My ears were ringing the longer the silence lingered in the room. I can see Jennifer’s shocked expression turn quickly into anger. I only glance over to see my dad’s face; his is harder to read.
“I know you were not in my studio with that fast-ass girl!” Jennifer spat out.
“Don’t call her out her name!” I yelled back, immediately feeling my body tense up. “She has nothing to do with this–“
“Get dressed and meet me upstairs,” my dad said in an ominous voice. I was grateful that he wasn’t yelling at me, but I know that would quickly change once I got upstairs. I looked at Sophie coming out from her hiding place slowly. I tried to walk over to her to help put her sweater back on, but Jennifer immediately shut that idea down.
“Nuh-uh, she’ll be alright,” Jennifer said, walking over toward us. “Go upstairs, and I’ll make sure she gets out of here.” I looked at Sophie; she looks terrified and I feel like absolute shit because of it. I walked away from Sophie and towards the exit of the rehearsal room. Jennifer pointed towards the back staircase of the studio; the one that leads up straight to the house upstairs.
I walked up the back staircase that led to the kitchen area. I looked around and immediately saw my father sitting at the dining room table. Fuck. He looks up and spots me near the back door. There was no turning back now.
“Sit,” my dad said, looking down at his cellphone as he did. I didn’t want to have this conversation with him; who knows how this would turn out. I stood in place; it was like my feet were glued to the floor. My dad looked up at me when he realized I wasn’t moving. “Now.”
I walked over to the table, pulling out a seat from across the table. My dad flipped his phone upside down on the table before looking at me. I knew he was communicating with Jennifer through text message.
“What’s going to happen with Sophie?” I asked.
“Right now, you should be worrying about what’s going to happen with you,” my dad responded back. He was now visibly angry with me. “I give you an inch, yet you decide to take the whole fucking mile–“
“It really isn’t what it looked like,” I tried to explain.
“The fact of the matter is that you were here with a girl without anyone else home, Milo!” my dad shouted. “I trusted you to leave you home alone while we went out, and you broke that trust for some girl–“
“She’s not just some girl!” I spat back, feeling defensive.
“You’re right,” my dad agreed, leaning back in his seat. “Sophie is more than just some girl.” I swallowed hard, not knowing what he meant by that. “Which is what makes this situation far more worse.”
“You’re making it seem like did… it,” I said, avoiding saying the actual word. It was weird to have this conversation with my dad about a girl that I saw as my friend more than an hour ago.
“Sex? What’s wrong? Can’t say it out loud?” my dad crossed his arms along his chest as he asked. “You want to do grown up shit, but can’t say said grown up shit?”
“We weren’t going to have sex,” I spat back. “I’m not as stupid as you were with mom.” I wanted my words to string. I wanted him to know that I was nothing like him and that I knew better. I wasn’t stupid to do such a stupid thing like the stupid thing he did when he was my stupid age.
“Well it sure as hell was getting close to it,” my dad scoffed. “What do you think would’ve happen if we didn’t come home? Huh?” I didn’t answer him. I know he was insinuating that we would have gotten carried away. We would’ve gotten carried away. “Exactly.”
“You think you know me so well,” I commented, annoyed at the way my dad was talking to me. “You think you know what’s my next move and what’s best for me because you think that I’m so much like you—“
“I was 15 once too,” my dad interrupted. “And you want to know what I did when I was 15?”
“Yeah, I know; you never let me hear the end of it,” I said, annoyed. “If you regret doing it so much, then why didn’t you tell mom to just get rid of me? Huh? Since it seems like I robbed you of your teenage years or something!”
“You think that’s how I feel?” my dad said loudly, growing more angry the longer we spoke. “You think that’s why I’m so upset at what you did today?”
“This isn’t the first time you caught Sophie here with me alone,” I leaned forward, reminding him of what happened last summer. “So why are you making this time such a big fucking deal? Just ground me—“
“You think this is a game,” my dad spat out. “You think you know what you’re doing and you’re not capable of making the same mistakes as I did—“
“These are my mistakes to live by!” I yelled, cutting my dad off. Nothing was said after that; he just looked at me. Did he finally get the picture? Does he finally realize that I am my own person bound to make their own mistakes? He leaned back in his seat, speechless in a way. He finally sighed before he started to speak again.
“The thing you fail to realize, Milo, is that while your mistakes are your own to make, your mistakes are also universal ones. You are not the first person in this world to make these mistakes,” my dad explained as he adjusted in his seat. “And to be quite honest, this is your second time getting caught with Sophie in this house without one of us here.” I could feel his eyes dart into mine when he looks at me. “This time wasn’t a mistake.”
“Dad,” I whined, trying to get a word into the conversation.
