Page 75 of Never Forever
“Whatever lets you sleep at night, princess.”
“Don’t…” I stopped, closed my eyes and wished I could suck the word back into my mouth.
“What?” he asked. Out of the corner of my eye I could see him turn to look at me.
“Nothing.”
“Call you princess?”
“Call me whatever you want, Matt. Just get me back to my hotel.”
He turned the heat down but kept his mouth shut. “Your mom and Gran, that’s what…” His phone rang and he stopped at a stop sign to answer it.
“Hey? Everything all right?...Really? No…No. I’m serious. Don’t go up there… I’ll be there in like two seconds. Just stay inside.”
He put the phone down and hung his head for a second.
“What’s going on?”
“It’s my dad. There’s a cat situation at the house.”
“One of the strays?”
“You remember?” he asked, his eyes on me and what felt like the heater right on my skin.
“Your dad and the strays are hard to forget,” I said like it was nothing. “Do you need to go over there?”
“I’ll go after I drop you.”
I had no love in my heart for Matt Sullivan. But Patrick Sullivan was a world-class fellow who had the terrible misfortune of having an asshole as a son.
“Matt, it’s your dad. We can go there now,” I said. “You told me to stay away from him and I did, but if you’re worried about him we should go.”
“You sure?” he asked, unable to hide his relief. “He thinks there are kittens in the rafters of the garage. I’m scared he’s going to get on a ladder.”
“Go,” I said, and Matt turned right instead of left.
Nothing in town was more than a fifteen-minute drive away and so we pulled up to the old Sullivan cottage in no time. Even in the rain it looked the way it did in high school when I spent every afternoon here after school when Patrick was doing the afternoon ferry. When Patrick finally accepted the inevitability of me and Matt, he’d started inviting me to Sunday dinners.
Those Sunday dinners were some of the happiest moments of my life.
It had gutted me not being able to talk to Patrick since being back. But Matt had asked me to stay away and I got it. It wasn’t lost on me that more than one heart had been broken the night Matt dumped me.
I’d seen Patrick in town, but I always pretended not to and I walked away before he could notice me or come over for one of his chats and legendary hugs. But seeing him the first time had been a shock. It looked like he’d aged more than the ten years since I’d known him. Enough that I worried about him, not that I could do anything about that worry.
Matt killed the lights and turned to me. “You want to stay in the truck?” he asked.
I already had the door open. If I was being given permission to see Patrick again, I was going to take it.
We ran through the rain again, but Matt didn’t go to the front door, he ran along the side to the garage and I followed, my hands uselessly over my head.
The garage door was open, the mellow light from one light bulb falling over Patrick as he stood with his hands on his hips looking up at the rafters. He wore athletic shorts and a baggy teeshirt. New Balance shoes and his white socks pulled up high on his wide calves.
My heart squeezed at the sight of him. Familiar and sturdy. The kind of dad a dad-less girl could only dream of.
“Dad!” Matt said.
“Matt!” Patrick said, hugging his son even though they probably saw each other every day. It was one thing I always loved about Patrick, the way he loved his son.