Page 98 of The Sun
Suddenly, it was more than real. “We’re really gonna do it?” I asked.
“Yes.” She twisted in my hold and pressed her lips to mine. “Two months?”
“Something like that.”
It was exactly fifty-five days until her birthday, fifty-six until graduation, but who was counting?
Sometimes the thought of her running off on her parents made me feel guilty. Actually, ninety-nine percent of the time it made me feel shitty. And that’s why I had planned to talk to Sunny’s dad on her birthday.
My brothers and I had just started a lawn care business, and while it wasn’t much, the fifty bucks we made from each yard added up. And it wasn’t even close to illegal. I wanted to tell him I’d accepted a more than generous scholarship to Alabama where they had on-campus housing for married students.
I needed to make him understand I wasn’t going to fuck this up. Then I’d ask him for Sunny’s hand, whether we tied the knot in two months or two years didn’t matter to me if he gave us his blessings.
If he didn’t. . . I’d at least have a clear conscious.
Sunny went to kiss me but froze halfway to my lips. Her face crumpled, her cheeks went pink and then red, and I kept my eyes aimed right at her, terrified to turn around.
“Daddy!” Sunny grabbed my hand, and I spun around to meet Mr. Lower’s weathered face full of silent fury.
His gaze drifted from her to me then back.
“Mr. Lower, sir—”
He held up his hand. That one motion must have possessed magical forces because it shoved the words right back down my throat.
“Sunny.” He pulled his keys from his pocket and dangled them from his fingers. “The car’s on level 2 of the deck. By the elevator.”
“Daddy!” She clung to my arm, her nails digging into my skin.
“Young lady.” One of his brows lifted. “Go to the car. Now.”
I rubbed my hand over hers. “You better go,” I whispered.
She kissed my cheek before snatching the keys and storming through the men’s section, and I think that made Mr. Lower even more perturbed. She had listened to me and not him. I could see his heartbeat throbbing in his temples, and I could feel mine pulsing throughout my body.
“Elias, I asked you to—”
“I should probably tell you I’m sorry,” I said, not wanting to listen to him tell me how I wasn’t good enough. “But I love her. More than anything else in this world, so I’m really not sorry about anything but your inability to see that.”
“I’m sure you love her.” He dropped his chin on an inhale. “But love isn’t what people get by on in this world.”
Tension wound through me until every muscle felt tight, locked and loaded. “Bullshit!” I clenched my jaw. “It’s theonlything people get by on.”
I could have stood there and argued with Mr. Lower all day, but it would have only left me going in circles, so I turned my back to him and walked off.
Sometimes adults get so damn blinded by bills and work and whose house was bigger that it makes it impossible for them to see that nothing matters the way love does. Maybe I was only aware of that because I had grown up with clothes from the secondhand store; backpacks and bikes people had donated to us; an aunt who pretended to care just for a check. Every damn thing I had ever owned was charity, even my short time at the Lower’s house came out of pity. But Sunny, her love had never been charity. It was real and pure, and it was the one thing in my life I could say was truly mine.
I could have all the money in the world, but if I didn’t have her, my life would be meaningless. And I couldn’t make him understand that.
Honestly, I didn’t need to.
35
Sunny
The drive home from Daphne was silent. Daddy turned the radio off, and he sat with one hand on the wheel and the other propped against the door to massage his temple. I thought, at that moment, that I hated him. And I felt guilty because daughters shouldn’t hate their fathers, but fathers also should know when they’re breaking their daughter’s heart.
We pulled up beside the house, and I opened the door before the car had come to a complete stop.
