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Chapter Nineteen - Just Like Your Father


“LAUREN!”

My throat hurt I’d yelled her name so loud, the second I stepped over the door frame into the foyer. My voice was so tense that Nacho and Igby doubled back halfway toward greeting me and hightailed it to the other room. “LAUREN!” I bellowed again. Ethan slunk into the room behind me, staring at his shoes, hanging back a couple feet.

Lauren came running down the stairs, “What?” she asked, a look of fear in her face, “Nick, what is it?” She came to a stop on the bottom step, her eyes traveling between me and Ethan, “You asshole, you’re both okay,” she said, gasping for breath, “Don’t you dare call me in that tone unless one of you is dead!”

I shoved the papers from Vince into Lauren’s hands.

“What’s this?” she asked, looking down at it, “Cool Springs Galleria Assets Protection? What?” She shuffled the papers, then looked up, “What happened?”

I looked at Ethan, “Tell her what happened.”

“I didn’t steal,” he said through his gritted teeth.

“DO NOT lie to me! That dude had a tape of you doin’ it!” I yelled.

“I’M NOT LYING!” Ethan yelled back, “I DIDN’T DO IT!”

Lauren’s eyes were wide, “Whoa, whoa, whoa. Calm down. What happened?” she looked at me.

“We split up at the mall and I got a phone call from this security guy sayin’ he picked Ethan up at Macy’s for shoplifting,” I said.

“Shoplifting?” Lauren looked at Ethan.

“I didn’t do it,” he repeated.

“He has a tape, Ethan!” I snapped, but Lauren held her hand up to stop me, still looking at Ethan.

“I was getting my wallet and I didn’t have enough money and I meant to put the necklace back. I took it back out of my pocket and I was gonna leave it on the last counter so I could find it easy after I found you, Nick, and suddenly this fuckin’ asshole --”

“Language,” Lauren injected.

“-- jumps me and drags me off to his office and starts yelling at me and callin’ the cops and everything else,” Ethan finished.

“Bullshit,” I said.

“It’s not bullshit!” Ethan yelled again.

Lauren looked at me with a disapproving look. “Nick, --”

“No, Lauren, no. He stole, we can’t just let him steal.” I turned to Ethan, “You’re a thief. You stole pizza the day I met you, I know you’re a thief. You told me you don’t usually steal when I talked to you about it, which means you have other times before, and now this. What’s next, the fuckin’ hope diamond?”

Ethan rubbed his face. “I didn’t steal this.”

“You’re a liar.”

“I AM NOT A LIAR!”

“You’re gonna throw away your whole life this way, Ethan, I’ve seen it happen and it’ll happen to you if you ain’t careful. You’ll ruin everything… you could have so much, do so much, and actually be something, actually make something of yourself if you just break the cycle! But no. You can’t even tell the truth when you’ve been caught. You’re gonna end up just like your father.”

The words had fallen out of my mouth before I could stop them.

He stared at me like I’d just slapped his face.

Lauren closed her eyes with a sharp inhale of breath.

We all kinda stood there a second - the longest second of history - staring at one another.

It was a line I’d had thrown at me a hundred thousand times, one my mother said everytime she wanted to end an argument because she knew that above every other thing in the world that was my biggest fear. Some people fear dying alone or drowning or being in airplanes or spiders or any number of phobias that engulf them to the very bone. Me, I have the threat of becoming my father. It freezes me exactly the same way and therefore it was the most absolutely scathing remark that could ever be said to me, and whether it had the same effect on other people or not, it was still the most terrible thing that I could possibly think to say.

Ethan turned and ran up the stairs, pushing past Lauren and thundering to the room, where he slammed the door shut behind him.

Lauren turned to me, one eyebrow raised.

I breathed heavily - I could feel my nostrils flaring with the breath going in and out of them, my chest rising and falling. I flexed my palms.

“Really? Was that necessary?” she demanded.

My face felt hot. “I just -- I want better for him.”

“I know,” she hissed, “But you could’ve said it nicer.” She sighed, looking up the stairs, then back at me. “You need to go talk to him.”

I closed my eyes, steeling myself, trying to prepare for what I might face if I went up there. I was about to reply to Lauren when the bedroom door opened again and once more there were footsteps on the stairs. I looked up. Ethan was coming down, his old bomber jacket and jeans on, the messenger bag around his chest and holding his guitar by the neck.

