I HAVE NO IDEA HOW to tie a bow tie. I stand in front of the mirror and twist it into a knot that looks like a toddler did it.
“Do you know how to tie a bow tie?” I ask.
Rafi’s lounging on my bed in a black-and-blue checkered suit that looks phenomenal on him. Honestly, I may as well wear a bathrobe to the wedding. No one’s going to be looking at me with him by my side.
“Sorry. Bow ties aren’t one of my many skills.”
“Damn.” I strip the tie off to try again. “Oh, sorry about earlier. I should’ve mentioned that my grandma can get a little handsy.”
Rafi smiles, and God what a smile it is. “I’m used to it. I volunteered at a nursing home for a while. And it’s not like she felt me up. Anyway, you’re just not a touchy kind of guy.”
“I like it when you touch me.”
“Is that so?” Rafi stands and moves toward me, but then stops and clears his throat. “Hey, Mr. DeLuca.”
My dad’s standing in the doorway and I’m a little embarrassed, wondering how much of that he heard, but then I also don’t care. If he didn’t want to hear me flirting with my boyfriend, he shouldn’t have been eavesdropping.
“You look nice, Rafi.”
“Thank you, sir.”
Dad doesn’t say it, but I get the feeling he’s trying to indicate that he wants to talk to me alone. Thankfully, Rafi also notices. “I think I’ll go see if there are any of those waffles left.”
As soon as Rafi leaves, Dad walks into the room and takes his place standing beside me. “Problem with the tie?”
“Yeah,” I say. “The problem is that it’s not a clip-on.”
Dad moves behind me and arranges the tie around my neck so that the wide end hangs lower than the narrow. “Didn’t I teach you how to do this?”
“I can tie a regular tie, but this thing is the devil’s handiwork.”
Dad laughs and then slowly walks me through the steps. “It’s not as difficult as you think.”
I try to follow what he’s doing, but I get lost when he folds the left side and pulls the right side up through the neck. When he finishes, he tugs the ends to tighten it, looks at me appraisingly, and smiles.
“What?”
Dad shrugs and rests his hands on my shoulders. “You never let me show you how to do stuff like this. You taught yourself to shave from YouTube videos, your mom taught you how to change a tire and the oil in your car, and I don’t think anyone had to teach you how to make up decedents. You were born with that talent.”
I pull away from him. “Not today, Dad, okay?”
“I’m not here to lecture you.”
“Then, what?”
“You have a gift, son—”
“Please,” I say. “Stop right there. Whatever you’re about to tell me about how I have a gift and it’s my responsibility to use it, blah, blah, blah. I don’t want to hear it. I also have a life. It’s mine, and I get to do what I want with it.”
Dad’s lips tighten. “All I’m asking, Dino, is that, as you explore your interests, you don’t close yourself off to this one. Go see what else you might want to become, but always know that this door isn’t closed to you.”
“If this is about the name, if you’re still holding out hope I’ll eventually work here so that you can keep the name they way it is, I can tell you now, that’s not going to happen.”
Dad reaches into the inside pocket of his suit, pulls out a folded set of papers, and hands them to me.
“What—”
“I had these drawn up months ago. Not because you didn’t want to work there, but because Delilah does.”
I unfold the papers, and it’s a lot of legal stuff I skim past, but in bold type I find the request to change the name to DeLuca Family Funeral Services.
“She will at the wedding,” Dad says. “I wanted it to be a gift to her as she starts a new life.”
I stare at the papers and then at my dad. “Then why have you been riding my ass about becoming a mortician when I haven’t even graduated high school yet?”
“Language.”
“Sorry.”
Dad’s shaking his head, and I know that look of frustration he’s wearing. He gets it when he’s tied up and doesn’t know what to say. Usually, this is the part where Mom jumps in to help him, but he’s on his own this time.
“I don’t get you, Dino,” Dad says. “I never have. I support you being gay, but I don’t understand it. You play video games and do theater and work on stuff I don’t comprehend. We’ve never had common interests. You’ve always been your mother’s son.” He stops and looks at me. “Not that I’m complaining. I’m glad you got the best of her, because even her worst is better than my best.”
“You’re rambling, Dad.”
“DeLuca and Son’s wasn’t about the name for me. It was a dream. My dream. One thing we’d have in common. One area where I’d have something to teach you. Lord knows you’re smarter than me in everything else.”
“You taught me how to tie a bow tie,” I say.
Dad chuckles. “Score one for the home team.”
“Is that a sports reference?”
I never knew my dad felt so left out. And it doesn’t make me want to be a mortician, but hearing what he had to say does make me see him differently. “How about I teach you some things?” I say.
“What—”
I grab a controller off the floor, toss it to him, and turn on the TV. “How do you feel about piloting spaceships?”