Page 113 of My Only

Unbothered.

Then he gestured at his Range Rover before walking to it.

“Drive behind me.”

And so… I backed out of the driveway so he could too, with no choice but to do as he said.

Again.

A few miles later, I was pulling into a parking spot at The Green Room, one of the local billiards in Long Island.

I’d only been here twice with my dad.

He had a billiard table in his man cave, so coming here was usually just a way to get out of the house. The Green Room was where he hung with his friends… and had talks with me he didn’t want to have at home, where my mother might be within earshot.

And the second I saw him disappear inside without waiting for me, I knew this wasn’t about pool. It never was at The Green Room.

The scent of liquor and faint nicotine greeted me as I stepped inside.

The Green Room was an old-school billiard hall.

A spot where regulars came to unwind, talk shit, and play the game.

This was where my father brought me to have the birds and the bees conversation when I was thirteen. I got caught by a teacher making out with a girl in my junior high school’s stairwell and they were quick to phone my parents about it.

That talk my dad had with me at The Green Room, wasn’t G-rated at all.

This was also where he brought me when I failed my first major exam years later in high school.

And now?

Here we were again.

At eleven at night.

After he’d just caught me at Vernon’s with Harper.

I opened my mouth to start explaining, to tell him exactly what happened. But before I could get a single word out? He told me…

“Rack up.”

The instruction was short. Firm.

He was giving me a chance to talk.

But it would be on his terms.

So, I pulled the rack toward me.

Arranged the balls.

And the silence?

That shit was kicking my ass.

“Aight, Dad,” I said after a long moment, exhaling sharply once I was done racking up the balls. “Your silence is driving me crazy, for real.”

“Hmph.”

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