by Joey Bush
In the next few moments it was like the snow itself started to melt. Bob’s shocked face became more and more disgusted and I felt myself starting to shake. I looked at my mom; she wasn’t quite as disgusted as Bob was, but I could tell as the shock started to fall away that she was far from happy to have walked up on Jaxon and me making out right out in the open. It was the worst possible outcome that any of us could have thought of. Bob looked around and I saw he was making sure that there wasn’t anyone around—it was at least a big step up from the lodge before.
Bob walked the last few steps separating Jaxon and me from him and Mom, and I felt my heart beating even faster. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” His voice was tight and tense, his eyes full of rage. He strode right up to Jaxon and I and I could feel the air vibrating with his anger. Mom walked up in Bob’s wake, looking displeased but less revolted by the fact that she’d discovered us—still more shocked than angry, though I could tell that she was not happy.
I looked over at Jaxon. His face was red, his eyes were narrowed. He was clearly getting more and more upset. Bob started going off on Jaxon and me, saying things about how disgusting it was. I looked around feeling more and more panicked. No one seemed to be paying attention to us, but it was easy to see that Bob was winding himself up for a major tirade. I swallowed against the tight, dry feeling in my throat and turned my attention to Mom. “What are you guys even doing here?” Mom tore her attention away from Bob and looked at me, her eyes still full of worry and shock.
“We came to surprise you,” she said, her voice tight and more than a little angry. “We wanted to watch the two of you compete—we thought it would be a good opportunity to get together as a family.”
“So you didn’t even call us this morning? It would have been just as surprising then.” Mom scowled slightly.
“We were going to tell you after the meet, take you out to dinner. It was supposed to be fun.” I felt a lurch in my chest—a mixture of guilt and discomfort. I wanted to be angry at Mom and Bob both, but I could see things from their perspective. They had thought that Jaxon and I had worked it out so that we could just be brother and sister—so they hadn’t even considered the possibility that they’d walk up on us making out.
Bob was still half-yelling at Jaxon, keeping his voice low enough that at least the people still lingering in the stands nearby might not hear him. He was berating Jaxon, saying things that were almost as bad as what they had yelled at each other at the lodge during Thanksgiving break. I watched as Jaxon got angrier and angrier, his scowl deepening, and his lips getting tighter. He crossed his arms over his chest and stared at Bob, not breaking eye contact or speaking.
All at once, Jaxon seemed to have enough of it. He shook his head quickly. “I’m out of here.” He turned on his heel and stormed away and I was left to Mom and Bob, standing there, as the silence stretched out awkwardly between the three of us. I swallowed. As bad as it had been to watch Jaxon being ripped to shreds by his dad, it was somehow way worse to have my mom and Bob staring at me, silent, looking disgusted.
“So,” I said, gathering up the last shreds of my courage. “You were going to take us out for dinner?” Mom glanced at Bob, and then back at me. I wanted more than anything to make things right with my mom. Even with the way things had improved ever since the disaster that had come up during Thanksgiving break, we were still not totally okay. There was still that tension between us.
“We were,” Mom said, her voice still tight. I took a deep breath.
“Give me a chance to change and get cleaned up and let’s go.” I didn’t dare propose that Jaxon should come with us, or even that I would try to find him. In the state of mind that Bob and Jaxon both were obviously in, them being in a restaurant together was the last possible thing that would help. I would just do my best to make things okay with our parents and hopefully the whole situation would blow over in time for Spring Break. It was obvious that Jaxon and Bob had enough issues as it was; from what he’d told me when we finally got together, it wouldn’t have mattered one way or another that Jaxon and I were seeing each other. Bob was determined to find fault with his son, though I had no idea why.
