Page 113 of Rule 3: Never Fake Marry the Coach's Son
Pappa isn’t one to get emotional, and this probably counts as a speech or something that involves words like “love” and “feelings,” the kind that other fathers sometimes tell their pretend sons in movies.
“He wasn’t serious,” Pappa says. “He’s nice, I guess.”
“He loved you,” I say.
I squeeze my eyes together and pinch my forehead against the coming migraine, as if my head is wailing.
“Loves you,” I correct myself, because Dmitri might not be in the country, but he isn’t dead or anything.
“He’s an f-boy,” Pappa says. “That’s what they call them.”
He grins, as if proud of knowing young person lingo or something.
“I’ll get you a beer,” Pappa says. “Maybe something good is on TV.”
I nod slowly.
This feels wrong.
This wasn’t supposed to happen.
People are forgetting about Dmitri so easily, just like he worried.
“There’s no solution, Oskar. You did what you could do.”
I frown.
“There’s always a way.”
“He’s a Russian citizen. He has to go back. He doesn’t have citizenship of other countries.”
“I know that. I wanted to give him US citizenship.”
“It was always going to be a long shot after what his agent did.”
Pappa opens the beer bottle and hands it to me. The click goes off in my mind.
“I-I have to go, Pappa.”
Pappa frowns. “It’s over, Oskar. You want one final kiss from him or something? His plane leaves tonight.”
“I know.” I rise, my heart beating.
It occurs to me, that I might make an absolute fool of myself. I don’t know that Dmitri wants this. That he really wants me.
The old me wouldn’t have tried.
All those years I was madly in love with Dmitri I never once told him. I never once imagined that he could want me in that way. I always assumed that he would be a painful crush, and never fought for us.
I never thought that maybe he would be willing for more, that maybe there was a reason he always liked hanging out with me, or that he would fall asleep snuggling me after long days at hockey practice.
I never thought to have the conversation with him: maybe we could be more.
Because God, what if he’d been dating far earlier? What if we could have shown US immigration that? What if none of the bad articles about us had ever appeared?
I can’t change the past, but perhaps I don’t need to settle for a future I don’t want, that fills me with despair.
I’m not the same person anymore that I once was.
