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You only graduate high school once.
That’s what Mom keeps saying, keeps telling her she’ll regret not walking if she doesn’t. It’s not about walking across the stage or whatever, but Mom doesn’t seem to buy that, which is annoying. Even in the car after Louis and Doug headed into the stadium, she’d tried to explain that she just doesn’t want all the attention, and she knows her family draws attention, not just because she has three of the world’s dadliest dads: Mom’s a decently famous contemporary artist, and Dad’s a millionaire with an increasingly eccentric wardrobe and, oh yeah, got kidnapped last year and was in the news for weeks, and then there’s—
Well, this is kinda what she wanted to avoid, if she’s honest.
“Who the hell is that?” Caroline whispers from next to her, and Alma rolls her eyes and has two guesses immediately. She turns to follow Caroline’s eye line and sees Ed paging through the graduation booklet, wearing a slightly nicer version of what he always wears: black jeans and a t-shirt—this one is dark green with gold buttons, short sleeves cuffed further and showing off his tattoos like a nerd. Dad steps over to him in a blue suit (it’s a high school graduation Dad, not a wedding, she’d tried to tell him, but he’d just smiled at her and asked her which tie to wear), and he points at something, and Ed raises his eyebrows and smiles.
It kind of makes her mad, how happy she is for them. How she can just look at them and know: those two are together, and they really love each other. Ugh. It’s the same thing with Mom and Doug, and it’s so annoying. Like good for them, but Jesus. Not like she’s ever going to get something like that.
She doesn’t have time to make up a lie before an announcement plays asking people to take their seats. Fucking thank God, because she’s not ready to verbally deal with her friends fawning over Ed. It’s not like she’s been avoiding having her friends meet him, just their schedules never really line up, and that’s fine because her friends are feral teenage girls, and Ed’s got tattoos and a dark vibe and he’s cool-looking.
Emphasis on looking.
Because Caroline is gossiping excitedly to Nadya about a tatted goth DILF, gag, and Alma has seen Ed walk around with Mom’s curlers in his hair because he wanted to see what it would look like (actually pretty good). Also, he has a tattoo of a six-letter game of hangman on his arm that they play with an eyeliner pencil during long waits at restaurants because getting a table for six adult-sized people takes some time. He’s a fucking softy and a dork with a garden who hates bugs and builds cars, and that’s all way more interesting than the fact that he’s handsome and looks cool.
The ceremony’s boring. All of it’s boring. She’s just gotten to the good part in her book and had to leave it in the car, and sitting through this shit is multi-fold torture.
At the end of the whole thing, she stands chatting with Caroline and Nadya and wills her parents to stay away just a little longer.
No luck.
Dad waves from across the crowd, and she waves back, because it would be mean not to. And it’s hard to be mean to Dad anymore, since he’s been trying so hard. When she was a little kid, maybe she was spiteful on purpose, but she’s almost eighteen, almost an actual adult, drives a Mercedes for God’s sake, and her Dad’s a flawed, strange little man who loves her a whole hell of a lot. She knows that now. Honestly, knows it better since he didn’t die and fell in love for real. He’s the best Dad he’s ever been, and that makes her sad and happy at the same time, turns her guts into a complicated little knot.
“You know the DILF?” Caroline hisses as Nadya slaps her arm.
“Ew,” Alma mutters.
“Why didn’t you say!” Nadya squeals. “You have to introduce us.”
“He’s literally getting married to my dad,” Alma says, flat.
“Shhh,” Caroline hisses, and Alma sees her parents approaching.
“Yay!” Mom exclaims, throws her arms up and then hugs Alma tight. It’s embarrassing! But she’s never going to say no to a Mom hug.
“Congratulations, darling,” Dad says when they part, and he doesn’t give her the big obnoxious hug that she knows he wants to, so she does it instead, hugs around his middle and smiles to herself when he hugs her tightly back and rocks them in a little circle.
And she gets a hug from Doug—ha—and a firm pat on the shoulder from Ed, before she turns to Caroline and Nadya.
“You know my mom and Doug,” she says. “This is my dad and my—“ Her eyes go wide: don’t say stepdad. “Ed.”
