Page 47 of The Tryout

For a moment, I wonder if this is a trick question. If there’s anything a lawyer is good at, it’s trick questions. I decide to answer anyway.

“Well, I mean, not to put too fine a point on it, but I’ve got you and Dad. You gave me the money for the car, and when I had extra, I knew you wouldn’t mind if I got a couch and TV.”

“All on the same day?”

I blush.

“Maybe.”

Probably best if I don’t mention the Switch.

“Is Finn close with his family? What do you know about them?”

“I mean, not a lot. He doesn’t seem to call them or anything. I know he moved from a small town in Missouri to St. Louis when he was twelve, and that he was close with his Nana, but she died three or four years ago. He doesn’t talk about it a lot.”

The silence stretches, and I wonder what he hears in those words that I don’t.

“Did I ever tell you about the first time I met your dad?”

I smile, thinking of the story.

“Yeah, you and he got paired up for a group project sophomore year at UCLA, and the rest was history.”

He laughs.

“That…was not actually the first time I met your dad.”

As if sensing my confusion, he goes on.

“The first time I met your dad, he was rushing a frat and accidentally squirted me with a water gun full of paint. I was wearing this new pair of Levi’s that I’d just bought with my first paycheck from my job and I was so angry.”

I try to picture them back then, before twenty-some years together had changed them both, brought them closer together.

“I bet…I bet you really liked those jeans.”

“I did. And even more I liked that I had paid for them, with my own money. And then this rich dickhead’s telling me to just buy another pair as though that’s something I would be able to do on top of tuition and food.”

Something starts bubbling up, starting in the pit of my stomach. Shame.

“I’ve never paid for anything with my own money.”

He hums again, not disagreeing.

“And look, that’s the way your dad and I have wanted it. We didn’t want you to worry about your next tuition check or whether you could afford to drive a safe car. But, yes. That is an immensely privileged position to be in, and I don’t always think you’re as aware of it as you could be.”

A cold sweat breaks on out the back of my neck.

“So…how do I fix it?”

“Well, you start by going back home and letting Finn tell you what he’s feeling, and you don’t disagree with him, or tell him he’s wrong. You let him tell you, and then you change.”

“Is that what Dad did?”

“Do you think we’d be here if he hadn’t?”

CHAPTER ELEVEN

FINN