Page 110 of The Other Side of Paradise
I jumped when my phone lit up with a call, and I got a knot in my throat at the caller ID lit up across the top of the phone, picking it up shakily from the bed.
I shouldn’t have answered. Not after everything. But… I couldn’t not. I stepped out of the room, moving quickly and quietly, and I swiped to accept, putting the phone to my ear.
“Dad?”
Chapter 28
Stella
I pressed up against the wall outside the room, the phone up to my ear, as Dad’s voice crackled through.
“Hey. Are you okay?”
“Dad, what the hell? You’re supposed to be on the plane.”
“It got delayed. I’m getting some coffee.”
“Jesus Christ, Dad, what’s with all the coffee on this trip? You’re going to give yourself a heart attack.”
He was quiet for a second—I heard the airport terminal busy in the background, moving past him, before he said, “Are you staying with Allison?”
“Huh? Oh, um… no.” I fidgeted with the phone, suddenly feeling small and awkward. “No, Ryan and I booked a room at the airport hotel.”
He sighed, and I heard the creak of a seat from his end. Didn’t sound like he’d even gotten coffee. I guess you could use coffee as a pretext to talk to somebody without coffee even being involved. “Are you going to be all right?”
“Yeah. We’re both adults.Iat least am going to be a lot better off getting a flight back than I would be with… with… dealing with all of that.”
His voice was awkward, strained in a way that made it clear he was overthinking every word. “Are you… coming back soon, or are you spending more time there?”
“Well, I…” I hadn’t even thought about the possibility of just extending my stay. I had a feeling Dad wouldn’t be too thrilled about me using the company card to book a hotel to avoid the family, and I had enough on my own account for a flight but not really to just hang around on the island forever. But then… “I’m—I was planning on coming right back. I mean, Ryan and I are going to fly together. I just… we didn’t want to be on that flight.”
He sighed. “Look, Stella, I owe you an apology,” he said, with a kind of exhaustion in his voice like he’d been struggling to say it. “You… you know, you worked hard to get that internship, by your own merit. I’d always wanted you to grow up dedicated to working hard and going after what you want. I shouldn’t have… you know, gotten in the way of that.”
Oh, god, he sounded like he was trying not to cry.Iwas trying not to cry. I pushed off from the wall, not even thinking about it, just walking to the stairs and focusing on one step after the other while I spoke quietly. “I, um… thank you. I appreciate that.”
“I’ve thought a lot about what you said. You don’t realize how much being a parent is going to humble you until your own kid puts you in your place,” he said with an awkward, wry laugh, as I got down to ground floor and stepped out through the back door into the courtyard, watching as the night deepened in a beautiful amethyst-purple sky. I sank into one of the benches under thick palm leaves as he continued, “Truth is… well, we don’t let it show very often, but your mother and I have been in a difficult patch lately.”
I kicked at the ground. “If you get divorced right now, I think Grandma’s head will explode.”
“We’re not getting divorced,” he said quickly. “We want to make it work. Your mother and I still care about each other, and we want to get past it.”
“That’s what this trip was, then? Mom put it together because she thought it would save the family, and then we blew it up anyway?”
“She felt like she’d been losing Ryan since she quit her job—”
“She didn’tquit her job,Dad, she changed her job. To a great new career.”
“Right. Sorry.” It clearly took everything he had not to argue back, but he kept the comments down. I guess I wanted to make it worse, because I kept going.
“Mom waslosing herbecause she was acting like that about it. Like she wanted to force Ryan to choose between her dream job and her family.”
“You certainly do have a fiery streak. Not one to let up on a topic.”
“You… raised me to be outspoken.”
He laughed quietly. “I guess I wanted to make the vacation work,” he said. “To help make things right between us. So I wouldn’t tolerate anybody trying to skip out on it, and I kept trying to… to make you appreciate your mother for me. Because I hadn’t been doing enough of it, and I wanted to make you make up for it. Which I guess wasn’t very fair.”
“Dad,” I said thickly. “I just… I just want to be my own person, you know?”