She watches Ed bite his cheek and go misty-eyed, and her heart skips a funny little beat because she knows he’s got a sore spot about being a father just like Dad does, and she tries so hard not to bring it up. Fuck. They aren’t even married, yet, either, so it’s like—
“Congratulations, girls!” Mom says, sweeps them all into a hug that Alma only outwardly grudgingly accepts. Maybe she lets it comfort her for making Ed feel like crap. That’s her business.
Later, when they’re standing out at the cars, Ed leans against the Mercedes next to her.
“Sorry for earlier,” she says, picks at the little hangnail in the corner of her pinky.
“Nah,” Ed says, and he spins the little black part nestled inside the band of the ring Dad got him. Fucking thoughtful as hell, and there’s that twinge again.
“I wanted to,” she starts, then shrugs and clears her throat. “I wanted to call you my stepdad, but I didn’t want to upset you. And then I did anyway.”
“Ah, damn, kid,” Ed says. “You didn’t upset me. And neither would you calling me that.”
“You look like you’re about two seconds from crying right now,” she points out, and Ed laughs.
“Yeah, I do that,” he says. “It’s a happy thing.”
Oh.
Well, fuck.
“It’d make you happy? If I called you my stepdad?” She asks, glances over at him before looking at the pavement.
“Yeah,” Ed says. His voice cracks, and he clears his throat. “You can call me whatever you want.”
“I want to,” she says, quickly, then blushes.
“Hell yeah,” Ed says. “Cool if I call you my stepdaughter?” He asks, and Alma kind of gets what he means by his tears being a happy thing, and she nods. “Ah, shit,” Ed says, then he hooks his arm around her shoulder in a hug. And he’s good at hugs, just like Dad and Doug: warm and firm, but not squishy and stifling.
“Sorry for crying all over you,” she says, sniffling.
“Don’t apologize for crying,” Ed says, and she’s gonna start up again because that’s such a sweet thing to say, and he says shit like that all the time. “How’s it feel, being graduated?”
“Ugh,” she says, rolling her eyes. “Doesn’t feel any different.”
“That’s what your dad said, too,” Ed says, and she wants to wrinkle her nose and call attention to the double entendre just so she can be scandalized by it, just—
“What?” She asks.
“I didn’t graduate high school,” he says with a shrug. “Dunno what all this is like.”
“Oh,” she says, blinks a bit. She glances over, and he doesn’t look serious or upset or that weird blank look he gets when somebody brings up Grandfather.
“Oh, your dad was talking about Sunday waffles or something?” Ed says, and Alma gasps.
“Waffle Sundae Dinner?” She asks, and Ed laughs and nods.
“That’s what it was,” he says, and Alma grins.
Her ears are ringing.
And there’s.
Lights, flashing everywhere. What?
What happened?
Her head lolls against the back of the seat.
She’d been in the car with her roommate and her roommate’s boyfriend. Talking…
Beer run for a party?
Fucking hell.
She feels clumsy as she fumbles for her phone.
She’s shaking, and her seatbelt won’t unbuckle, and she yanks at it frantically for a few moments before she gets absolutely winded by panic.
Those are police cars and an ambulance and a fire truck, and Annie and her boyfriend are already out and—
“Alma?” Ed’s voice sounds rough, and she faintly feels a little guilty for waking him up.
“I think I’m in a car accident? There’s cops and shit.”
“Fuck,” Ed mutters. “Stede, hon, wake up.”
An unintelligible grumble from Dad, Ed mumbling something.
“Where are you, kiddo?” Ed asks, and she can tell she’s on speakerphone now.
“I don’t know,” she admits. “We were going to pick up a keg, I think.”
“A keg—“
“Not now,” Ed interrupts, and she’s so grateful for that.
“Quite,” Dad says. “Alma, darling, I have your location. We’ll be right there. I’m not waiting for the police to contact us.”
“Just sit tight. Can you do that, kiddo?” Ed asks, and she nods.
“Like, literally. I’m stuck in the seatbelt,” she says. “My roommate and her boyfriend are already out. I think. Fuck, I think he was drinking, but he said. Oh, look—“
“Hey, there,” a firefighter says.
