Page 121 of Love Complicated

“I’m telling you, man, toddlers are the death of parents,” Henry remarks after telling me how Ada took a pair of fingernail clippers and tried to cut his chest hair while he was sleeping last night.

I laugh and hand him a beer. “This might help.”

After a few drinks, he levels me a serious look. “Why didn’t you tell me you fucked T back when we were kids.”

Whoops. Let’s be honest. You knew this would come back to haunt me at some point, didn’t you? I did too. “Didn’t think it really mattered. You weren’t together at the time.”

“Still, I thought you would have told me.”

I raise an eyebrow, lifting my own beer to my lips. “Really?”

“No, not really, but still. I had to find out by accident.”

I laugh it off, though Henry finds no humor in it. “How’s your house guest?”

Tatum, Tori’s younger sister, has been sleeping on their couch lately. He stares at me for a half a second and then a look of realization comes over him. “You should rent this house out.”

“Why?”

“Because you and I both know this house is too much for you.” He’s right. It’s something like three-thousand square feet and way fancier than I want to live in. Dad bought this house back when he was still with Madalyn, so naturally, it had to appease her too. All that means is I don’t want to live here.

“I guess I could.”

“You should, and Tatum can rent it from you because she needs to get off my couch.” He downs the remainder of his beer. “I can’t sleep in my own bed because Tori’s constantly letting the baby sleep with us like it’s some kind of common bed house. . . and now I can’t sleep on my couch either because Tatum is there, crying over being knocked up.”

Henry’s got problems, doesn’t he? No wonder he let it go that I slept with his wife first. He certainly has more important things on his mind. Like sleeping.

“Why aren’t you over at Aly’s tonight?” He stands beside me, looking at the photos on the mantel.

For the first time since I’ve been back, I’m finally at my dad’s house, going through his stuff. I avoided it for over a month, but now it’s time. “Austin is over there. Figured I’d stay away until he leaves.”

I’m not sure what I’m going to do with my dad’s house. Maybe renting it out is a good idea. I like living in the trailer. You know me and the simple things in life.

I look up from the football trophies scattered on Dad’s mantel, memories he saved of me and my football career. It’s years of games, wins, from peewee football all the way up to my last college game where he stayed through pouring down rain to see me play. It didn’t matter how I treated him, how angry I was that he sent me to live with my uncle, he still made an effort.

He was there for birthdays, holidays, games, graduations, all of it because I mattered to him, and he needed me to know it. Believe it or not, I never once asked my dad the truth behind what happened between him and my mom, and though I know he had an inclination I knew he wasn’t my biological father, we never discussed it.

Henry laughs, picking up a framed photograph. “Remember this?”

I turn my head toward him, a folded-up piece of paper falling to the ground when he lifts it off the mantel. The photograph is one of me, Aly, Austin, Henry, and Tori at the track. We’re kids, probably nine or ten, sitting on our butts in turn three against the concrete barriers at the track.

I remember that day. It was Aly’s birthday and I’d made a cupcake for her, licked the frosting off and gave it to her. I still have chocolate on my lips in the picture.

It’s not the photo that catches my attention so much as the folded piece of paper on the ground. Bending over, I pick it up and much like the note from the boys earlier today, I gasp at what’s written on it.

I’m not sure my dad ever planned on giving it to me, or maybe it was his plan for me to find it after he was gone.

Dear Ridge,

I never intended on telling you. I didn’t. I never wanted you to know. It wasn’t that I thought you didn’t deserve the truth. It was because I didn’t want to see the truth. In my eyes, you were mine. I chose you. I knew you weren’t my blood, but I never saw it that way. I loved you, unconditionally, selflessly, and more than my own life. I had no idea what it was like to love someone so deeply you’d give your own life to make them happy, until you were born.

I’m sorry I never told you, and I hope you can forgive me for keeping it from you. Maybe not in this life, but someday, when you’re given a choice to be in someone’s life because you want to, not because you have to, you’ll understand. I’m sorry. I am. I learned a hell of a lot more from you than you ever learned from me.

Love, Dad.

Do you see that guy standing near the mantel holding his father’s truth in his hands? He knowswhyhe returned now, and it had nothing to do with the track or even the girl he left behind. It had to do with loving something more than yourself.

If you don’t know what that means, someday you will, just like I did.

Tears sting my eyes, hundreds upon hundreds of memories of a man who might not have told me he loved me often. His love was in his actions, his decisions to always do right by me. I thought for a long time him sending me to live with my uncle had something to do with him not wanting me. I was angry at him for it, but now, I’m. . . grateful for the things he didn’t give me, but made me earn. Made me appreciate. Like this, now, even after he’s gone, his presence in my life is still unmistakably greater than I’ve ever realized.

Had I stayed here, I would have destroyed my relationship with Aly, more than I already had in the car that night, and eventually lost her forever. Leaving brought closure to a time in my life I needed to let go of. I had been so angry with the lies everyone had told me I wasn’t willing to see anything but that.

It wasn’t until I returned home, that I finally saw it for what it was.

Henry grasps my shoulder, shaking me with a gentleness he doesn’t have. It’s like being hugged by a grizzly bear. “Mike was a good man, and you’re a spitting image of him.”

He doesn’t mean in appearances.

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