“I love you,” he tells me. “I’ve always loved you. Whether you can believe it or not is up to you. I’m not here under false pretenses. I don’t want your f**king statement to the media. I don’t want your forgiveness. I just want you in my life. I want my son. If that means having to listen to your insults every goddamn dinner we have, fine. But I’d rather have that than nothing at all.” He spreads his arms wide. “Your decision, Ryke.”
I run my hand through my hair. I want to believe him. In the core of my soul, I want this all to end, and I want the f**king father that he claims to be. But beneath this unconditionally, f**ked up love—there is years and years of pain. How does that ever go away? “How am I supposed to accept you?” I ask, my voice low.
“Ask me anything. I don’t have a problem being honest, even if you don’t like my f**king answers.”
I don’t know why I realize it now of all f**king moments—but I curse just like him, just as frequently, just as badly. What does that mean? He rubbed off on me? He was around enough that he could influence me somehow. That even if he lied about me—he was there, trying to be a part of my life.
I take in my surroundings, the metal toilet, the sink, the bars behind my father, the grimy cement wall behind me. My father is giving me an out. I’ve only ever seen black and white when it comes to my family. But maybe this is too gray—maybe there’s no right and wrong choice. There are just decisions that will hurt my brother and decisions that’ll hurt me.
“Why am I even here?” I ask, needing someone to verify my suspicions.
He scrapes his finger against the pole, irritation pooling through his eyes. “That would be Samantha Calloway’s fault. She apparently emailed her friend mid-flight to call the cops on you. She went a little f**king overboard on her anger.” He looks at me. “Her daughters are all a bit nuts, so you know exactly where they get it from.”
“She called the f**king cops on me,” I retort. “That’s not nuts that’s—”
“It’s nuts,” he rebuts.
“It’s f**ked up.”
“That too,” he says. “But what do you expect when you stick your dick around a fifteen-year-old girl when you’re twenty-two.”
I glare. “I didn’t—”
“I know,” he says. “Like Greg, I believe you, son. But Daisy is their youngest daughter, the last to leave. You’re encroaching on Samantha’s f**king territory.” He checks his watch. “Like I said, you’ll be out of here shortly. She has a few fake statements that’ll hold you in here for another ten minutes.”
“They’re going to book me soon.”
He nods. “They’re backed up in there. I’m sure they’ll want to fingerprint you in a half hour.” I do the math easily. He’s saying I’ll be out of here before they can even f**king charge me. He smiles at me, knowing I understand.
“I resisted arrest—”
“I talked to the officer. They’re dropping it.”
I breathe through my nose, my heart beating quickly. I don’t know why all of a sudden I feel so f**king overwhelmed. I realize that I’m thankful that he’s here. And the sad thing—I don’t want to feel that way. I’d rather stay angry. Why do I have to hate all the good parts of a person? My mom—I think she f**king taught me that. Every time I thought about my brother in a good light, she’d crush that vision, she’d focus on the bad, and so I did too.
I can’t do it anymore.
I rub the back of my neck. “What about Lo?” I ask my father, not willing to dodge this topic.
“What about him?”
“You’re f**king terrible to him,” I say in a deep breath. “What you say to him—it makes me sick. You beat him down, and then he returns to you like a wounded dog. I can’t be around you when you treat him like that.” I’d rather Lo not be around him either, but we’ve tried that way, and look where we are now. Lo loves our father, and he’s going to keep going back, even if it kills him.
My dad absentmindedly unclips and clips his Rolex watch on his wrist. “He’s not you, Ryke. He dropped out of college. He can’t even fill a resume. He shit his life away, and if that means I’m a little tougher on him, fine. But I’m not going to f**king watch him continue to throw his potential down the drain.”
“So tell him like a normal human being!” I scream. “Stop saying things like he shit his life away.”
“This isn’t about Loren. This is about you and me,” he refutes, cutting off that topic. As if there’s no room to even discuss it.
Fuck him. “If you love him, like you say you do, you’d support his sobriety and you’d stop tearing him down every chance you get.”
He glares. “If I didn’t motivate him, he wouldn’t be where he is. That’s love. You’ll understand when you have your own children.”
No f**king way will I ever raise my kids like him. Fuck that.
I stare at my father for a long moment. He will never change. He is so f**king rooted in his beliefs. It’s either I accept him like this or do what I’ve been doing—try to forget he even exists.
He opens the door further for me. “Are you ready to put this bullshit behind us, or do you still want to hold onto the f**king past?”
I’m frozen again. Stuck to the middle of the floor. There’s no nasty retort on my tongue. It’s those words that get to me the most.
Do you still want to hold onto the f**king past?
I’m living back there. Where my dad leaves my mom. Where I’m lying for years and years about who I am. Where I feel lost of an identity to call my own.
But I have all of that now. Fuck, I have more than I ever dreamed of.
I have a girl I love.
I have a brother.
I have a mom who loves me, even if she f**ks up.
I have a dad who wants to be there for me…I look up at him. Who is here for me.
And I’m Ryke Meadows. I’m a free-solo climber. I’m a celebrity. I’m a f**king sober coach. I have an identity that’s mine. No one took it from me.
I glance over at my dad again, and I want to see the villain, but I think, maybe, all this time the villain was me. For not moving past this, for not realizing that he’s free to make mistakes too. I don’t know if I’m willing to forgive him right now, but he’s not asking for that.
He’s letting me take all the f**king time I need.
I inhale strongly, and I say, “I may never see eye to eye with you.”
He nods. “I’d rather fight with you at every Sunday dinner than never talk to you again.” He shrugs. “That’s the goddamn truth.”
“You love me that much?”
There are f**king tears in his eyes. “More than you can possibly understand, son.”
A pressure bears down on me, and I ask him something that I’ve never f**king asked him in my entire life. I just always thought I knew the answer. Now I’m not so sure. “Would you be willing to stop drinking for Lo and for me?”
After a heavy silence, a single tear rolls down his cheek. I see now that he’s fighting an internal battle probably just as powerful and just as rebellious as the one Lo has, as the one I have.
What he does will change everything.
60