"You don't have to worry about me," I told him. "I have a dad of my own, you know."

"I know." He did look at me then. "It must be hard, not having him around."

"It's not like he's dead."

"Of course not." He looked like he wanted to put his hand on my shoulder. Don't ask how I knew; I know what it looks like when a man wants to lay hands on me.

"He didn't leave because of me, if that's what you were thinking."

"It wasn't."

"My mother made him think he was worthless. Tell someone that enough and they start to believe it."

He drew on the cigarette, breathed out a puff of smoke.

"I hope you don't believe it, Jimmy."

"Excuse me?"

"You shouldn't let her make you feel worthless."

I was doing you a favor. He needed someone to remind him that he existed, that he wasn't just a figment of your mother's imagination. Let someone start believing they're not real and, poof, one day they disappear. You wouldn't want that, Dex.

We both know the last thing you want is to be like me.

"Mrs. Dexter has a lot on her plate these days," he said. "And I'm not making things any easier."

That was when I knew I'd said something wrong, "Mrs. Dexter." Because usually he called her Julia, as in Julia hates it when I . . . or Julia would have a cow if she knew I . . .

"Maybe I should go," I said.

"Maybe you should, Lacey."

I didn't mind that he said it. Only a screwup lets some strange girl insult his wife. I could be generous, because it didn't change the truth: I was his secret, and he kept it. He lied to you, and he lied to your mother. I was his truth. I'm not saying that meant he loved me best. But it has to mean something.

MY FATHER IS NEVER COMING back. I know that. And my resulting daddy issues are not subtle. I didn't need a therapist to tell me I was looking for paternal replacements, that the "inappropriate" encounter with my band teacher or the time I let that McDonald's fry guy feel me up beside the Dumpster was all about filling a hole. Pun unintended, guttermind.

But I don't need a father, Dex, so don't think I was trying to steal yours. Just borrowing him for a bit, just chipping away a little for my own.

"I'll probably get fired soon," your dad told me once when I asked why he was around so much during the day. Not like the movie theater does such big business in the afternoon, and not like managing the place qualified as actual work, but still. "Though if you want to know a secret-"

"Always."

He leaned in, and the whisper floated on a trail of smoke. "I'm thinking I might quit."

He dreamed big: inventions he didn't know how to build and franchises he didn't have the cash to open, dreams of starting up his band again or winning the lottery or getting salad bar botulism and suing his way into a fortune. He's the one who made you a dreamer, Dex, and maybe that's why your mother never seemed to like you very much, either.

I told him he should go for it. That I would.

"Yeah, well, you don't have a mortgage." He sighed. "Or a wife."

I was starting to think it wouldn't be long before he didn't have a wife, either.

"I shouldn't have told you all that," he said. "You can't tell Dex. We good on that?"

It was insulting. Had I told you any of the other things you weren't supposed to know? Like how he'd proposed to your mom because he thought she was pregnant, and when their bundle of despair turned out to be a stomach virus, he went through with it anyway. He wasn't an alcoholic, but he was trying his best. He'd gambled away your minuscule college fund on some stock scam before you were old enough to notice, and that was the last time your mom let him touch the checkbook. He liked the stillness of two A.M., when the house slept and he could imagine what it would be like if you were all gone. Sometimes he stayed awake till dawn, imagining himself into that emptier life, the songs he would write, the coke he would snort, the roar of his engine on the open road.

"They make me take these pills," I told him, to prove myself: a secret for a secret.

"What?"

I didn't tell him how it started, after my mother found me in the bathtub, the water pink. "You know how it is, you do one thing people don't understand, and they freak out and drug you up like you're some kind of crazy person having daily chats with Jesus and the man in the moon."

"Were you?"

"I don't fucking see things that aren't fucking there," I said.

"I meant, were you some kind of crazy person?"

Then I had to smile. "You're not supposed to say crazy. It's offensive."

He held up his hands, like excuuuuuuuse me. "So sorry. Were you nuts?"

"Wouldn't you go a little fucking nuts if everyone you knew was calling you crazy?"

It must have been lonely for him in that house, without anyone who knew how to make him laugh.

"So they put me on these pills," I said. "One a day to keep the little dark uglies away."

"Do they help?"

I shrugged. They didn't stop the nightmares. They didn't make it any easier to breathe when I thought about the woods.

"Dex doesn't know," I said.

He slipped a finger across his lips, then X-ed it over his heart. "Hope to die," he said.

