Page 20 of Friends That Heal Us
“With some friends. Supposedly out running some errands,” he says in finger quotations. “She’ll be back with her hands full of shopping bags.”
That’s something we both have in common—our wives shopping on Saturdays. Well, soon to be ex-wife. At first, I thought Rya’s shopping habit was normal because I remember my mom always out on a Saturday shopping away. “Does it bother you that she shops a lot?”
“Nah. It makes her happy,” he says with a smirk on his face.
I nod slowly, listening to the softness in his voice. “Rya shops a lot.”
He crosses his arms loosely over one another. “Yeah. I could tell.”
“It was getting to where we would be short on bills, and I would have to pull from savings.”
He shakes his head in disappointment. “Well, your mother isn’t irresponsible. She pays bills first, then saves money, and keeps a little for herself to buy what she wants. But it’s not likeshe does this every day. It’s every now and then. So I don’t mind it.”
I sit back in my chair trying to come up with the words to tell him what’s been going on. Then I get a sense of déjà vu. We’re sitting in the same spot when I came to tell him I had a crush on someone. I was having a hard time coming up with the words to tell him.
“Hi, Dad,” I say as I slump down in the chair next to him, tired from playing in the river and riding bikes with my friends.
“What’s up, Son?” he asks, wiping off the oil on his pants as if it’s going to come off. He always comes home from work with so much oil on him. He says it’s from the cars he works on. Every day he gets home from work, he walks in, gives my mom a kiss on the lips, which I tell them is gross, then he asks her if she needs any help with dinner. She always says no and tells him to go rest. So on the warmer days he comes out back and sits here until we’re called in for dinner.
When I grow up, I want to work on cars like he does. I always tell my dad he should take me to work so I can learn so when I get older, I’ll be the best mechanic out there. But he says it’s dangerous in the shop and I need to be a little older. Whenever he works on the cars at home, he lets me help.
“I met a new friend,” I say with my cheeks heating.
“Oh yeah. What’s his name?”
My eyes flicker around nervously. “It’s a girl.”
“Oh. What’s her name?”
“Violet,” I say, staring down at the holes in my pants. My mom won’t let me wear my school clothes out to play. She says I’m too rough on my clothes and I need to save the nice ones for school. I wear the ones that already have holes in them when I’m playing outside.
“That’s a pretty name,” he says, looking over at me.
“Yeah.” I ignore his eye contact and still stare down at my holes, too nervous to tell him what I want to say.
“Where does she live?”
I shrug my shoulders. “Not too far. We were riding our bikes home, and she said she lived down that street,” I say, pointing towards the area she lives around.
“You didn’t make sure she got home safe?”
I glance up at my dad and shake my head.
“Son, you should always make sure a girl gets home safe,” he tells me, crossing his arms.
“Oh. Okay. I will next time.”
He nods his head once and looks back over at the trees swaying in the wind. School is about to start, which tells me summer is almost over. I get sad when I have to go back to school because then I can’t hang out with my friends as much. I hope Violet goes to the same school as me. I’ll be sad not being able to see her all day.
“What did you and your friends do today?”
“We played at the river.”
He chuckles softly. “You and those damn skeeter bugs. Did Violet catch any of them?”
I giggle. “Yeah, and she thinks they’re cute.” I chuckle louder, swinging my legs since they’re hanging off the chair.
“Cute?” he questions, laughing louder.