I hurried to the bus while everyone else on the team was in the lodge, drinking hot chocolate, coffee, beers, or whatever they felt like having. Normally, I would have been thrilled to go out to dinner with my mom after a meet—but I was tense all over. I had no idea where Jaxon was. I knew the dinner would be tense, but I thought that if I could spend some time alone with the parents, maybe things could get better. Maybe at least I could get them to stop thinking about the situation between Jaxon and me. We were both adults; it was our business, whether they liked it or not.
I grabbed a quick, hot shower and blow-dried my hair. I wondered what Mom was saying to Bob, where Jaxon was and what he was doing. I tried to tell myself over and over that it would be okay, that Bob would calm down and that we’d have a civilized dinner, and then later on we could discuss the situation like rational people. I got dressed and grabbed a ride to the restaurant where Mom said they would meet me. At least, I thought, Bob seemed to have gained enough self-restraint not to try and humiliate people publicly—he had kept his voice down when we’d been by the stands. Maybe it wouldn’t be that bad. Maybe Bob would want to talk about anything else but the situation—maybe Mom would have gotten him to think about something else already.
Chapter Eight
I had hoped that things would be okay, even if they were monstrously tense. But even though I still had the situation at the lodge during Thanksgiving break and the horrific tension of winter break still very clear in my mind, I was not at all ready for the way that Bob was behaving when I got to the restaurant to meet him and Mom.
As soon as I sat down, he started in on me, and I could see from the flush in his face and the glazed look in his eyes that he’d had more than one cocktail. “It is completely disgusting, what you and Jaxon are doing. It’s unnatural. You’re freaks!” He turned to my mom. “Your daughter and my son are freaks.” I blushed bright red and looked around at the tables close to us; people were trying hard not to listen as Bob’s voice rose over the chatter and the clink of silverware.
“Why don’t we talk about the competition,” I suggested, taking a deep breath. “I’ve been working really hard—did you notice how clean I landed that last aerial? It was awesome.” Mom jumped in, agreeing with me, asking about my training routines, and in the interests of keeping things as calm as possible I kept from mentioning Jaxon’s help, talking about other members of my team. I told them about Lucy spraining her ankle in practice or about Eric mastering a particularly tricky grab.
Bob came back to the topic of Jaxon and me. “What the hell are you guys even thinking with that shit?” he asked, his voice just a little too loud. The restaurant wasn’t exactly bank-breaking, but it was still not the kind of place that anyone would have chosen to be put on the spot like that, and I could remember all too vividly the scene Bob had made in the lodge. I looked at my mom and wondered just what the hell she could possibly see in a guy like Bob, who would take the opportunity of getting to know his new stepdaughter better, of mending fences and trying to work through the tension of the situation and turn it into public humiliation. Does he do this to her? I wondered, thinking about Jaxon. If he could humiliate his own son and yell at him in public, what was to stop him from being an asshole to my mom?
Mom and I both did everything we could to distract him and change the subject. We talked about my classes, about the pickup games I played, about working out and going out and doing things. I avoided mentioning Jaxon at all, even though he’d been involved in my life at the campus long before we’d ever even hooked up. We tried everything we could, but Bob kept coming back around to the subject of how gross, disgusting, revolting, unnatural it was that Jaxon and I were “hooking up like two animals.” If I had thought that the little bit of self-awareness he’d had at the mountain was any kind of sign that he was
going to do anything to control his anger, I was totally wrong about it. Nothing that Mom or I said or did—even when we started throwing out comments about the food itself in desperation—seemed to make a dent in Bob’s determination to talk shit about his son, and to drag me through the mud with Jaxon.
At one point it was so bad that even Mom quietly told Bob “Darling, don’t you think this is a conversation for a different time? I mean, this is really public—I think everyone else would like to enjoy their meals without having all of our dirty laundry on their table.” Bob turned and scowled at her and lit into me again.
