Total pages in book: 109
Estimated words: 108862 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 544(@200wpm)___ 435(@250wpm)___ 363(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 108862 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 544(@200wpm)___ 435(@250wpm)___ 363(@300wpm)
My dad.
“Protective to a fault. Fixing shit no one asked him to fix. Did you know even your mother came up to me once at a party—mind you, she’d had a few, had a nice buzz going—and she asked if it’s normal for men to get offended when someone won’t let them fix their kitchen sink? No idea what that was about, but I understood it immediately. No context needed. My damned brother …”
He chuckles again at that.
I’m hearing more laughter from this man during this chat in a hotel lobby than I’ve heard from him my whole life.
He sighs. “Think he confused being needed with being loved.” He shakes his head. “Your dad loved harder than anybody I knew. Didn’t always love smart, though.” That makes him chuckle again. “Once, I got into some financial trouble. Right around the time you were born, actually. And you’d have thought your dad was ready to sell his own house to bail me out. He might as well have. Took out his nest egg for me. Didn’t ask him to. Didn’t want him to.” He pokes at the eggs with his fork and sighs again. “I was so mad at him for doing that, we didn’t speak for two damned months.”
“Family helps family. He was just doing what was right.”
“But I didn’t ask him to.” He shrugs. “Didn’t mean he was a … a bad person. It just … made him my brother, I guess.”
I think about my dad’s car suddenly.
How I failed to get it working.
Failed to bring it back to life.
Fucking failed the way he failed.
“What’s going through your head right now?” asks my tío.
I’m staring down at the table again. “Sometimes, I feel like …” I shake my head, deciding not to say it. Then suddenly I do. “Think he’d look at me now and … wonder what the fuck happened.”
“No.”
I look up at him, my jaw tightening, lip quivering.
“Not a chance,” he says. “If you only knew the things your dad said about you back when you were in school. He’d brag all about you. All the time. Jesus Christ, constantly. Drove me nuts. Like, I get it already, Diego’s a star, Diego just did his first oil change, Diego’s first pick on the team, Diego’s—Don’t get me wrong, you being my only niece or nephew, I loved knowing you were a stand-out kid—but didn’t that man live for anything else?” He chuckles at himself and shakes his head. “No, of course he didn’t, and that’s how my … how my brother was. Loved you every day like he somehow knew he only had a few years left.”
I look away, fighting something on my face.
“I know you don’t wanna hear this last part, and I’m not much a fan of her either for leaving how she did, but your mama loved you, too. Both of them. Whatever else went wrong between your parents, mistakes they made, flaws they had, don’t ever convince yourself you weren’t loved.”
“Just stop.”
He doesn’t. “You want to convince the world you’re such a hard-ass, Diego, but I can see right through that. I think that shell you grew around your heart is just hiding how squishy and full of love you really are inside.”
“Nothing squishy about me,” I spit back. “And don’t compare me to Mom. I’m nothing like her.”
He shrugs. “Maybe. Maybe not. But what I’m seeing right now is someone who’s running away when his heart got broken. That sure sounds like one of them.” He tilts his head. “She loved you. And she still did a terrible thing to you. Both can be true.”
I throw my eyes down again, picking at the table. “What’s the point, Tío? That I’m too helpful like Dad? Running away like Mom? What the hell am I supposed to do with that?”
“You tell me.” He sets down his fork. Finally. “Your dad never figured out he could let a loved one fuck up now n’ then. Thought loving someone meant always catching them before they fell.” He eyes me. “You gotta let people you love fall on their ass.”
“So you’re saying I should’ve just let Wyatt get screwed?”
“I think you should have let Wyatt decide for himself, then be there for him afterwards. In the way your mother wasn’t for you.”
I wipe away something under my eyes.
Then look away.
Then wipe something else.
Tío Marcos slides a napkin across the table to me. “Premium-quality tissue right here,” he says.
I guess that’s a joke.
The napkins here are sandpaper.
I snatch it and use it anyway, wiping off my eyes.
He sits back with a sigh, crosses his arms, and tilts his head as he keeps looking at me, studying me. “Come live with us.”
I look up like I didn’t hear him, squinting. “What?”
“Not forever. Just until you get your—”
“I don’t need your charity.”