“What’re you doing?” I asked.

He didn’t answer.

Ethan pushed by me and Lauren and headed for the foyer.

Lauren gasped and she went after him. “Ethan, wait. Ethan.”

I stood there dumbfounded as the front door slammed.

“NICK!” Lauren yelled from the door, “Nick!”

I hurried out to the foyer and pulled open the door. Ethan was halfway across the lawn. I rushed after him. “Ethan, c’mon. Come back inside.”

“No. I don’t have to stay here. If you think I’m a liar and a thief then why would you want me to stay with you anyway?” he snapped, “I’m going to go find my dad and stay with him.”

“Ethan, you can’t walk from here it’s too far.”

“Then maybe I’ll steal a car,” he snarled.

I grabbed his messenger bag and held on. “Ethan.”

“Ethan, please!” Lauren caught up to us, barefoot and hugging her sweater around her chest. “Please. At least let me give you a ride,” she begged.

He glowered at me.

“Please.” Lauren’s voice was emotional.

“Fine,” he answered.

“I’ll get the keys,” I said.

Ethan shook his head, “Lauren said she was going to give me a ride. She doesn’t think I’m a lying thief.”

“I’ll get the keys,” Lauren said, and she turned and went back in the house.

Ethan and I stood there facing each other on the lawn. I stared at him. I wanted to tell him that I wasn’t trying to be an asshole, that I didn’t know how to handle this, that I was sorry I’d said what I had, that I hadn’t wanted it to end like this. “I’m not good at being a parent --” I started, but he cut me off.

“You aren’t a parent,” he snapped, “And thank God for that. I wouldn’t want you for a father if you were the last one on the whole planet!”

Gutted. That’s the only word for what I felt.

I stared at him, my jaw moving, but no words coming out, like the very air I breathe had been sucked out of me vacuum-style.

Lauren came running out of the house, like she hadn’t believed he would’ve waited for her. She was waving the Jeep keys in her hand triumphantly. Ethan walked over to the Jeep and they got in and I watched them drive away as the words he’d said echoed in my head, a refrain all too similar to the things I’d been telling myself all along.




I wandered around the house aimlessly, pacing more than anything. I hoped that Lauren would come back with Ethan, say that she’d worked her magic and talked him into staying and that we’d somehow work it out. I couldn’t stop the words echoing through my head, all my worst fears confirmed. My hands were shaking. Finally, desperate to quell the torment my brain was putting me through, I went down to the studio and dug into the very back of the filing cabinet. There, a long time ago, I’d hidden a half of a pack of Marlboros when I’d been trying to quit smoking. They were the Emergency Pack, the only one that Lauren hadn’t found. I carried them out to the back deck like they were made of gold and there I proceeded to chain smoke them, one after another, praying for the nicotine to ease my nerves.

I was almost finished with them when Lauren got home. I had the last one in my mouth and I was smoking it slowly, savoring it. She came through the house and stood in the sliding glass door frame, half in and half out of the house. It was cool outside, about 40 degrees, and she leaned against the door, raised eyebrows, watching me smoking.

For almost a solid minute, neither of us said a word. It was like neither of us dared to.

We stared at each other.

“So he went,” I said, finally, lowering the cigarette. She stared at it with disdain, then looked back up at me and nodded in a disapproving manner. I blew the smoke I’d been holding in my chest and mouth out, watching it float away. “Is it bad?” I asked.

“Bad?” Lauren asked, her voice trembled between anger and sadness, a dangerous place to balance. She raised her eyebrows almost off her damn forehead. “Yes it’s bad,” she said, “It’s really, really bad. It’s a piece of shit RV in the damn winter in this cheap ass campsite on the crappy side of the touristy area, Nick, not a fuckin’ palace!” She shook her head, “You couldn’t just listen to him, hear him out, could you? You had to act like a god damn ogre.”

“I wasn’t a god damn ogre,” I snapped, “He shoplifted, Lauren. There was a video to prove it, don’t you get that? He did it and then he lied about it.”

“Did you actually see the video?” Lauren asked.

“Well. No, but --”

“Nick, all he wanted was you to believe in him over the word of some douchebag rent-a-cop at fucking Macy’s. That’s all he wanted. He’s a fifteen year old boy. They make mistakes.”

