‘Um,’ I say, clearing my throat a little, not really sure whether to tell Jesse whether my dinner is cancelled or just get dropped off at the restaurant and pretend everything is fine.

‘Yeah?’ Jesse says, looking over.

My face is red, I can tell. I’m hot with anger, and embarrassment, and pain, and I’m not very far away from crying, even though this is the kind of thing I have vowed never to cry over, and it’s not even in the top ten of ways Dad has let me down. It’s nothing, it’s just a dinner, I can go home and lie in bed with a heat pad now, I should be happy, I am happy, I just need to get past all the other feelings first.

‘Do you want me to park or just drop you out the front?’ Jesse continues, when I don’t say anything.

‘Well, my dad just texted me to cancel, actually, so you don’t need to, we can…we can just drive home,’ I say, babbling, not knowing how to finish the sentence.

‘What? Your dad cancelled your dinner? The one we’re driving to right now?’

‘Yeah, he’s caught up with work stuff. We’ll have brunch tomorrow.’

We won’t have brunch tomorrow. Dad knows it, and I know it. He’ll be busy or hungover or something will happen. I roll my eyes at Jesse, so he can see that this is a minor annoyance but mostly nothing. It’s nothing, no problems. Not a big deal, as Jesse would say. My face still feels warm, I know my skin is betraying me right now, and I’m chewing on my thumbnail.

‘That’s really shit,’ Jesse says. He’s looking at me with pity eyes. I do not want pity from him, not now, not ever.

‘What can you do?’ I say, shrugging, looking out the window, pressing into my abdomen.

‘I get it,’ he says.

I turn slightly towards him.

‘Get what?’ I say, after letting the silence hang for a while.

‘What it’s like to have a shitty Dad,’ he says. If he thinks I’m going to ask him questions, be his therapist, he can think again. I don’t want him offering me crumbs of his own trauma.

‘Congratulations. Let’s start a club,’ I say.

‘Great, I’ll be president and you can be secretary,’ he says, and I can’t stop myself glaring at him, at the very idea he would have the leadership role over me in our fictional club, even though I know he only said it to get that very reaction.

He looks at my face and laughs.

He thinks he knows me so well. I swallow down the sarcastic remark I was going to say in return. I don’t have the energy.