“I’m talking to my dads,” she says, inanely.
“Cool,” the guy says. “I’m gonna get you out of here in a bit. Your door’s jammed, so we’ll have to get creative. Gonna have a paramedic come check you out first to make sure it’s safe, okay?”
“Alma, we’ll be there in ten minutes,” Ed says. “Don’t leave with anyone, okay? Wait for us.”
“Okay,” she says to both of them and clutches her phone to her ear.
“I’ll stay on with you, how ‘bout that?” Ed says, and she hears the garage door opening and the sound of the security system being armed.
“Ed, where are your keys?” Dad asks in the background as a younger looking paramedic slides into the front seat and leans into the back.
And Alma tries to do what they ask her to do while she listens to Dad and Ed getting in the car, and she’s starting to feel a little panicky, cold and shaking.
“Alright, they’re going to get you out of here, now,” the paramedic tells her after she’s poked and prodded and blinded.
“Sure,” she agrees. She feels a little like throwing up or crying. Both, maybe. She’s really starting to kind of vibrate? “It’s cold.”
“We’ll be there so soon,” Dad says. “And I’ll wrap you up in a great warm hug.”
“Yeah,” she says, voice catching because a hug from Dad sounds so nice.
“Here, can I hold that for a second?” The firefighter from before asks. And she stares at him, terrified to not have Ed and Dad in her ear.
“Go ahead, we’ll be there in like four minutes, Jesus, Stede. I know you’re not used to driving a gas-powered—“
“Oh, don’t start with me—“
“Mr. Lead Foot—“
Their affectionate bickering helps her catch her breath, and she carefully sets her phone in his palm so it doesn’t accidentally hang up. If she focuses, she can kind of hear their voices.
She crawls out over the center console and trips her way out. And the firefighter catches her, but her focus is on retrieving her phone, and she can hear Ed rambling as she raises it to her ear.
“—teach you to drive a stick, hon, it’s a basic skill, everybody should know it, what about the apocalypse, huh? Your only option for escape is a manual transmission piece of shit, you’re just gonna strip the—“
“I’m back,” Alma says. A scratchy blanket settles over her shoulders and she tugs it close.
“Hey, kid, how’s it going?” Ed asks.
“I can walk, so,” she shrugs.
She walks up the small embankment to the ambulance with the paramedic and sits on the boot with the blanket over her shoulders.
“Did you have anything to drink tonight?” The paramedic asks, and she glances over to the cops still hovering. She can’t see Annie or her boyfriend. “It’s just so we can check all your symptoms, make sure you’re okay.”
“I feel fine,” she says. And she does. Her hands are trembling. Besides, her parents are on the phone.
“Tell the guy, kiddo,” Ed says. “You’re not gonna get in trouble.”
“Like two beers and a shot,” she says.
“I see you,” Ed says, and then the call ends.
She hears a familiar engine and looks up. Ed’s out of the car before it’s even fully stopped, and she sees Dad yell at him about it, but even she can’t be too mad. She watches him fully glare at a cop who tries to stop him:
“That’s my fuckin’ kid,” he says, pointing at her, and shoulders past. She scoots off the ambulance boot and stands on wobbly legs as Ed scoops her into a hug. Fuck, it’s like. It’s a fucking Dad hug, holy shit.
“Get out of my way,” Dad says from further away, then as he approaches: “Oh, my darling child.”
Ed transfers her over to him, and she pushes her face into Dad’s shoulder and cries into his shirt, a paisley monstrosity that he had the decency to throw on a solid color pair of pants with. He’s ridiculous, and she’s never been happier to see him. And now that’s two Dad hugs, and the fear that’s been mounting can finally get out of her.
“That’s it, dear. You’re safe, now,” he murmurs, kisses the top of her head and holds her. “Here, shall we let this gentleman do his job so we can get you home?” He suggests, though he doesn’t make her stand up on her own, which is nice because her knees feel like jelly.
“Okay,” she says, and sitting back down is a lot easier with Dad helping her, standing next to her and holding her hand while the paramedic takes vitals and looks at her pupils again.
