Read Online Friends Like Us by Lauren Fox - Free Book Online

vacation. This was going to be the big one, the big splurge: Austria, where Stan’s grandparents had come from; France; Italy. We had already gotten our passports. I’d spent my babysitting money on travel guides and sketch pads and a leather-bound European trip diary. But one night, a few weeks before we would have left, Stan and Fran called us into the living room and told us that the vacation was off. Just like that. Stan clasped his hands behind his back and told us that an important businesstrip had come up for him during the exact same two-week period, that he had to go to Albany and couldn’t get out of it, that he was terribly, terribly sorry to disappoint us. Fran sat on the edge of the ottoman looking ashen.
    “Willa,” she said. “Seth. We’ll reschedule the trip. I promise we will.” She covered her face with her hands, and we knew not to ask any questions.
    In the restaurant, a waiter rushed past our table; glasses and silverware clinked. “Dad,” I said. I pushed my plate away. My appetite had died, had been crowded out by the tidal wave of disappointment and disgust that was washing over me. “God, Dad.”
    Lesley looked at me, her pretty, lined face a relief map of confusion. “What’s wrong, honey?”
    I shook my head. Nothing was her fault. Still, I wanted to stab her with my fork.
    “Will,” my father said, and I turned to him. I thought about how this could go; I thought about how if he apologized, after all this time, I might never talk to him again: I would look back in thirty years and say, That was the day I stopped talking to my father. He kept his small brown eyes fixed on me as he reached for Lesley’s hand. “You know that things have turned out for the best for all of us. I think you do know that.” He leaned over to Lesley and kissed her on the cheek, and she turned her face to him, surprised and pleased. “Well, it’s not always easy to do the right thing,” he said. “We take so many wrong turns.”
    Lesley, still smiling to herself, still a bit bemused, turned her attention back to her garden salad.
    “Love can be ruthless,” he said. He ran his hand through his hair, which was full and curly and only just starting to go gray. “But we do what we have to do. We make our choices.”
    “I have to go,” I said.
    “Willa.”
    I got up from the table and thanked them for dinner and said I had to get back to study. The restaurant went blurry for a second, and I gripped the edge of my chair.
    Stan stood up and walked around the table and put his arm over my shoulders like a man who would not, in fact, apologize for his own happiness, not even to his daughter. And what could I do about that? How could I argue with it? I leaned into his embrace, but only for a second. “Okay,” I said. “See you.”
    When I got home I took one look at the birthday cake I had baked, and I wanted to stuff it down the drain, but I also wanted to call Stan and tell him to come over after all. I stared at that lopsided chocolate cake for a full five minutes, and then I carved myself a huge, crumbly slice of it. I called out for my roommates, who were studying; I called out, “Guys, cake break!” and they came, and slice by slice, we ate the whole thing.
    But what seems jagged and wrong at nineteen can change, over the years, and seven years is a long time to think about a thing, to turn it over and over in your mind. My dad and Lesley are happy. My mom and Jerry are happy. Seven years is long enough to turn an excuse for the worst kind of behavior into a flawed nugget of wisdom. Take it or leave it. It had always been up to me.

Chapter Seven
    “You have to acknowledge your inner truths,” Seth says to me. It’s been a week since he was here last, and he’s slumped at my kitchen table again; he’s unshaven and wearing the same frayed blue T-shirt and sweatpants he wore last week. For a moment it seems possible that he has never left. Right now he’s methodically dipping his index finger