“I’m saying, we’re official boyfriend and girlfriend now. And we should have a deal. If you let me be me, I’ll let you be you. Free to be who we are, do what we think is right, even if it’s doing something for the other. In other words, if I had an issue with it, honey, I would have told you. And even as angry as you were, I sense you would have listened to me.”

At first, hell no.

Later.

He hoped so.

“But more,” she carried on, “I can’t say it sucked you were so angry on my behalf. It didn’t. Not even a little bit. And when you first told me you might come with me to share what you had to share, I wanted to see how that would go, when someone stuck up for me to Dad.” Her curls slid as she tipped her head to the side. “Does that seem childish?”

“No,” he said firmly.

She gave a small nod and went on.

“Even so, I think in a way we’re always little kids with our parents. And because of that, they always have the ability to do good things, make us feel better when life is crap, or we want them around when we’re sick because they give us comfort. But they also always have the ability to do bad, like what Dad does. On the other side of it, they always see us as their kids, and they’re the authority, so they might not listen. I think he knew he hurt my feelings when he called me that. I also think he felt badly about it afterward. But from experience, that won’t make it stop. Now I’m wondering, if someone else says, ‘Listen, that isn’t okay,’ if he’ll hear that and maybe realize it isn’t okay and stop doing it. Or at least try.”

“You have hope you can salvage shit with him,” Axl murmured.

“Well…he’s my dad.”

Yeah.

He was her dad.

“How about we see how it plays out?” he suggested.

She smiled at him, her unease not entirely gone, but it wasn’t as bad as before.

“That sounds like a plan,” she agreed.

He bent to touch his mouth to hers before they walked to the front door.

She let them in.

Once in, she called, “Hey, Dad!”

There was no response.

The place was nice, not anything like Axl imagined: run-down and unkempt.

Decent furniture. Clean. Ordered.

They moved out of a small foyer into a living room and there he was in a recliner, a Rockies game on.

He turned a surly face their way and Axl was surprised again.