Home sweet fucking home.
I hadn’t talked to him since he’d received my academic expulsion letter from Baylor. He bought a one-way ticket to McKinleyville, the closest airport from Spring Hill, for me and said “we’d talk later.”
I had a feeling there wouldn’t be much talking, just a lot of yelling, especially when he just dropped thousands on my schooling. I didn’t blame him for being pissed—I just didn’t want to be within a ten mile radius of the aftermath.
The plane pulled up to the terminal and the fasten seatbelt sign clicked off. Would the flight attendants really notice if I stayed on the plane and got off at the Seattle stop while my luggage circled around baggage claim and my dad stewed in the car? I’d heard about people stowing away on airlines, couldn’t be too hard. Anything seemed like a better option than spending my summer at home with Dad, working at the store. The only reason I was home and not back in Texas, crashing with friends, was the fact that everyone went home for the summer, and I didn’t have a job there. No money equaled summer from hell at home.
An elderly lady sitting to my left tapped my shoulder, giving a short reprieve from the Ryan Pity Party. “Excuse me, could you help me with my bag?” She pointed to the overhead compartment. “The purple one.”
“Sure.” I unbuckled and opened the bin. I stared at the mass of impatient people shuffling toward the exit of the plane, most of them waiting for me to get out of their way. Probably had people who were excited to see them at home. Dad made it clear about his stance on my arrival—pure disappointment and disdain. The only double Ds I didn’t enjoy. But as my soccer coach would say, I needed to nut up and get my head in the game. Game plan: get the hell out of Spring Hill as fast as I could.
I reached in the overhead bin and grabbed a purple bag and handed it to the lady. She smiled and said, “Thank you, sweetie.”
I nodded and grabbed my bag from the overhead compartment. The lady reminded me of my grandma, my favorite part of coming home. If I was smart, I would have taken her offer to stay in her spare bedroom this summer but didn’t want to make more work for her. If I knew her, she’d be cooking me breakfast every morning and sewing more quilts for the guest bed. With her arthritis, she needed to be taking it easy.
After disembarking the plane and making my way to baggage claim, I picked up my two suitcases with everything I hadn’t boxed up and shipped back to Spring Hill. Dad’s car sat in the short-term parking lot, the black Hummer dwarfing the two hybrids on either side. Showy bastard. Just because he rolled in the dough didn’t mean he needed to kill the environment in the process.
I opened the trunk and heaved my suitcases into the back. Closing it harder than I needed, I made my way around the side and got in the car, Dad’s tropical Hawaiian air freshener stinging my eyes like pepper spray.
“Hi, Dad.” I wiped at my eyes and hid my nose in the collar of my shirt.
He grunted in response. After paying for parking, Dad pulled onto the five and drove toward home. His home.
We made it halfway to the house before he spoke. “How was your flight?”
“No crying babies, so good.”
“Good.”
“Yep.”
I knocked my head into the back of my seat. I expected the cold shoulder, the disappointment that hung off his clipped words, but it still stung.
We pulled into the driveway fifteen minutes later. He made his way into the house, slamming the garage door to the house behind him. Dad had really honed his brush-off skills, really took it to the next level. It’d been a long time since we’d been on good terms—about seven years ago, before Mom left us for her personal trainer, Hans. A fucking guy named Hans.
After extracting my bags from the back, I shoved through the door and waddled toward the stairs, the two suitcases clutched in my arms.
Dad called from his office, which lay adjacent to the stairs, “I left something for you in your room. A coming home present.” He sat at his desk, typing on his computer, like any normal day. If normal days counted as his only son comes home from college on a permanent hiatus.
“Okay?” Dad wasn’t the present type. Last one I got was a trip to Mexico for high school graduation, and I was pretty sure that was only so I’d be out of his hair for a week.
“Dinner’s at seven. We’re having Luigi’s.”
“Sounds good.” I half expected him to ask me to chip in.
When he didn’t say anything else, I lugged the suitcases up the stairs and dropped them in the middle of my room. A book sat in the middle of my bed. Career 101 with a sticky note plastered in the middle. I ripped it off and read it. Make good use of this.
Bend me over and call me Betty. This summer was going to suck ass.
Chapter Three
Jules