She kind of tunes out Dad and him talking, eyes sliding to where Ed is talking to one of the cops. He looks calm and intense and focused, that thing where he looks up through his brow. It’s kinda scary because she knows how Ed really is, knows his smiles and laughter and warmth, and that looks like somebody totally different, cold and calculating and angry.
“How does that sound?” Dad asks, and she blinks.
“Huh?” She asks, and he smiles warmly.
“Do you want to stay with us tonight?” He asks.
“Yeah,” she says.
“Not sure if you heard, but we’ve gotten the all clear to take you home,” Dad says.
She glances over to Ed, watches him shake the lady’s hand and send a wave over his shoulder as he walks back to them, and he looks normal again, just tired. She leans into him when he slings an arm around her shoulders.
“All good?” He asks, and Alma nods.
“I just want to go home,” Alma whispers.
“Of course, my dear,” Dad whispers, and Alma turns her face into Ed’s chest, and he hugs her close, and Dad rubs her back, and she feels safe as hell.
“D’you want company in the back?” Ed asks.
“Yeah,” Alma says, clings to his shirt like a child as they head toward his car.
“We’re meant to keep you awake a bit longer, dear. Are you hungry?” Dad asks as they all buckle in.
Alma’s grateful for the bench seat as she slides over and tucks herself into Ed’s side. It’s not even weird, which is awesome.
“Yeah,” she says, belated. She was kind of tipsy before, and they’d been doing shots… “Oh, man.”
“What?” Dad asks.
“He was. He was drinking,” she says, and Dad stops the car.
“He’s already getting booked,” Ed says, and Dad takes a deep breath and drives.
“Oh, my God, why did I get in that car?” She asks herself out loud, in disbelief. He’d seemed fine, and she’d believed him when he said he hadn’t been drinking. Like an idiot. “I’m an idiot.”
“I‘m sure that’s a bit of hindsight bias rearing its ugly head,” Dad remarks.
“I believed him. He said he was just drinking Coke,” she laments.
“Hey, come on,” Ed says, gentle. “You did good calling me.”
“I remembered you said if I ever got into trouble to call you and you’d come get me no questions asked,” she explains.
“So, you did, hell yeah,” Ed says.
“But I,” she sniffles. “I shouldn’t have gotten in the car.”
“No use in should, kiddo,” Ed says. “Shit happens, and that fucker crashing his car is his fault, not yours.”
“Okay,” she says, nods.
“Breakfast food or diner food?” Dad asks. Alma rests her head on Ed’s shoulder and shrugs.
“Could go for a milkshake,” she says. Dad hums and flicks on his turn signal. “You said he’s gonna go to jail?”
“Mhmm,” Ed hums. “Your roommate’s okay, though. Glad you were wearing your seatbelts.”
“Fuck,” she sighs. They’d just been talking about what songs to add to the playlist back at the house, what would be funniest or the most nostalgic. And now she doesn’t know what the fuck happens next.
“I know,” Ed says. “It’s like nothing’s ever gonna be the same again.”
“Yeah,” she says. She feels the tears flow, lets them leak down her face.
“It’s scary as hell, losing your sense of safety like that,” he says. “It’ll come back. Promise.”
She can hear the clock above the door from all the way across the room, flicking her in the brain every second while she tries to concentrate.
And it’s stupid because she knows all this shit, studied for hours about, and now she’s staring down at her blue book like she’s fucking Spongebob with the first word written and nothing else.
Don’t cry, don’t cry, don’t cry.
It’d be so fucking embarrassing to turn this shitty essay in with tear stains on it.
She takes a deep breath and wills it not to shake on the way out.
She knows what she’s talking about. Just has to put it to paper.
Fuck.
And then time’s up, and she’s only half way through, and she sits paralyzed as the rest of the class leaves, and her professor stands.
“Alma, you’ll have to turn it what you have,” she says, sympathetic but firm.
“Yeah,” she sighs, then closes the notebook and makes sure her name is there so she’ll get a fifty instead of a zero. At least she didn’t cry on it.
“You know, the student resource center could help you out,” her professor says, and Alma smiles tightly and nods, doesn’t trust her voice.
Oop, there’s a drop darkening on the front cover.