"You're not going to . . . You won't try to keep me away from Dex, now that you know I'm totally fucked-up?"

"I think maybe it's good for Dex to be around some fucked-up people," he said.

No one had ever said I'd be good for someone. "You really think that?"

He sucked down the last drops of whiskey. "I have to, don't I?"

I reached out.

I took his hand.

For a few seconds, he let me.

"Lacey," he said.

"Jimmy," I said.

He let go.

"I shouldn't have done that," he said.

"I did it," I said.

It's just something dads do, right? They hold your hand. They hug you and let you lean against their chest and breathe in their dad smell and tickle your nose against the dad hairs poking out from the hole in their ratty dad shirt. There's nothing fucked-up about wanting that.

SO THERE I WAS, THAT last night, everything I loved gone to ash in the backyard, the Bastard praying for my immortal soul, and when I got the hell out of there and came to find you, there was no you there to find. You'd left without me, and the only one home was your father, beered up and dreaming in the still of the night.

He came out to the car, wanted to know what I was doing there, where you were if you weren't with me, and that's how I discovered that you didn't sneak out; you just asked permission. Good girl to the bitter end. He was the one who'd broken the rules.

I would have left then-come for you-but he said, "You okay, Blondie?" and he looked so worried, so dad-like, that I couldn't lie.

We sat on the curb.

"Tell me," he said, and said again, and I couldn't, because I don't believe in breaking the fucking dam.

I wouldn't have told you, either, probably, but only because if I'd told you about the Bastard, how I felt like Kurt was dead, like I was dead, hollow inside and just fucking done, there would have been a scene and you would have fallen apart; I would have had to be the tough one, all It's okay, don't cry, squeeze my hand as much as it hurts, and you would have been the one to feel better.

I'm not blaming you, Dex-you are what you are.

You are not the strong one. So I have to be.

"I can't go back there," I said.

"Home? What happened? You want me to call someone?"

"God, no! Maybe-maybe I can just live here with Dex." I laughed, like it was a joke. He looked like I'd asked him to fuck me.

"Kidding," I said.

"Let's call your mom," he said. "We'll talk it all through. Figure it out."

"No! Please."

"Okay . . ." Maybe if we hadn't been sitting out on the street, in front of everyone, he would have rubbed my back, like dads do. "Let's go inside, then. I'll call Julia. She'll know what to do."

"Your wife? The one who hates me?"

"She doesn't-"

"Dex is forbidden to see me. Or did you forget?"

"She's upset," he said. "She'll cool off."

"Oh, yeah, I'm sure she'll be real cool when she finds out her husband's been palling around with the town slut."

"Don't call yourself that."

"You know what I mean."

"Lacey-"

"Face it, your wife hates me. And that's before she even knows about this."

"This what?"

"This." Like I was going to spell it out.

"Lacey."

"Jimmy." I said his name the same way he said mine, heavy and patronizing.

"Lacey, what, exactly, do you think is going on here?"

I snorted.

"This"-he wagged a finger back and forth between us: me, him, me-"is not a secret. Dex's mother is the one who thought you might need-"

"What? A new daddy? A good fuck?"

He cleared his throat. "Someone to talk to."

I was on my feet then. Fuck him fuck them fuck you fuck middle-aged middle-class self-satisfied judgmental oh-so-proud of their charity to the less-fortunate fuckfaces.

"So she put you up to it? What, did she bribe you? How many blow jobs is an hour with me worth?"

"Whoa. Blondie. Sit down. Chill."

Like he could just choose when to be a responsible grown-up. Like he cared about anything but making sure the neighbors didn't hear. When I didn't sit down like a good little dog, he stood up, but he couldn't look me in the eye, not now that he'd admitted it-that I was some kind of chore for him, a way to get out of cleaning the gutters.

"I guess this is good-bye, Jimmy," I said.

"Look, I'm obviously not handling this very well, but if you'd just come inside-"

"I can say good-bye right out here, no problem," I said, and when I opened my arms and he came in for the hug, I put my hands on his shoulders, rose on my tiptoes, tilted my head, and kissed him.

I don't care that he pushed me away, hard, or that he didn't say anything after that, just shook his head and went back into the house and locked the door between us, that when he finally saw the real me he ran away. I don't give a shit about any of it, but you might, because before he did all that? Before he remembered who he was supposed to be and what he was supposed to do? He kissed me back.

I CAME TO FIND YOU.

I came to find you and take you away, because I couldn't go home again, and after I'd done what I'd done, I couldn't very well let you go home again, either.