Free Awkwardly Ever After by Marni Bates Page B

lower my standards to the point of kissing frogs.
    Â 
    â€”from “Promising Too Much,”
by Vida Condon
Published by The Smithsonian
    I walked home.
    I didn’t really see any other viable alternative, given that Isobel probably wasn’t speaking to me since I had ditched her with Spencer back at Dylan’s house. And the last thing Mackenzie needed while having a conversation with her dad for the first time in years was for me to call, asking if Logan could give me a ride.
    My mom was still at work and wouldn’t appreciate getting a phone call during business hours at Sew Creative. And it wasn’t as if my dad would be in any condition to give me a lift home, even if he was working weird shifts in the hardware store this week. Assuming that he was at home, he was probably on his third beer and his fourth episode of NCIS. Or maybe it was SVU.
    All of his TV shows blurred together for me. Someone was murdered. A concerned group of “good guys” tried to piece it all together. The case was solved. The theme music blared.
    I had a case for him to solve: the one of his deteriorating liver.
    That would be a much better use of his time.
    Then again, my dad wasn’t looking for a good use of his time. He was looking for . . . actually, I wasn’t quite sure. Numbness, maybe. Or maybe he had just been drinking for so long that he’d stopped asking himself that question. What he wanted was a beer. And then another.
    It didn’t matter that my mom and I desperately wanted to him quit.
    Still, I’d never asked him to stop.
    I had just accepted this as my way of life. Wake up. Make breakfast. Go to school. Come home. Maybe cook dinner. During most of the time we spent together, my dad would be quietly nursing a drink. We’d talk a little—stuff about my day, the idiocy of some people who couldn’t tell a Phillips head screwdriver from a wrench—normal, boring stuff like that, while he worked his way through the first one or two drinks. Then he would graduate to drinks three and four when I started making noise about going to my room to do my homework. He was usually on number six by the time my mom came home with a new quilt store sample project in her tote bag.
    Unless he switched to something a whole lot harder.
    Then there was no telling when I might find him passed out on the couch.
    But I had never confronted him about it directly. My mom and I had discussed staging an intervention a few times, but it never went anywhere. We wanted to give him an ultimatum, but we couldn’t cope with the consequences if he called our bluff. If he didn’t stop drinking, then we would do what exactly ? Leave him?
    He would be dead by the end of a week. Not from starvation or general incompetence, but because if the alcohol didn’t numb the pain of that rejection, he would use a bullet instead. That’s how I thought it would play out. And given the choice of watching my dad, the man I loved despite everything, drink himself slowly to death or getting that phone call from a neighbor that they’d heard a gunshot and that nobody was answering the door . . . yeah, I would pick the drinking.
    I still couldn’t shake Dylan’s voice in my head.
    He bailed.
    So had my dad. Maybe Dylan had a point. It was time for me to stop running.
    From everything.
    I barely paused to scan the recycling bin—five beer bottles, one bottle of cheap gin that he had consumed last night—before I took a deep breath and forced myself to unlock the front door.
    â€œHi, honey.” My dad’s voice didn’t have the faintest hint of a slur to it, which meant he hadn’t made it even halfway through his latest six-pack. Good. “How was your day?”
    I didn’t even know how to answer the question.
    Really freaking terrible. I mean, I got to spend time with this guy I’ve been crushing on. So that would have been great if I hadn’t just totally screwed it