“Thanks,” she gets out, hands the notebook over, and leaves.
Her parents are gonna be so fucking disappointed in her. Graduated high school with honors, and now she’s struggling to finish a test in a freshman comp class. What a joke. She’s a fucking joke. Why’s she even going to college? She’s studying psych like every other freshman girl too chickenshit to admit they’re too dumb for anything more challenging.
Doug says she should study what she wants to study, that college can be about more than setting yourself up for a career. That’s good fucking news, because she has no clue what she wants to do tomorrow, let alone her whole life. And Doug says that nobody really knows what they want to do with their lives, that the idea of one day knowing is a made up thing insecure people use to feel better about the chaos.
Whatever that means.
She’s supposed to get dinner with her parents tonight, but she doesn’t want to leave her fucking dorm. As soon as she’s back, she kicks off her shoes and plops into the beanbag next to her desk. Single room for her, whoopee. Her roommate dropped out, and she got the option to buy out the spot instead of getting a new roommate, so. Yay, privacy!
Downside is everything else:
She’s lonely as hell. She has nobody to talk to, trades memes with Caroline and Nadya, but they both went out of state while Alma’s still in the city. She goes to her classes and her dorm and the dining hall and that’s fucking it.
It’s so quiet that it’s loud, and she wants to scream and doesn’t know why.
Her phone rings like it always does at four on Thursdays.
She glares down at it.
Dad’s dumb smile lights up the screen, and she really debates letting it go to voicemail. She could just lie and say she fell asleep after class.
“Hi, Dad,” she says.
“Hello, darling,” Dad says, and she manages a watery smile. “How has your day been so far?” He asks like he always does.
“I don’t think I’m good at college,” she admits.
“What? Nonsense,” Dad says, encouraging, and she sniffles. “Oh, dear,” he says.
“I didn’t finish an essay exam. I studied all week, and I even wrote a test essay that my professor said was strong. And then the time comes, and I’m sitting there staring at the paper like the words’ll just appear if I wait long enough,” she rambles. “I barely got half way before class ended. And then my professor said I should go to the student resource center.”
“That sounds upsetting,” Dad laments, and Alma sighs.
“I feel really stupid,” she says.
“What stalled you out?” Dad asks.
“I don’t know. It was like I could think all the words but couldn’t write them down. And then the clock got so loud it was the only thing I could think about,” she says. She sniffles and blinks away the sting in her eyes. “And this guy behind me was writing with a squeaky pencil, and I cried on my blue book.”
“Can I take you out for ice cream?” Dad asks.
“Yeah,” she says, then bursts into tears.
And she calms down eventually, and Dad picks her up in his red Prius and chats merrily the whole way. And they get soft serve and go back to Dad and Ed’s house and eat it on the back deck.
“Do you know, darling, I had similar issues in school,” Dad says.
“What?” She asks, because he’s fucking smart with all the numbers and shit.
“I’m far better at math, or reading or even presenting,” he says. “The actual physical writing down of things, though. My brain moves faster than my fingers.” He shrugs and pops a spoonful of peanut butter parfait into his mouth.
“Google seems to think I have ADHD,” she says, lets herself speak it into existence. Not like she’s been doing an obsessive amount of research, no binder in the second drawer of her desk full of studies and stories, highlights and sticky notes. Nope.
“Is that so?” Dad muses. “Ed does, as well.”
“I mean, yeah,” Alma says, glancing over at Dad and back to her ice cream. Like everything about the guy makes that obvious. “How’s he deal with it?”
“You could ask him,” Dad says, and she shrugs. Feels weird bringing that up out of the blue. “Hmm. Well, there’s a great many things, but I’d say the biggest help has been the correct medication.”
“Yeah? Do you. Do you think you could talk to him about it for me?” She asks.
“I could ask him if he’d like to talk to you about it,” he offers.
“Okay,” she agrees. “Yeah, I want to talk to him.”
“I’ll go see what he’s up to now,” Dad says, smiles at her and levers himself up with a groan.
“Old man,” she comments, and he scrunches his nose at her and shuffles inside.
