Page 21 of Ecstasy
“My name is cleared, too,” I tell my dad. “You know how Rihanna is.” I swallow hard, sitting up straighter in my seat as I stare at the grey police building in front of me. “Was,”I amend, my voice low.
My dad is quiet on the line and for a second I wonder if we got disconnected. I pull my phone away from my ear, glance at the screen. Nope. He’s still there.
“Dad?” I hate the way it comes out. Like I want him to be here or some shit. I don’t want that. I haven’t wanted my dad to be there for me since I was fifteen and everything went to shit.
Before that, I dealt with the fighting. My mother flinging accusations his way of cheating and being an asshole. Calling him a hypocrite, a liar.
He might’ve worked for “the Lord”, but he was God to me. Throwing the football with me every single day at the beach. Taking me to practice, signing me up for camps. Watching the game with me every Sunday during the season.
I took his side every time she started screaming at him.
But then he fucked everything up.
“Yeah, son?” he asks in answer to my plea, his voice heavy. Full of exhaustion. As if he feels the past six years weighing on his shoulders, too.
I close my eyes, swallowing hard.
Rihanna is dead.
I say it out loud for the first time. “Rihanna is dead.”
He sighs. “I know. I’ll need to reach out to her parents later today, after they’ve had time to…” He just trails off. Time to what? Process it? That their twenty-year-old daughter was found dead in a pool after a back-to-school party, right after she started her senior year?
Yeah. Being a pastor sounds like it would blow. Dad’s church is on the coast, a two-hour drive from here, but he knows Rihanna’s family because I’m on the team and Rihanna was the cheerleading captain.
I mean, I’m just barelyon the team, since I’ve got to sit the next few games out for breaking Nate’s nose—he deserved it.
I blow out a breath, thinking of Rihanna.
I didn’t know her well. Like most everyone else, she preferred Eli to me. Girls always thinking they can get him to open up, or some shit.
Eli doesn’t even play fucking football.
“Is Eli okay?” my dad asks me.
I don’t fucking know. Eli doesn’t talk about shit like his feelings.Before the cops had me follow them down here, he was sitting in the wreck of a living room, silent, drinking a glass of myorange juice, as if girls who sucked his dick were found dead in a pool every morning.
My stomach flips, a lump forming in my throat.
“Son…” My dad’s voice sounds strained. “Was Zara there?”
I tense in my seat. Dad doesn’t like Zara. He thinks she’s a bad influence.He’s not wrong, but it’s not really his fucking business. I don’t know why it matters, anyway, except… I do know.
The thing about having a dad overly involved in your sport is that he hears shit he shouldn’t. Things that would be better off kept from your parents.
And he knows I caught Zara sucking Jamal’s dick last week.
I clear my throat. “Yeah, but we weren’t… Not for me,” I lie to him, not wanting to deal with this shit. I don’t know what’s going on with me and Zara anyway. “I don’t want to talk about her.” I start the Jeep, put my seatbelt on with one hand. “How’s Mom?” I ask, changing the subject to one my dad doesn’t want to talk about.
There’s a pause and I realize I’m holding my breath, waiting.
Finally, he just says, “She’s fine.” Which means she’s probably not fine at all. Probably pissed as hell at me, or in a fucking Xanax-induced sleep, which is why she isn’t on the call. I can’t even blame her.
I think my dad and I have just been one big ass disappointment after another to her.
“Great, well, I’ll talk to you later.”
“Wish you were going to be at service this morning,” my dad says quietly.
