It Could Be More | ✔

17. Dad Mode

Future Harlow didn't have a hard time convincing Mom that I came home from Liah's in the middle of the night because of stomach cramps. Mom knew that when I didn't feel great, the only place I wanted to be was in my own bed.

Grayson wasn't buying it, though. As soon as Mom left to get brunch with her girls, my brother barged into my room like it was his. I was packaging my latest nail orders. My desk was covered in gold bubble mailers, business and thank you cards, and complementary nail care kits.

Harlow's Nails might've been a small business, but my patience for my brother was even smaller.

"Go away." I didn't bother looking up, even as he came in and sat on my bed.

"Where were you last night?"

I made a show of stacking my thank you cards, tapping them on the desk so they'd all fall in line before I put them back in the storage container for safe keeping. Then I moved on to the business cards.

"I know you weren't at Liah's."

Tap. Tap. Tap.

I picked up my phone, setting a reminder to order more business cards. My brother didn't move. He was as good at enduring the silent treatment as I was at giving them. Our stubbornness was genetic.

We could be at this for days on end. But what I did last night was my business. He didn't need to know the details. He'd probably use it as a reason to ban me from ever leaving the house again.

Once I put all my packaging supplies back into their storage bins, I turned to my brother, ready to be a smartass. But I stopped. My mind went back to last night, to Corey's confession.

Knowing your best friend hooked up with your crush couldn't have been easy. I didn't have it in me to add on to his pain. But I wasn't telling about last night. Especially not the fact that I was with Corey.

Instead, I went in a completely different direction. "Do you still think about our dad?"

Gray looked taken aback. "Why are you bringing him up?"

I picked at a loose thread on my shirt. "Something happened recently that made me think of him." I thought back to Maverick and the pills.

His eyes narrowed. "Like what?"

"Nothing!" Of course his mind would jump to the worst possible thing. And then, because shutting up seemed to be physically impossible for me, I said, "He called me."

Forcing those words out, it felt like all the air inside me went with them. I'd never told anyone. Not Mom. Not Liah. No one. That phone call stayed between me and my dad. I was perfectly content taking that secret to my grave, but with constant reminders lately, it wanted to be let out.

Gray didn't say anything and I didn't look up for his reaction. My eyes stayed trained on the blue thread unraveling the hem of my shirt.

"Who? Dad?"

"Yeah, before he..."

More silence. I looked up then. My brother focused on a spot just above my head.

I wasn't close to our dad. I didn't think Gray was either. The day Mom got the call from our grandma, Gray disappeared. It hit him harder than I expected it to. We never talked about it, but I always wondered why. Growing up, I assumed we felt the same way about him.

Our dad was an occasional drunken phone call. A "Hey, kiddo," on holidays when we stopped by to see grandma. He was always on his way out while grandma slipped her wallet back in her purse.

If he said more than two words to you, it meant he needed money. Or he wasn't sober.

In elementary school, when we did crafts for father's day, Gray and I made them for Mom. I thought we viewed our dad the same way--a stranger. Practically non-existent. Maybe that wasn't the case.