Two Birds, One Stone

27. Tongue Tied

I would drive away feeling worse than when I arrived. So I never texted him. And he never texted me.

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I shifted beneath the sheets at the sound of a knock on my bedroom door. I was already awake, sure, but I had no plans on getting up until at least ten. "Come in," I more or less groaned, knowing that it was Jacob; nobody else ever knocked on my door nowadays. Curse him and his early mornings.

The door was slow to open. I propped myself up on my elbows so I could glower at my brother, then almost fell right back down when my father's face stared back at me. I rubbed my eyes, blinking against the light shining through the blinds I forgot to close the night before, but it was still him when I looked again.

"Dad!" I said, wide-eyed and startled, pushing myself the rest of the way up. "Um, hi. Good morning."

"Did I wake you?" he asked awkwardly, opting to remain in the doorway. "I'm sorry."

"No -- you didn't, I'm just . . ." I rubbed the sleep from my face, "What's up?"

My dad took a short breath. "Do you have plans? Or can you come somewhere with me today?"

My lips curved into an 'o' and I leaned forward, like I wasn't hearing him properly. "Um, yeah. Yeah, I'll get ready."

He nodded once and slipped back through the door, leaving me to stare at the space where he'd stood and wonder if this was a trippy hallucination. I didn't give myself much time to ponder, though; when it sank in that my dad had just offered to take me somewhere for the first time in months, I jumped to my feet and practically ran to my bathroom to get ready.

Too nervous to eat, I skipped breakfast and met him in the living room not even ten minutes later. He looked startled when he saw me, like he hadn't been expecting me to get ready so fast. Wiping his palms on his jeans, he stood up with a tense smile and nodded toward the front door.

I followed him out wordlessly. The silence was too thick to ignore and uncomfortable enough to make me squirm. It didn't go away when we climbed into his truck.

Most of the way there, I thought he was taking me somewhere new. He didn't offer up where, and I was too busy sweating in my seat to ask. As we got closer, though, I started to recognize the route. Any excitement or anticipation slipped through the spaces between my ribs, and my heart drummed away jealously within the confines of my chest.

"Dad," I said hollowly, disbelievingly. "Are you serious?"

Since I came out, my dad had been the quiet one, my mom the cruel one. But as my dad pulled into the parking lot of our old church, I wondered if the roles had reversed.

Our family had never attended service regularly. If we ever did, it was when I was really little; after the first divorce, our consistency took a nose-dive, and only faded more and more with each round. The only time I could remember going often was when mom was with Richard, and our church-going ended the second their relationship did. Even after mom and dad got back together, we never managed more than a handful of sparse, random trips per year and appearances on special occasions like Easter and Christmas.

And yet there I was, trapped in a car with a man who was suddenly a saint compared to me, suddenly ready to act like he'd lived his entire life in God's name and beg for my soul to be saved.

"Come with me, please," he said. He turned his body towards me but didn't meet my eyes, gazing down at the buckle of his seatbelt long after he'd undone it. His voice was soft, unimposing, and yet I had never been more wary of him. I knew for a fact that he didn't care any more for Bible verses and outdated standards than I did. I knew for a fact that he didn't believe that I was going to hell for loving the way I loved. I knew for a goddamn fact that he hadn't dragged me here because he believed he could help me.