I managed to force down the food I’d ordered, eating in stony silence while Bob kept talking about the situation. With any luck, I thought, he’d get loud enough that someone would complain about him, and then we’d be kicked out—or at least he would. I thought it would be so much easier to eat my damn dinner if Bob was sent to the car. I was dreading the fact that I was going to have to ride with them back to campus; if Bob wasn’t going to shut up about the situation in the middle of a crowded restaurant, I couldn’t imagine what he would be like in a car alone. I looked at my mom; how could she stand to be around him? I wondered if Bob was any different with her. For the first time, I wanted her to divorce him not because it would make it easier to be with Jaxon but because it anyone would could be such a monumental asshole to someone he barely knew—and even more of one to his own flesh and blood—could obviously never be good enough for Mom. No matter how much she liked him and his stupid mansion and the heaps of money he spent on her, the guy was a complete and total asshole.
I felt myself getting angrier and angrier as it became clear to me that Bob was almost enjoying his tirade—that he was like any bully. He was treating our silence like a victory, his voice getting louder. I remembered all the terrible things he’d said to Jaxon and the way Jaxon had told me that every time his father lit into him he felt like he was still the stupid, angry, reckless teenager. Jaxon didn’t deserve to have a dad that treated him like shit. Even if I didn’t know what motivation Bob might have had—and I’m sure that Jaxon was not easy to deal with—I couldn’t think of anything at all that could possibly justify the kind of shit that Bob was slinging, the way he lit into even me. I finished my entrée and set down my napkin. All at once I had made up my mind.
I know the signs when I start getting too angry. Everything around me starts getting too clear, too vivid. It’s rare that I really get good and mad at someone—for the most part I feel like people just aren’t worth the energy. But listening to Bob go on and on about what an irresponsible waste Jaxon was, and seeing him pin me down and dare me with his stupid half-drunk eyes to say anything else while he was slinging mud at me too, I got to where I just couldn’t stand another minute of it. I drank down the last of my soda and set my glass down. I stood up in one quick movement, looking down at Bob. Mom was staring at me in shock, but I couldn’t have stopped myself even if I had wanted to.
“You know what?” I said, keeping my voice as much under control as humanly possible. “You’re an asshole, and I’ve had just about enough of listening to you talk, Bob.” I looked at my mom; she was staring in shock still, her face bright red, and I knew that she was just as humiliated by the thought of me taking a stand as she ever could have been at Bob making a scene. “I’m going to tell you something, Bob: Jaxon and me have absolutely nothing to do with you and Mom. We started seeing each other a long time before you guys got married, and we’re seeing each other because we’re in love with each other, simple as that.”
“Young lady, I am not finished talking to you,” Bob started to say. I held up a hand.
“Yes, Bob, you are finished talking to me, because apparently all you have to talk about is how screwed up I am, and what a fuck up Jaxon is, and frankly it was a hell of a lot more interesting the last time you launched this tirade months ago. You don’t have any new material so you might as well shut the hell up and listen.” Bob sputtered, setting down his silverware. I saw the angry look in his eyes, and part of me felt a flicker of fear—where did Bob draw the line? Jaxon had never mentioned his father getting physical with him but it wasn’t hard to imagine Bob losing his shit completely and going off that way. But I was tired, I was angry, and I’d had enough of tiptoeing around what I wanted because our parents were disturbed by what was going in between Jaxon and me.
“Jaxon and I are grown-ass adults, and if we want to see each other, we absolutely will, and there is nothing that either of you can do about it. Kick us out if you want to; I don’t think either Jaxon or I give a single fuck about it.” I took a deep breath. My hands were shaking, but I didn’t want to show a single sign of how emotional I was about the whole thing. “By the way—if you really have such a problem with us seeing each other, it might have been a decent idea to make sure we knew the two of you were seriously dating when it happened, instead of presenting us to each other as step-brother and step-sister long after we’d already met and hooked up. What kind of adult pulls that shit? You guys were dating what—a couple of months when you got married? Are you kidding me that it never occurred to either of you that with kids going to the same college, they might have already met?” Mom put her silverware down and looked at her plate, biting her bottom lip and looking thoroughly humiliated; but the thing that was strongest in my mind was getting back at Bob for everything he’d said to both Jaxon and me.
