NATE
“Hey,son. Hope you’re hungry. Your mom’s been at in the kitchen for hours.” Dad was kicked back in a recliner, the footrest lifted and the back slightly lowered for maximum comfort, his eyes directed at the TV, engrossed in the game taking place on the screen.
“Hey, Dad.” I looked over at the TV screen, my brow furrowing in confusion. “Wait. Are you watching soccer?”
“Sure am. Those boys have stamina I can’t even fathom, running all over that field the way they do.” He let out a whistle and shook his head. “Makes me tired just watching them.”
“When the hell did you get into soccer. You know baseball season’s already started, right?”
He popped a handful of sunflower seeds—his go-to snack food when he was watching a game—into his mouth. “I know, I’ve got that recording to watch later. No commercials.” He looked over at me like he was the cleverest son of a bitch in the universe, having discovered how to finally use that feature on his television after all these years. “But your mom made me watch this show with her a while back. Ted Lasso or something like that. Anyway, it’s all about soccer, and I kind of got into it, so here we are.”
I sat down on the sofa across from him with a chuckle. “Only you would get into soccer because of a TV show.”
He lifted his finger into the air. “A damn good TV show. Want a beer?”
“Sure.”
He reached down and flipped the lid open on the cooler beside his chair, tossing me one of the beers from inside. That cooler was another game day staple. Desmond Warren was serious about his sports. When he was in spectator mode, the only time his ass came out of that chair was to use the bathroom or replenish his snacks if he was running low.
I popped the tab on the can and brought it to my lips, taking a nice, long pull before letting out a deep sigh.
“I know that sigh,” my dad said. “That’s the sigh of a parent with a teenager. Quite familiar with that sigh myself. Matter of fact, I think I’m the one who taught you how to do it.”
“Was I ever this difficult?” I asked, then thought better of it and raised my hand to stop him. “You know what, don’t answer that.”
Dad let out a chuckle and took a pull from his own beer. “Don’t need to. Pretty sure you know the answer to that one already.”
I drained nearly half my beer in a couple gulps. “Then I owe you and Mom the world’s biggest apology.”
He waved that off with an easy, “Meh. It’s how everything stays balanced. Asshole kid grows up to have kids of his own who just so happens to also be assholes, because all kids are, and can suddenly relate to his parents. It’ll all come full circle with Evan when she’s an adult. You just have to bide your time, then the real fun begins.”
“Oh yeah? What fun would that be?”
He looked over at me and winked. “The fun where you get to throw it back in her face and make her feel guilty for all the hell she put you through when she was an asshole kid.”
“What you’re saying is I have another ten to fifteen years before I see any kind of pay out.”
He tipped his can my way in silent salute. “Hey, no one said this was an easy job. Worth it? Every damn day. Unless your kid’s Dahmer or Bundy or something. But then the parents were most likely part of the problem with those two.” Finally, he circled back around to what we were originally talking about. “Anyway, what I’m saying is it’s tough, but worth it.”
“I’ll have to take your word on that.”
The commercial break ended and the game resumed. We sat in silence for a few minutes, just watching the guys run back and forth across the field, working a tiny little ball in ways I hadn’t thought humanly possible before my mother’s shouted voice carried into the living room, breaking our concentration. “Dinner’s just about ready! Get your behinds up and set the table.”
That was a hard and fast rule in Georgia Warren’s house and had been since before I was born. She never had an issue with slaving over a hot stove, spending hours in the kitchen whipping up delicious, creative meals... as long as that was where her work stopped. If we wanted to eat her cooking, it was up to Dad and me to make sure the table was set and the kitchen was scrubbed clean afterward. A fair trade in the eyes of anyone who’d ever eaten my mother’s cooking.
We didn’t dawdle at moving our asses, and by the time everything was ready to come out, the table was set, complete with full water glasses. The delectable smells and the familiar behavior transported me back to growing up under this roof, the dinners spent around this very table night after night. We never ate in front of the television or in separate rooms. Dinner was family time in the Warren household, a time for us share with each other the good and bad of our days. As I thought back, I was hit with that damn pang of guilt again, the one that came more and more frequently since my return to Whitecap.
I remembered how I hadn’t appreciated the hour or so every evening spent with my parents, how jealous I was of my friends whose folks let them eat dinner in front of the TV or in their bedrooms. Back then, I believed I had a million other better things I could have been doing than hanging with my lame parents and telling them why my algebra teacher, Mr. Walter, was a certified dick.
As I pulled out the same chair I’d sat in for the first eighteen years of my life and lowered myself into the seat, I thought of how I would give anything to go back, even if it was just for one night, and do it again. Do it right.
“Smells divine, sweetheart,” Dad said to Mom from across the table. “Just like always.”
“You have Evan to praise as well,” Mom decreed as she took her linen napkin and shook it out before placing it in her lap. “She mashed the potatoes nice and smooth. Seasoned them up too, all by herself.”
I looked up from the bowl of potatoes in question I’d been scooping onto my plate. Across the table, my daughter’s head was bent toward her lap, but I could see the tiny grin she was fighting.
I shoved the spoon back into the bowl and heaped out another scoop. “Then I’m getting extra,” I declared as I plopped more potatoes onto my plate. “If they taste half as good as they look, I’m in for a real treat.”