My Dad's Best Friend Moved Into My Spare Room After His Divorce, and the Promise He Made My Father Lasted Four Days novel · Chapter 20 of 24

Chapter 20: Makeup Night

My father's house was dark when we pulled up on Friday night, and there was a note taped to the screen door.

I read it by the porch light.

BOWLING MAKEUP NIGHT. BACK LATE. CHAIRS IN GARAGE. DON'T EAT THE POTATO SALAD, IT'S FOR TOMORROW. -L

I stood on his top step with the folded speech in my hand, looking down at the note.

"Thursdays," I said. "The church lady's husband bowls on Thursdays."

"It's a makeup night."

"So he's at the lanes right now."

"With the church lady's husband."

"With a truck at a lake."

Ed came up behind me and read it over my shoulder, the way he read everything.

"We wait," he said.

"I hate waiting."

"I know."

We sat in the truck at the curb, three houses down, with the engine off and the windows cracked.

The streetlight made a long orange stripe across the dash.

The speech was in my lap.

I had written it four times.

The last version began, Dad, I need you to listen to the whole thing before you say anything.

I could not get past the second line without wanting to throw up.

Ed put his hand over my hand, over the paper.

"You don't need it," he said.

"I need something."

"You need him."

"He's not here."

"He will be."

I turned my face to the window.

The street was empty, a row of small brick houses with their porch lights on.

A sprinkler ticked somewhere, and moths slapped at the lamp.

"I'm scared," I said.

I had not said that to anyone since the funeral.

"I know," said Ed.

"I'm not scared of him. I'm scared of the look."

"What look?"

"The look he gets when he's been let down. He gave it to my mother once, over something stupid, and I watched her cry in the kitchen for an hour."

Ed said nothing.

He lifted the speech out of my lap and laid it on the dashboard.

Then he put his arm around the back of my neck and pulled me across the bench seat into his side, and I went.

His coat smelled like sawdust and the lanolin soap he used.

I put my face into the canvas.

"Whatever his face does," he said into my hair, "I'm going to be standing in front of it, so it hits me first."

"That's the dumbest thing you've ever said."

"I've said dumber."

I laughed into his collar, shaky, and then I wasn't laughing.

I lifted my face.

He looked at me in the orange light.

I kissed him.

It wasn't a question.

His coat was already coming off his shoulders.

I pulled it from under him and folded it twice and put it down against the door.

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