“Stealing is not a mistake, it’s a fucking crime,” I said loudly, “And lying about it is just as bad.”

“Maybe he wasn’t lying, did you ever think of that? Did you ever pause in your tyranny long enough to think maybe the security guy was lying or exaggerating or jumping to conclusions?”

I rolled my eyes.

Lauren’s mouth set. “Don’t you roll your eyes at me.”

I took another drag from the cigarette.

“Put that fucking thing out,” she said. I lowered it and blew the smoke out of my lungs, but I didn’t put it out. “You could’ve at least given him the chance to explain himself and apologize,” she said hotly.

“He wasn’t going to apologize,” I answered, “He was too busy denying he ever did anything wrong to apologize. That and calling me a bad father, like he even fuckin’ knows what a good one is like --”

The words still stung, even in me repeating them.

Lauren stared at me. I took another drag from the cigarette. “PUT THAT THING OUT!” she yelled and she reached over, snatching it from my hand, threw it onto the floor and stamped it out with her foot so violently the thing never had a chance.

“What the hell, Lauren?” I snapped, “One fucking cigarette is not the end of the world. It’s my fuckin’ lungs, why’s it matter to you if I smoke?”

“You can’t smoke around me,” she snapped back.

“Why not? I need a smoke around you right now, you’re being such a bitch,” I retorted.

Her eyes widened. “Why not? Why not? BECAUSE, you asshole, you just can’t smoke around me. You don’t need any other reason other than because. Now fucking pick up all these cigarette butts off this damn deck and go change your filthy smoky clothes and figure out exactly how you’re going to apologize to me for calling me a bitch. You better have some really good apology planned before I see your face again,” she said, and she turned and went inside.




I managed to put off the apology part for the rest of the evening, dawdling around taking the shower and changing and then locking myself into the basement studio and laying in the dark on the couch scrolling through pages of people named Ethan Paulson on Facebook, desperately trying to find my Ethan Paulson, but to no luck. It was time for bed by the time I emerged from there to find that Lauren had cleaned the kitchen and living room and all the lights in the house were off. I used the flashlight feature on my phone ‘til I got up to the bedroom, but the lights were off even in there and she was in the bed, her back to the door.

I hovered in the door a moment, but she didn’t respond to my presence and I wondered if she was even awake. I went in the bathroom and closed the door, leaning against the wood as though I could keep all the issues outside. I looked at myself in the mirror. I looked tired. And I was. I was really tired. In every possible way.

I sank onto the floor and let my legs stretch out in front of me with a sigh, closing my eyes and leaning my head back against the door.

When I finally got up and went out to the bedroom, Lauren was still back-to me and I crawled into the bed, laying flat on my back, staring up at the ceiling. I was there for a couple minutes, just breathing heavily, before Lauren rolled over. She licked her lip hesitantly, like she was contemplating something, then finally she said, “Nick, I need you to apologize to me so we can have make-up sex.”

“What?”

“Make-up sex,” she repeated. “Either that or we’re going to have to have I’m-still-mad-at-you-but-too-horny-not-to-fuck-your-brains-out sex with you.”

Both sounded okay to me.

I stared at her through the darkness. “It’s not the time to be trying to have a baby right now,” I said.

“I’m not,” she answered, “I’m dying over here. You smell like -- like you -- and I just want to climb on top of you and --” she let the words trail off.

I wondered what had gotten into her lately. We’d had sex like five times in the last week and they’d all been initiated by her. Usually it was me that was rolling over in the dark, trying to talk her into sex, not vice versa. She was biting her lip now, though, and I felt the blood rushing to my crotch from all over my body.

But I didn’t really feel sorry for what I’d done yet. I still felt like Ethan had done something wrong and sure I guess I should’ve let him talk, but he should’ve said sorry, too. He’d been the one that had done the wrong thing, not me. But I guess I didn’t have to call Lauren a bitch earlier, that wasn’t really good. I hadn’t meant it - even though she had been kinda bitchy about the cigarettes - I’d just said it ‘cos I was mad and stuff. I took a deep breath.

“I’m sorry I called you a bitch,” I said.

“Okay, I forgive you, now get your clothes off,” Lauren said, already reaching for the drawstring of my sweatpants.

After, long after when Laur was asleep and everything even, I laid there wondering if Ethan was okay, if he was happy, and if I’d ever see him again.