Hooked (Never After Series)

“But you’ll be home for dinner?” I hate the way my voice sounds—infused with a pleading tone in hopes my father will actually come home.

The faint sound of paper rustles in the background. “I won’t make it there tonight, honey, but I’ll try my best for the weekend.”

I chew on my bottom lip, worrying the flesh. My father has always been a busy man, but he used to make time for me. Over the years, he’s slowly slipped further and further away and now I don’t know how to reach him. I’m not sure how to convince him that we need attention too.

“You haven’t even been to the new house, Dad. It’s like… I don’t know.”

He sighs. “What did you expect, Wendy? You know how things are.”

I don’t want Jon to have to keep raising himself.

It’s on the tip of my tongue to say it, but I swallow it down, hoping that if I bite my tongue, maybe he’ll come home. “What are you doing, anyway?”

He sighs again, and this time there’s a distinct feminine voice in the background.

My stomach tightens, my hand white-knuckling the phone. “Are you even in Bloomsburg?”

He clears his throat. “Not at the moment, no.”

I scoff, resentment billowing like a storm cloud in the center of my chest. “Dad, you promised that when we moved, you’d be around more.”

“I am. I will be.”

My eyes burn. “Then why are you still just… everywhere else?”

There was once upon a time I thought my father hung the moon. I followed him everywhere and did everything with him. So much so, he dubbed me his ‘little shadow.’ But as I grew older, things changed. Slowly, I was pushed to the back of the bus until I wasn’t even in the same vehicle. Left behind like unnecessary luggage.

Sometimes I wonder if Jon has it easier, not ever having known what it was like. Our father has never given him the attention he’s given me. Still, I would do almost anything to have my father’s love the way I once had it, and I would do even more to guarantee that Jon could taste it for the first time.

I don’t think my father is a bad man, I just think his thirst for adventure overpowered his need for a family, until somewhere along the way he forgot he had one at all.

“We just miss you is all.” I swallow around the lump in my throat, rife with all the things I want to say. “Thank you, by the way, for putting Jon in homeschool.”

“Yeah, about that, I’ve changed my mind. There’s a great boarding school outside of Bloomsburg I’m sending him to.”

My heart seizes in my chest. “What?”

“I met with the dean the other day, and they assured me this would be the best place for him.”

The breath whooshes from me, realizing he met with a stranger, but can’t make time for his own children. “Boarding school? Dad, he’ll hate that. You know how things are for him with other kids.”

“Well, these are different kids now.”

“Dad…”

“Wendy,” he parrots. “Listen, this isn’t up for discussion.”

My fingers squeeze tighter around my phone. “Why?”

He hesitates and clears his throat again—his tell for when he’s trying to avoid the subject. Biding his time, formulating his thoughts before he lets them escape as tangible words in the air. “The dean is a business associate. They’ve assured me this will be the best fit.”

My mind replays the conversation with Jon from the other day, how his shoulders seemed to ease as he talked about getting to stay home. And just like that, a bit of rage seeps into the center of my chest, unfurling like smoke and curling around my edges. The entire reason I moved here was to stay with Jon; to try and bring our broken family back together. My father promised he’d be home more, that Bloomsburg was the perfect spot for him to settle and put down roots and stop living for everyone else.

And now, he’s going to ship off the only person I have. And I’ll be here. Working in a coffee shop and living in a mansion. Alone. And for what?

I squeeze my eyes tight and blow out a breath. “When are you going to tell him?”

“He doesn’t leave for another week, so I’ll be home to tell him then.”

“Dad, you cannot let me be the one to handle this. He needs to hear it from you. He needs you to explain the reasons why.”

My stomach cramps with the realization that I can speak until my throat is sore, but it doesn’t change the fact that somewhere along the way, my father stopped listening to what I had to say. And with every day that he’s gone—another business trip, or another sight to see that doesn’t include us—he slips further from our grasp. Away to somewhere nobody can reach, even if we wanted to.

“I hear you, sweetheart, I do. I’ll do it when I come home. Sorry about dinner.”

Click.

Swallowing down the irritation, I glance at the fireplace mantle to the photo I placed there of the two of us in hopes it would remind me of better days. In hopes that it would remind him, too. I’m sitting on his shoulders, a big smile splitting both our faces. I wonder when it was that the shift happened. Whether it was me who changed and started to outgrow my naive, fairy-tale view, or if it was he who regressed after our mom’s death. Although, truthfully, it happened before then.

Maybe people never change and it’s only our perceptions that alter the view.

My phone dings the second I place it down, and untapped hope spirals through my center, even though I know it isn’t going to be my father again.

And of course, it isn’t. It’s Angie.

Angie: The JR tonight, bitch! No saying no. I’ll pick you up at seven.

My stomach flips as I read her message, my mind immediately going to the handsome stranger who asked me on a date and then disappeared for days.

Will he be there?

Chewing on my bottom lip, I type out a reply.

Me: Okay. Count me in.