadn’t been yelling at me, he could’ve braked in time.”

He shakes his head once, sharply. “Not from the police reports I read. Nobody anywhere in that intersection could’ve avoided that guy.”

“But if?—?”

His hand stops my words. “Listen. A thousand things could’ve happened, things you could’ve done different, that might have made things turn out differently. I know that kind of logic. I went through that with your mother.”

“What do you mean? She had cancer.”

“Yeah.” His hands dive into his armpits and his eyes fall to the floor. “But if I’d made her go to the doctor when she was eating Tums like they were candy and complaining about pain in her belly?” His jaw twitches. “I’ll never know if it would’ve made a difference. So I get it.

“Don’t be like me. Don’t spend half your life trying to punish yourself for one mistake—a mistake that probably didn’t make a difference, anyway—while you neglect the person you care about most.” When he looks up, walls that have separated us for as long as I can remember just tumble down. “Live the life you’ve been granted. Not the one you wish you had.”

We just stare at each other for a while. My burning throat and eyes slowly relax, and I release the breath I’ve been holding. “Okay.”

The silence between us is easy by the time the buzzer sounds on the stove. My dad opens the oven and checks the chicken before pulling it out. He fills plates and hands one to me.

“Let’s eat.”

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