Everyone in the small town of Hull knows two things. One: Jill Williams doesn't date, and two: Carson Blue is addicted to drugs.
When Carson decides to clean up his act and apply at Jill's family restaurant, she's less than enthused. Between school...
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
MY DAD ALWAYS cut his hair short when he was trying to change, at least that's what he liked to claim. "New do, new me," he'd say, but his hair grew like a weed and it'd only take a few months for him to fall back into the same Graham Grant skin he always wore. The skin he belongs in.
The ghost of that man is in front of me now. Hair short and spiked at the top, not like the long ratty mess I'd seen him rocking in Judas Cradle's band photos. Grey streaks flow through it and his face is caught in a web of wrinkles but that's my dad, all right. He even has the nerve to smile. Looks like all that cash has got him a whole new set of teeth, because the crooked yellow ones he used to sport are now perfect and white. When he opens his arms to me, I freeze.
"Shit, look at you, babygirl. You're a beautiful woman now."
There it is: that grating voice I never thought I'd hear on anything but a radio again. My hands shake.
"Yeah," I say, "kids grow a lot in five years."
Behind him, Mom's eyes are wide with shock. "I'm sorry, Jillie. He showed up out of the blue."
Head spinning, I try to catch my balance with a table. I don't know why or how he's here—but he needs to get out now.
Dad moves toward me. "Come on, give your daddy a hug."
"Whoa." I jerk away, and hurt fills his brown eyes. Nothing about him looks like me; I'm the spitting image of Mom when she was seventeen, but what did Graham Grant give me? Nothing but trauma. I can't walk into a party without being bombarded by memories of him doing drugs. Some nights I still cry about how I wasn't good enough for him to stay, and wonder if maybe I won't be good enough for anyone else to stay either.
"Look, baby," Dad says, "you've got every reason to hate me, but hear me out a little, yeah? Come on, let's go for a walk, catch up a bit."
Those questions have haunted me for five years. Ever since I woke up on a grey Saturday morning and found Mom in tears on the front porch of our trailer, fat drops of rain pounding the dirt around the awning.
"He's gone, Jillie. He's not coming back."
All this time I thought he never would. But here he is.
Since then, I've had my first period, lost my virginity, failed tests, cried, written over ten songs. I've lived the most important parts of my life without him in it—and I sure as hell don't need him back now. Somehow, I'm too paralyzed to speak. Dad keeps smiling.
"Come on, baby. Let me explain myself. It's been five years, you can't give your daddy five minutes?"
Five years in five minutes. All the hurt he caused me, explained just like that. Easy as pie.
He isn't worth a minute of my time, let alone five, but I'm too stunned to react. I gravitate toward the door.
"Let's go," is all I say. Dad and I walk out together.