“I don’t want to hear it,” he emphasized. “You want to act like a man? Then I’m going to talk to you like a man.” My dad gets up from the seat across from me and sits to the one next to me. I was feeling uneasy at this moment. “I know that you are infatuated with this girl. You are wearing rose-tinted glasses and nothing else around you matters besides spending all of your time with her. You are willing to jeopardize your friendship with Mollie because she’s dating someone that you don’t like and you’re getting romantically close to someone she doesn’t like.” I looked at my dad, swallowing the dry lump stuck in my throat. “I’m not caught up in your school drama, but I know my son.”
“But—“
“A mistake is when you do something that you ultimately regret doing when you are faced with consequences. The first time was a mistake; one that you should’ve learned from. This time wasn’t a mistake. It was a decision you chose to make.”
“She just came over to rehearse for the showcase, that’s all—“ I tried to explain to my dad what the circumstances really were, but the more my father spoke, the more I felt like he was reading into my soul. It was like he knew the answers to everything, and that was bothering me, because he wasn’t necessarily… wrong.
“Milo,” he simply replied to me. “If Jennifer and I didn’t come home when we did, would you have had sex with Sophie?”
“What?” I quickly said as if it was a reflex. “Why would you even take it to extreme like that? Sophie and I are friends—“
“Milo, I wasn’t born yesterday,” my dad stated, getting annoyed with me now. “I know you see Sophie more than just a friend, and I know you like her more than you are putting on. I know you are falling for her; quickly even.” At that moment, I felt my tongue tying itself in a knot. Falling for Sophie? Like… is this me falling in love with Sophie? How would I even know what that looked like? My dad sighed as his face softened. “I need you to answer my question, Milo. Did you invite Sophie over today to have sex with her?”
“No,” I said, knowing that was the truth. “I did not invite her for that.”
“Do you think it would have gone that far if we didn’t come home in time?” he asked. I didn’t know how to answer that question. We did things in that studio that we never did with each other before. I never saw so much of Sophie’s skin like that before, and I never showed so much of my own to another girl either. I never felt my skin get as hot as it did as it touched hers. I never kissed a girl like that before. I never felt those things I felt with her before.
“I… I don’t know,” I answered. “Sophie’s not that type of girl, dad.” He sighed as he leaned back on the chair, brushing his hair back with his hand.
“Neither was your mom,” my dad said under his breath. It got me super angry.
“Sophie is nothing like mom,” I spat out. “Sophie is smart and sophisticated and classy and—“
“Milo,” my dad stoically said. “You hold Sophie up on this pedestal because of how you feel about her, but if you feel this way about her, don’t you think she would feel the same way towards you? This isn’t about her character. I know Sophie is all of those things, but she’s human too that feels human emotions as intense as you do.” He briefly looks away and sighs, as if he’s gathering his thoughts to form the next sentence. “Despite what you want to tell me or not, but I know that you and Sophie will end up doing it.”
I take in everything that my dad is telling me in this moment. I can’t help but replay the entire day over in my head. I want to do nothing but hug Sophie to comfort her, say sorry for putting her in this situation and tell her that everything is going to be okay. I want to consider today a mistake, but I don’t feel bad for the time we spent together. I don’t think I ever could.
“I’m going to ask you again, Milo; and be honest or else we can’t move past this point.” my dad looks at me in the face, closer than before. “Do you believe that things would’ve gone to that point if we didn’t come home when we did?” I tried choosing my words carefully before I answered. What the fuck do you tell your dad in a situation like this? How do you finally allow yourself to feel the things you really feel? How do you honor what you feel without feeling like you’re also ruining the beauty of it at the same time?
My dad knows the answer; not because it’s taken me longer to answer, but I can’t help but look at him. I look at him not wanting to say anything, but in doing just that is telling him everything he already knows.
“I can’t stop you from doing what you’re gonna do,” he began to say. “I can only have these conversations with you to ensure that you do the right thing. My dad didn’t sit me down to have these conversations when I was young and very much in love with your mom. Instead, he kicked me out of the house long after finding out. I’m not going to do that to you.” This was the first moment in our conversation that felt calm. My dad was no longer trying to antagonize me for having Sophie over, and I was no longer trying to hide the fact that Sophie and I were dangerously close to doing… it.
Before I can say anything, my dad’s phone vibrates on the table. He checks his message; I know it was Jennifer. He began to get up from the table. “Jennifer just dropped Sophie off at her house—“
“Dad?” I said before he started to walk away. He turned around to look at me. “It really wasn’t Sophie’s fault. I was the one that invited her over. I wanted to hang out with her for my birthday today.” My dad nodded his head as if he already knew that was my true intention for what happened today. Nothing else was planned after that; everything just happened so fast. So fast, neither of us couldn’t keep control of the situation.
My dad turned around and held his palm out. Fuck.
“You’ll only have your phone on you when you’re at school for the next week,” he simply said. “In the meantime, we still have to get ready to go to Lydia’s tonight for your birthday.” I took my phone out from my pocket and put it in my dad’s hand. He placed it in his pocket and finally walked out of the dining room area, leaving me in there with nothing but my thoughts.
What do I do now with this newfound information? What do I do now knowing this is truly how I feel about this? Us? Her?
Letters From Liz. 