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Derek’s thirteen-year-old self had been sorting his music into the new CD binder Olive had gotten him for his birthday when his dad knocked on his door. Derek had expected the usual joking complaints about the “whiny” music playing too loudly on his stereo or maybe mild parental harassment about a recent disappointing math grade.
But on this night, his dad sank down on the floor beside Derek’s desk. “I never wanted to be this kind of dad.”
Confused and already a little scared, Derek dropped the CD binder and sat on the floor facing his dad.
“I wanted you to be a normal kid in all the ways I didn’t get to be.” His dad scanned Derek’s walls lined with the cut-out band posters that sometimes came in Olive’s magazines. “My parents put so much pressure on me. I wanted you to be a kid. But now… I understand why my parents did what they did. Their expectations made me stronger. They knew when they left Taiwan and came to this country that family is the most important thing, and no other help is guaranteed. But for you… that wasn’t the kind of parents your mom and I wanted to be.” He fell silent.
“Dad, what’s going on?”
His dad’s face seemed etched with more wrinkles than usual. “I’m sick, son.”
Sick?
As if the word sick tied Derek’s vision to a freight train zooming into endless tunnel, the bedroom around him faded.
“We hoped we could keep this from you a little longer. Michelle and Amy are too young to understand, so a lot’s going to fall on you.” He leaned forward, a hand on each of Derek’s scrawny shoulders as if he needed Derek to understand exactly how heavy this would be. “Your mom’s not doing well. Keeping this from you is making it worse for her.”
Derek’s head bowed over white-knuckled fists.
“Do you understand what I’m asking?”
At some point, Derek had started crying, so his mouth felt too full of salt and bile to answer. Derek’s dad took off his thick-framed glasses and held them in his lap. He pulled Derek’s forehead to his and let Derek cry as much as he needed to. Derek had no idea how long they sat that way.
Hearing Derek’s mom call from downstairs, his dad got up to leave.
Derek stood and grabbed his dad’s arm. “Are you going to die?” Only a stupid, punk thirteen-year-old would ask the question like that. Like it was happening to Derek and not actually happening to his dad.
But when his dad looked down at him, a little bit of his normal self had returned. “I’d say my odds are about fifty-fifty. You know…” He dragged his knuckles softly across Derek’s face in a joking motion that he had used so many times before. “In a casino, that kind of luck is unheard of.” He thumbed Derek’s nose. “Your mom doesn’t approve of gambling, so don’t tell her. But yes, Buddy, I’d bet on me.”
Dramatic music swelled.
Derek blinked. At some point, Derek must have returned to the bed in his living room. Dylan leaned on him with his Ireland-tattooed arm resting across Derek’s thigh. He could feel that arm’s warmth through the fabric separating them.
On the screen, Billy Crystal ran through the streets on New Year’s Eve. The movie was almost over.
He grabbed his phone and swiped to his text chain with his mom. She had been going through old albums recently and sent him a bunch of low-quality pictures of old photos. He scrolled up to a particular one. His dad, in his early twenties, smiling behind a tiny Derek holding up a red envelope on Lunar New Year. Preschool Derek was cheesing like the cash inside was a check from Ed McMahon.
His dad was ten years younger in that photo than Derek was now.
Dylan did a double take at Derek. “You okay?” He had mouthed the words so as not to disturb Felicity, who had apparently fallen asleep next to Gus. He kissed him once.
“Yeah.” Derek shifted his body closer, smiling and letting their fingers tangle together. “I’m okay.”
Chapter 27
When Derek woke up, he reached instinctually toward the other half of the bed.
Empty.
Derek was still in his clothes. The shorts and T-shirt were tangled and slightly sweaty from being slept in. He vaguely remembered falling asleep against Dylan’s chest while Tom Hanks spelled F-O-X, and Dylan saying he should go take a “nap” in the actual bedroom. He must have made it upstairs.
He pried one eye open to check his phone.
DYLAN
You passed out at 5:30. I took Gus for his walk and gave him his meds and food.
DYLAN