Page 57 of Keeping Score

Iwas not going to cry.

Not only was it unprofessional, it was also highly embarrassing.

I wasn’t the type of girl to cry. Hardly ever. Unless you stuck me in front of the television screen and held me down while you forcibly played The Notebook.

At least then, there’d be a little more honor in the tears. I mean, who doesn’t cry during that movie?

But ten o’clock on a Monday morning definitely didn’t warrant sobbing. Even if Mr. Reilly was pulling on every single one of my heartstrings as he blubbered in front of me.

“I saw them,” he said, wiping his eyes as if he could play off the fact that water was leaking out from the sides. “They look bigger somehow. Could they be bigger? It’s only been a few weeks.”

I mustered up enough energy to smile.

“I’m glad you got to see them. I bet they were, too.”

“They didn’t understand why I had to leave.” He jerked his Red Sox hat off, fiddling with the strap as he spoke. “They didn’t know why I couldn’t go back home with them.”

My chest tightened. I remembered that feeling all too well. The days following my dad leaving, when no one had been able to explain his absence.

But it was felt.

In every missing article of clothing, and collection of CDs that had been taken away with him.

I felt it—maybe not more intensely than my mother and brother, but definitely more loudly.

“But his boat is still in the driveway,” I had sobbed to my mom. “He has to come back for his boat.”

I kept telling everyone that he would be back. He had to come home soon. I didn’t know when, but something inside of me had been so certain that he wouldn’t stay away for long.

I’d been wrong.

Liam had spent a lot of time in his room, door shut to the world.

I had spent a lot of time trailing after my mother, asking question after question about what happened, or if they had a fight, or why I couldn’t call him.

No one had any answers that satisfied me. And those empty questions just left more of a hole inside of me.

I flinched away from the memories, bringing my attention back to the client in front of me. I didn’t have time to linger in the past. It didn’t matter anymore.

My father was in my life again—no harm, no foul.

And if a part of me still felt like that little girl, wondering why he left her without a word, well, I didn’t have time for her either.

Brody was good about knowing love languages.

Like, today when I came home from work with a certain look on my face and a weariness in my step, he knew exactly what I needed. Even before I did.

“Do you want to get all-you-can-eat tacos and margaritas?” The words were out of his mouth before I even dropped my bag down.

“Say less.”

Within minutes, I was in his car, brain blissfully shut off from the shitstorm that was my life as we listened to some 80s hits.

I wasn’t going to think about my family, I wasn’t going to think about work. And I especially wasn’t going to think about why the two seemed so interconnected lately, each reminding me of the other in annoyingly upfront ways.

My focus was only on the bottomless chips and salsa sitting in front of me while Brody ordered the rest of our food.

I could turn my brain off with him, knowing he had it covered. It was a weird feeling—good, but foreign in a lot of ways. Even after all these years.