Dad looked startled. “Whoa. You’re a lot taller than you used to be.”
“Screw you,” I said, stalking past him and heading into the bathroom, where I slammed the door.
“Trying to sleep,” Mom shouted from her bedroom. That was probably a lie, considering she’d gone in there with a cup of coffee, but she hadn’t come out to see Dad, and he wasn’t trying to make her.
“Sorry, Gina,” Dad called.
When I came out of the bathroom, he was rummaging in the fridge. “Does your mother not feed you?”
“I’m eighteen, Dad. I can feed myself.”
“Mostly prepackaged garbage, from the looks of it.”
“Is that why you came over here? To lecture us on proper nutrition?”
The fridge door squeaked shut. “How about we go grocery shopping?”
“Right now?” I asked.
“Is there a magic hour for grocery shopping?”
“No. There is no such thing as a good time to go grocery shopping with your father. Especially when that father is you.”
He nodded. “Good. Expressing your feelings is healthy. Now get dressed.”
I huffed. We were getting low on coffee and ice cream, the basic necessities. “Are you buying?”
“If I say yes, will you come?”
“Yes.”
“Yes.”
Less than twenty minutes later, we were heading inside Delmore Grocery, Dad a few paces ahead of me. Like my mother, my dad had naturally dark hair, but he spent hours in the sun, so it was blonder on top and dark brown closer to the roots. He was wearing it longer than when I’d seen him last, and he seemed to be styling it now so that it stood up from the top of his head in a disheveled pompadour.
As we entered the store, at least four sets of eyes tracked him, like they couldn’t decide if he was someone famous, or just someone unfairly handsome.
Or maybe just a jerk who’d abandoned his family seven years ago, simply because his daughter couldn’t follow in his footsteps. I knew that wasn’t the whole reason, but as I trailed him through the store, the resentment bubbled up inside.
A dreck lady gave him an appreciative look, her gaze sliding down the length of his full-sleeve tattoos, watching his muscles flex as he bagged a few apples and set them in his cart.
I rolled my eyes and grabbed a bunch of bananas. “How long are you here for?”
“A few more days. I actually got here yesterday. You know how these festivals are. People start to gather before the formal stuff starts to happen. I’m just here to observe.”
“Oh, yeah. Because the Syndicate is so neutral.” Flynn had told me they’d been gunning for the Devils for years, just looking for an excuse to take them down a peg. He’d always stopped short of insulting Dad to my face, but I could tell what he really thought.
“We are neutral, Mo.” He took in my sour look. “We’ve got the Sixes, the Kings, the Devils, and the Stalkers, all of which have feuded with each other in the past decade, as well as a handful of smaller clubs. Not to mention all the other kindled folks who just come for a good time. The Syndicate’s just here to keep the peace.”
I arched an eyebrow. “Yeah? And you’re the best person for the job?”
His nostrils flared. “I am, actually.”
I made a grumbly, skeptical sound in my throat as I poked at the tomatoes.
“So, have you been hanging out with the Medicis much?” He picked through the onions, like the question was insignificant.
“Around Alex, yeah. I don’t see much of Crowe anymore.”
Dad tossed an onion in the air and caught it again. “Crowe is a great kid, but he’s a great kid who does bad things, and I worry about him without the guidance of his father. I think it’s smart to keep your distance.”
Sometimes I forgot that the death of Michael Medici affected more than just Alex and Crowe and their mom. My dad and Michael had been best friends since they were kids—until my dad took off, that is. I hadn’t talked about Michael’s accident or death—or murder, if Crowe was right—with my dad, but that was mainly because he hadn’t even come back to town for the funeral. And though I was pissed at him for leaving, I couldn’t believe Dad didn’t care. I could see the loss etched on his face now, the pain that flashed through his eyes before he turned away. It sort of took the wind out of my anger.
We made our way through the store, and Dad grabbed the necessary items to make chicken fajitas, my favorite, which told me he was either a) sorry for being such an absent dad and hoping cheesy Tex-Mex would heal all wounds or b) planning to use spicy deliciousness to lull me into opening up.
Dad grabbed a six-pack of beer off the shelf. “You been practicing at all?”
Well, there it was. His fake-casual tone dragged me back eight years, to when he would try to coax me into showing him what I could do and then pretend not to be disappointed when anything I tried fizzled out halfway through because I was too overwhelmed to hold it together.
Instead of answering, I turned the corner to enter the aisle for frozen food. I needed ice cream. Like, the most salted-caramel-chocolate-dipped-pretzel-terrible-for-me kind.
“The perimeter on the house is practically nonexistent,” he said. “That should be easy for you by now.”
A mom, prodding along two young kids, stalled for a second as my dad passed. She smiled at him. He ignored it.
I tossed a carton of my chosen vice into the cart. “Is that really any of your business, since you don’t live there anymore?”
“Maybe it should be, if Crowe Medici is showing up and trying to burn down the house that I still own. His dad used to get worked up like that from time to time. Like father, like son.”
“It was a few pounds of meat, for God’s sake.”
“Not really the point.”
The point was that he’d caught me in a lie. Or at least, a half lie. I’d said I hadn’t seen Crowe much, and I hadn’t. But I had seen him the night before in the kitchen of my own damn house, and both Mom and Dad had noticed.
“He drove me home,” I explained.
“Uh-huh.”
“Dad,” I said, part warning, part whine.
He glanced at me, leveled his stare. “Just don’t lie to me, Jem. It’s as simple as that. I’m your father, you know.”
“Oh, really? I hadn’t noticed, what with you moving hours away!”
He turned into the next aisle. “I keep a roof over your head, don’t I?”
I grabbed an extra carton of frozen comfort, grinding my teeth. “That’s it? That’s what you have to say?”
He was waiting when I entered the aisle where he was loading up on pasta. “Jemmie, someday, when you can talk to me like an adult instead of like a toddler throwing a tantrum, I’ll tell you why I left.”
“Fuck you,” I snapped, tears starting in my eyes. “I have a right to be mad.”
He bowed his head and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Okay. You’re right. I’m sorry. Look—let’s go home. We’ll cool down and talk later.”
“Whatever,” I mumbled, but followed him to the checkout line. I didn’t want my ice cream to melt before I could get it to a freezer. I also didn’t want to break down in the middle of Delmore’s.
The girl behind the register greeted us in a too-high-pitched voice. I tossed a few things on the conveyor belt. She rang up a total of three items before saying, “Wow. Your tattoos are incredible.”
“Thanks,” Dad said. He fished his wallet out.
“How long did it take you to get all that done?”
She was stalling now. The conveyor belt had stopped moving and our milk sat, waiting to be scanned, the plastic sweating in the heat.
“A few years,” Dad answered vaguely, probably used to having these conversations.
It was so weird to stand there next to him. He was only in his mid-thirties; he and my mom had had me so young. Didn’t mean I was cool with a girl my age stumbling over herself to flirt with him.
“They’re incredible,” she said again. Her cheeks flushed when she noticed me staring at her, my lip curled in disdain. She scanned the milk. The sun beat through the windows, momentarily blinding me. If only it’d deafen me, too.