I blink slow and steady, long enough and slow enough that the whole world disappears and reappears between my lashes every single time. Now I’m here, I blink, now I’m not. I don’t feel particularly inclined to get out of bed, let alone face the outside world, where I have successfully destroyed not one but like a thousand relationships, effectively tearing apart almost my entire circle of friends during what was supposed to be the most magical, best, perfect summer of my life. The impossible summer has been impossible all right.
I pull the blankets up to my chin and let my eyes drift closed. Is it possible to sleep until I leave for college next year? Probably not. Not on my dad’s watch, anyway.
“Hon?” My dad cracks open the door. “You up yet? Don’t you have to be at work at ten?” His words are soft, like I might still be sleeping, but he knows me well enough to know that I’m definitely not. I know he’s noticed that Seeley hasn’t been around for nearly a week, and I’m sure the curiosity and concern is eating him up. I wonder if he’s called her parents yet. I don’t think I want to know.
“I’m awake,” I say. “Sort of.”
“Are we going to talk about whatever’s going on with you?” He pushes the door all the way open, leaning against the frame and tucking his hands into his pockets the way he does whenever he needs to look all small and nonthreatening. He used to do that around my mom a lot, especially when she was yelling at him. I haven’t seen him do it in a while.
I pull the blanket back over my head with a groan. “No.”
The bed dips under his weight as he sits beside me. “You know you can always talk to me, Elouise.”
I frown. I know he really believes that, but I also know that may not include me telling him that I am definitely in love with Seeley. Because he’d probably freak, right? I mean, that’s what parents do about that sort of thing.
“I can’t tell you this.” It hurts to say that. He pulls the blanket down, and I can tell it hurts him too by the way his forehead crinkles.
“Lou, I know it might feel like that, but I promise you, you can. Whatever it is, let me help you.”
“I think I’m in love with Seeley.” I blurt it out, just like that, and I don’t know if it’s because I’m brave or overtired or because I want to test this theory of his out right now. If anything is going to make him run screaming from my room, it would probably be that. He met Malia, sure, but even if I didn’t exactly hide it, I never came out and said she was my girlfriend either. And even if I had, this is a whole different ball game since Seeley’s practically a second daughter to him.
He freezes for a second and then tucks my blankets around my arms the same way he did when I was little. “And?”
I raise my eyebrows. “And? That’s all you have to say?”
My dad leans back to look at me. “And what’s the problem with that? She doesn’t treat you well? Did she do something awful and now we have to hate her forever?”
“We don’t hate her.” Even the idea of hating her hurts too much.
“Oh, good, because that would have made it very awkward when her parents come for dinner next week.” He chuckles, clearly enjoying his own little joke. “But if we don’t hate her, if she doesn’t treat you bad, and if you love her, then why isn’t she here? I haven’t seen her for days, which has got to be a record for you guys.”
“How are you being so cool about this?”
“Cool about what?”
“Cool about the fact that I told you I was in love with Seeley, who is a girl. And I’m a girl. So I’m a girl that likes girls. Sort of.”
“Sort of?” He crinkles his eyebrows. “What does ‘sort of’ mean?”
“I mean that I don’t only like girls, like I’m not, you know.”
“A lesbian?”
I turn about a thousand shades of red and wish the earth would swallow me whole, because my dad said the word lesbian and it’s the weirdest thing ever.
He lets out a nervous laugh and shrugs. “What?”
“It’s weird that you’re not freaking out.”
The smile slips off his face a little, and he squeezes my arm. “I think I’m freaked out by the fact that you felt you had to keep this a secret from me. I know there’re things you don’t want to talk about with your dad. You’re allowed privacy, same as I am, but, Lou, don’t ever feel like you can’t. This is a big thing to feel like you had to hide.”
I find a particularly interesting spot on the wall to stare at, afraid that if I look at his face, I’ll completely fall apart. “I wasn’t hiding it. I was just . . . not telling you.” I look up at him and he tilts his head. “Sorry.”
“You don’t have to be sorry.”
“I bet you’re totally freaked out right now and trying to cover it up.”
“Lou, this isn’t news to me, even without you putting it in so many words before. If you think I didn’t know what you and Malia were up to last year . . . ” He trails off. “And no, I’m not ‘totally freaked out’ right now. Are you ‘totally freaked’ that I like women?”