“I’d also like to point out that really, from what I’ve seen, you’re a miserable damned father. Jaxon would honestly be better off poor and on the streets than living with a guy who thinks it’s so much fun to tear him down constantly. I can’t even imagine how much he hates you—I’m ready to hate you and I’ve only known you a couple of months!” I took a deep, shaking breath. “If I were in his position I’d be in jail for killing your ass by now, and I don’t know why he isn’t.” Bob’s eyes widened as he stared up at me. I shook my head.
“Look, you asshole. All you do is make your son miserable and humiliate him in public and around people who care about him. From what I can see, even with all the shit he was involved in as a teenager, Jaxon is at least a million times better as a person than you could ever hope to be. As far as I’m concerned, if you and Mom got divorced tomorrow she would have wasted far too much time with you because you’re a miserable fucking human being who deserves to die alone. How about instead of insulting and humiliating people you’re supposed to love and care about, you grow a damned heart or maybe even a soul and actually—oh, I don’t know—give a damn about them?” I took a deep breath and exhaled. Abruptly I had nothing more to say at all; every last bit of my pent-up rage towards Bob was spent.
I realized that everything around me had gone completely and totally silent. Where only the people at the tables nearby had been able to hear Bob’s remarks about how terrible Jaxon and I both were, how disgusting it was for us to date, it seemed as though everything in the restaurant had come to a screeching halt sometime during my tirade. I felt the blood flood into my face. I glanced at my mom; she was still staring down at her plate, but the look on her face was a mixture of hurt and humiliation, rather than just embarrassment. Bob was still staring up at me in shock, his eyes wide, and his mouth slightly open.
I felt exhausted and completely humiliated. I couldn’t stay in the restaurant for a single moment longer. I took a deep breath and swallowed against the tightness I felt in my throat. It seemed like every last person in the restaurant was staring at me; there was no way I could sit down and have dessert, or pretend like nothing had happened. There was also no way that I was going to give Bob even a momentary opening to react to what I had just said—I could only imagine what he would be like if I showed even the slightest sign of backing down. I picked up my purse and looked at Mom again. “I’ll call you later, Mom. Have a safe trip home.”
I walked to the door, and as I opened it to go out, the restaurant seemed to come to life behind me; everyone was suddenly keenly interested in pretending like noth
ing had happened at all. I shook my head as I walked out of the door. Fuck, I thought, stepping into the cold with the realization that Bob and Mom had been my ride. How the hell am I going to get back to campus?
Luckily for me, some of the people who had been competing that day were still on the mountain, not quite ready to end their partying and celebration. I called one of the boarders who’d given me her phone number and begged for a ride, telling her only that I’d gotten separated from my team, that I’d had a situation with my parents that had gone nuclear, and I needed a ride back to the town the college was in. I remembered that it would be on her way. “Yeah sure, get to the lodge and I’ll give you a ride.”
I had just enough time for a beer to try and calm my frazzled nerves before she and her friends set off to get back to where they were going to school, a few miles north of the campus I lived on. I didn’t tell them anything at all about the situation with Mom and Bob, but kept talking about the tournaments to come and how exciting the day had been. They asked me questions about Jaxon—they hadn’t missed the fact that Jaxon and I were obviously an item—and I kept my perkiest, happiest act in place, telling them about how we’d ended up on the team together, how he was helping me to get better as a snowboarder.
I was exhausted—I would have been tired down to my bones even if Mom and Bob hadn’t shown up, even if there hadn’t been a disaster of a dinner to come after the long day of competition. I tossed my new friend some cash for gas as a thank-you for giving me a ride, and bought her a coffee when we took a pit stop. The only thing I wanted in the world was to get to my dorm and to take a long shower and curl up in my bed. I kept thinking of all the ways that I probably made the whole situation worse.