Page 78 of Never Forever

Dad shot me a hard look.

“Yes, well, this time,” Patrick said, spinning his whiskey glass in a little circle.

“What?” Carrie looked at me, then back at Dad. “Wait? There was another time?”

“Dad!” I barked too loudly. “Ask her the question you really want to know.”

Patrick’s eyes twinkled and he leaned forward, his face golden under the light. “Yes, Carrie. I’ve got a question for you. Very serious.”

“What’s that?” she asked, leaning into the light too. The two of them such clowns.

Dad waggled his eyebrows. “Tom Cruise?”

She smirked. “You want to know if he was a good kisser?”

I had to sit on my hands not to reach for her. I had to turn my head away.

Dad blushed bright red. “No!” he said, and then dropped his voice. “Is he?”

“Everyone asks me that. Everyone. All the talk show hosts ask me that. And you know what I do?”

“What?”

“I lie. Every time. I say he’s the world’s best kisser. The best kiss I ever had.”

“Hey now,” Dad said, nodding his head my way. “Matt’s sitting right over there and you two used to get up to a fair amount of kissing.”

It wasn’t even awkward. That was the thing with Dad and Carrie. It was so easy with them. So real. It made me realize all over again, how rare she was.

How rare we’d been.

It made me miss her like a knife to the gut.

“The truth is,” she said. “I don’t remember kissing Tom Cruise. I kind of blacked out. Between the kiss and the stunt it was all just too much for me.”

“I don’t believe it,” Dad said, pouring a little more whiskey in her cup. “Nothing was ever too much for the likes of Carrie Piedmont. Remember when we took first place at the… what was it, Matt?”

God, I wanted to fight these memories. I’d put them aside. Away. Like they’d happened to a different person.

“You remember,” Dad said looking over at me. “That bar where we stopped for dinner after your sectional meet. You remember.”

“We sang together,” I said, my eyes closed. “It was like a talent show thing.”

“We sang!” Dad cried and Carrie started laughing. Soon the two of them were singing that stupid Billy Joel song they sang that night. The one about the guy playing the piano.

I stood up so hard my chair screeched across the old linoleum I’d been planning to replace for two years now. “We should get going. Carrie’s got an early morning.”

“Sure, then,” Dad said, looking at the clock over the stove. “Look at that time. It’s way past my bedtime.”

“It was really good to see you, Patrick” Carrie said, standing up to hug my Dad, kiss his cheek. “Take care of yourself, please.”

“Oh, that’s what I have Matt for. Good night you two,” he said and clapped me on the back. The old man gave me a cheeky little wink and headed for his bedroom. Which was now a suite we’d built off the living room so he had access to a bathroom, the kitchen and his garden without going up and down stairs.

Upstairs it was just my old room, which I kept clean with sheets on the bed for nights I needed to stay over, and Dad’s old bedroom, which had been turned into storage.

Carrie watched him go and turned back to me. There was some suspicion in her eyes and suddenly I didn’t know what to do with my hands.

“When was he sick before?” she asked. Our distraction hadn’t worked, apparently. “And how could you not tell me that?”