“Why would it bother me that you like women?”
“Oh, it doesn’t?” He grins. “Huh, weird, because it doesn’t bother me that you like them either.” He laughs, and everything about his body language says I told you so.
I huff and turn away. “I guess I expected it because I’m freaked out that I like girls.” I reconsider. “Okay, no, that’s not true, girls are pretty great.”
“All right,” he chuckles. “But you’re going to have to fill me in here. If we aren’t freaking out about liking girls, then what are we freaking out about?”
“It’s more that I like this girl in particular.”
“Is that why Seeley hasn’t been around? You’re taking some space to work out your feelings for her?”
“Sort of,” I say.
“Do you want to tell me the rest?”
“No.” I try to hide under the blanket, but he stops me, pulling it back down from my face.
“Fair enough. I’m not going to pry, but I’m here if you need me.” He looks at his watch, the corners of his lips twisting up as he thinks. “Pancakes or waffles? You should have enough time to eat before work.” Only, when he starts to get up, I sit up fast and grab his wrist to make him stay.
“I used to like this boy Nick,” I say.
Dad wrinkles his forehead and sits back down. “I thought you said you liked Seeley?”
“I do, but I didn’t then. Or I did, but I didn’t realize it.” I shake my head. “Just, let me say this before I lose my nerve, okay?”
“Okay, shoot.”
“So, I liked Nick, but Nick was dating Jessa. I kind of made Seeley pretend to be my girlfriend so that I could get closer to him, in the hope that we’d end up together before he left for college and I missed my chance.”
“How would dating Seeley make you and this Nick boy get together?”
“I don’t know, I thought it would for some reason, like maybe we could be better friends and it wouldn’t be a big deal because I had a girlfriend too. And then, I don’t know, maybe he would break up with Jessa or something, and then I would fake a breakup with Seeley, and Nick and I would live happily ever after.”
My dad sighs. “Until he leaves for college next month, you mean.”
“I guess. Yeah. But people have long-distance relationships all the time.”
“They do.” He frowns. “But usually not ones built around the fact that one of them lied and schemed to get the other one to like them.”
“Okay, true,” I say, “but anyway, none of that really matters because then something happened.”
“You realized how ridiculous this all was?”
“No. Well yeah, kind of. Mostly I realized that I didn’t want to break up with Seeley anymore, at the same time I also realized that Seeley never actually wanted to date me in the first place. She just sees me as a friend, same as always. But none of that matters anyway, because we got into a giant fight and now she doesn’t even want to be that.” I exhale, and it sounds all shaky and pathetic. “Whatever happens, I don’t want to lose her forever, I can’t.”
“I don’t think it’s possible for you two to lose each other forever,” he says, and I want to believe that so bad, I really do, but I know there’s no way he knows that for sure.
“People lose each other all the time,” I say. “We lost Mom.”
Dad swallows hard; we both know there’s nothing he can say to that.
“I want everything to be okay, and it’s not.”
“I know, baby, I know.” He pulls me in, wrapping me up tight in his arms. I don’t know when exactly I started to cry, but I don’t think I’m ever going to stop. And the worst part is that my dad really does know. He lost the love of his life, and he never got her back; he just got stuck with me and a bunch of postcards that I steal from him and hide underneath my mattress.
“Waffles?” He leans back and wipes at his own eyes. “If we hurry, you’ll still make it to work on time.”
I rest my cheek on my knee, wishing I was five years old again. “Do I have to go?”
“Yes.” He smiles. “You have to.”
I slump back in my bed with a sigh. “Okay, but Death Star waffles today, because that’s just how it’s gonna be.”
“Fair enough,” he says, heading to the door.
“Hey, Dad?” I mean to thank him for being cool, for this conversation, for life, but the words get all stuck in my throat.
“Yeah, honey?”
“Um, Seb’s mom says hi back.” I don’t know where that came from. It’s worlds apart from Thanks for being a good dad, but still.
He looks confused, and then sorta happy.
“You should call her,” I say, deciding to run with it.
“Why would I call Sharon?”
“She obviously likes you. She said hi back.”
“Oh, well, if she said hi back.” He laughs, and his voice goes all soft. “I love you, Lou.”
“Love you too.” I flash him a watery smile. “Now scram so I can get dressed for work.”
He shakes his head, grinning. “One Death Star waffle coming up!”