Vegas Boys

I jumped and gasped a little in surprise as my father's hand landed on my shoulder--it was as cold and hard and heavy as granite. I blinked away my tears as inconspicuously as possible and glanced up at him over my shoulder.

"I didn't see you come out here," I explained, grinning sheepishly.

"Sorry." The single word came from deep within his chest, a low grumble that someone who had never met Dad might not recognize as actual language. "Didn't mean to scare you."

His enormous hand slid off my shoulder as he bent down to retrieve my bags. I moved to help him, but he was already gripping all four of them and walking back up towards the house. At a loss, I wavered momentarily and then followed him inside.

Dad's house was deceptive: on the outside, it looked just like all the other houses lining the street, but I was sure that none of the other houses in the neighborhood could have been as extravagant as his on the inside. It consisted of two floors of sprawling rooms with cathedral ceilings, all filled with the most expensive furnishings available. And yet I suspected that it was a modest home for my father's income; my mother had insinuated more than once that Dad had more money than anyone but he would every know about, socked away in hidden places and invested in countless other projects.

My mother had been single until just a few years before, so I had grown up in less than average circumstances. To be suddenly thrust into this world of prosperity was a bit of a culture shock. Already, I wanted to be back home, in my closet-like room with my ragged posters and cluttered bookshelves. The ordinary shuffling of my dirty Converse on the pristine white marble floors made me feel embarrassed and out of place.

For his part, Dad didn't seem to notice my discomfort. He stopped at the foot of the wide stairs in the foyer to turn and give me a little smile that was unintentionally grim--he just wasn't used to making that friendly expression. "Your room's this way," he reminded me, and then turned and headed up the stairs, leading the way with my luggage in hand.

He set my bags down in the most familiar room in the house--my room. It was bright and cheerful and less imposing than the rest of the house. The marble ceased here to give way to soft white carpet; the walls were painted a pale yellow to match the little flowers dotting the bedspread on the old-fashioned bed in the corner. School pictures of my closest friends from freshman year--when I'd last stayed here--still lined the edges of the mirror above the dresser and the closet was still full of my old stuffed animals. This room, still so strongly reminiscent of my childhood, was the closest thing to home I had in Vegas.

Dad managed another stiff smile and ducked out of my room, mumbling something about giving me time to settle in. As soon as his retreating footsteps could no longer be heard, I shut the door and curled up on my bed and cried silently to myself. Dad was right: I was settling in--settling in to a routine that persisted for weeks and weeks. That summer, I cried myself to sleep every single night.

-----

Later that night, I was roused from the miserable stupor I'd fallen into once the tears subsided by a soft tapping at my door.

"Yes?" I called hesitantly. My voice cracked and broke embarrassingly.

The door swung open silently and I heard my father's rumbling voice. "Are you hungry?"

I hadn't noticed it before, but now that I thought about it, a gnawing hunger was nagging at my empty stomach. I sat up on my bed and rubbed the tears out of my eyes quickly, then looked up at my father and managed to smile. "Yeah, kind of."

With a sweeping motion of his wide hand, Dad waved me past him and out of my room.

I had been expecting to have some kind of dinner at home--at least frozen food or a pizza or something--but Dad walked right past the kitchen and headed for the front door. Shrugging a little to myself, I followed him out of the house and down the front walk to the driveway.

As it was late June, sunset was slow arriving, and it was still light out at seven o'clock; the hot desert sun simmered on the blacktop and raised visible, glistening waves of heat that hovered just above the pavement. I had only been outside for a few seconds, and already I was sweating. Relieved at the cool interior of Dad's pristine Lexus, I wondered if I would ever get used to the heat.

"What do you want to eat?" asked Dad, turning his steely blue eyes on me.

I shifted uncomfortably under his gaze. "I don't know. I don't really care."

"We can go wherever you want." He smiled a little--the gesture was warmer than it had been earlier, out of practice. "It's your first night here. It's special."

I shrugged. "I don't know. Italian...?"

"Italian it is, then." Dad grinned affectionately at me and for a moment I felt like maybe everything would be okay after all.

And Mom's right, anyway, I reminded myself as we inched our way through heavy Saturday-night traffic, into the heart of the city. It's just a few weeks. Summer will be over before I know it.

-----

There wasn't much to talk about over dinner. I felt like I was in a formal meeting with a teacher or potential employer, rather than eating out with my father.

At first, I was supremely uncomfortable, but after a while I began to get used to his quiet--if large--presence. He was the type of person who only spoke when the need arose, and that was fine by me; I wasn't much of a talker myself, and I was in too much distress at the time to be bothered with small talk anyway.

We discussed the basics. I explained that my mother and her new husband, Chris, were to spend the summer finding jobs and an affordable apartment in New York City, and that Mom thought it would be killing two birds with one stone for me to spend the summer here in Vegas: I would get to bond with Dad, and I wouldnt have to be bored in New York in the meantime (what made her think I wouldn't be bored in Vegas, I have no idea.) I didn't mention the fact that this was obviously just a good excuse to spend the summer alone with her new husband.

Of course, Dad had already heard all about it from my mother, but somehow it reassured me to say it out loud myself. As if I needed to explain it to myself more than anything.

The truth was, I felt betrayed. I had always been all my mother had until she met Chris. I had always been loyal to her; I had always looked out for what was best for her, and now she was only looking out for herself. I felt like I'd been dumped here like an unwanted reminder of my mother's past--like the discarded half of the old wedding picture she'd ripped down the middle. And for all the guilt in her eyes and all her reassurances and excuses, I knew that she was happy now, wherever she was with Chris, in New York. Happier than she would have been if I had been with them, too. Happy to be rid of me--even if she wouldn't admit it.

'I'm just a leftover,' I thought as I watched the waitress take our plates away when we were done eating. 'Cast aside and forgotten.'