Dad and Ed aren’t immediately visible when she goes back in to get some water. But she hears their muffled voices from upstairs, so she stands at the bottom of the steps and listens to the conversation that floats down.
“I’m not giving your daughter Adderall, Stede,” Ed says, and he sounds mad.
“That’s not—“
“Not what? She’s a kid, of course she’s gonna have trouble concentrating sometimes—“ Ed’s voice is getting louder, and that’s a little scary.
“That’s not what this is—“ And now Dad’s raising his voice to match. Fuck, her heart’s racing.
“Then what is it?”
“She needs help!”
“She’s a fucking adult—“
“Who needs help—“
“So go to a doctor about it, I’m not just gonna give her shit because you think she needs it!” Ed shouts, really shouts, and then it’s so silent her ears ring with it. “Fuck,” Ed says. “Fucking fuck, I’m sorry.”
“Ed, I think there’s been a terrible miscommunication,” Dad says.
“Gimme a sec, I’m.”
“Yes, take your time. Do you need space?” Dad asks.
“No,” Ed says. Alma hears a few measured breaths, knows because she counts the seconds of each part. Inhale-hold-exhale-hold. “Fuck, go ahead.”
“She asked me to talk to you,” Dad says. “To ask if you’d talk to her about your experience with it.”
“Fuck,” Ed curses. “Yeah, of course she did. And of course you weren’t. Fuck, Stede, I’m sorry.”
“I am, too,” Dad says. “I’m sorry I pushed you. I should have taken your no as it was.”
“I got defensive. It’s the. Y’know, I just get,” Ed stutters around a few sentences.
“She’s my daughter, Ed,” Dad says. “I would never. I won’t ever.”
“I know. I know, I just,” Ed stops again.
“Yes. I know,” Dad says, and Alma curses their telepathy because she’s so fucking curious. She’s never heard Ed raise his voice like that, and she’s seen him pissed off, but he’s always pretty quiet. And she doesn’t get what else would make him yell like that.
“I’m sorry I yelled,” Ed says, and he’s. Oh man, he’s crying. Alma’s only ever seen him tear up a little, but now she can hear him trying to keep himself quiet. “I’m sorry I thought you’d do that.”
“You were afraid I would,” Dad says, and it sounds different when he says it like that. Fear could. Well, fear can make you do and say a lot of shit. “Can I give you a hug?”
“Yeah,” Ed replies, and then he can’t keep quiet anymore.
“There you are, love, it’s alright,” Dad says, and Alma moves away from the stairs and feels like she’s heard something she really wasn’t meant to. She goes back to the deck and tucks herself into Dad’s chair and buries her face in her knees.
Ed comes outside first, sits heavily in his chair, and when Alma looks over, she tears up a little. He’s drawn and kind of pale, tucked up in a robe Dad got years ago when he bought his condo for ‘guests’—Alma’s just glad he’s finally Out.
It’s a muggy early summer afternoon, but Ed’s bundled up like it’s still winter.
“I’m guessing you heard all that,” he says, and his voice is quiet and tired.
“Yeah,” she says, can’t keep the emotion out of her voice.
“I’m sorry I yelled. And I’m sorry you heard it,” he says.
“I’m sorry I upset you,” Alma mumbles.
“Ah, fuck, kiddo,” Ed sighs. “You didn’t upset me. Trust me, okay?”
“I do,” she says, nods. “Can I ask what happened?” She asks, and Ed nods. Still, there’s a long pause before he speaks.
“A long time ago, people who were supposed to be taking care of me gave me shit I didn’t need because it made me easier for them to deal with,” he says. Alma startles to feel a tear on her cheek, and she scrubs her sleeve over her face. “So, I kinda stalled out on that part and got stuck on your dad doing that to you. I wasn’t listening to what he actually said.”
“I knew something was wrong because even when you’re just mad, you’re still quiet. But I didn’t understand,” she says. She bites her lip to keep from asking more questions.
“I’ll spare you the details,” he says, and there’s something distant in his eyes that makes her angry and sad. “You should go get ready for dinner.”
“I’m not really hungry,” she admits, still feels queasy for overhearing the conversation and the test she failed and the loneliness.
“Neither am I,” Ed says. “But once we get there, and we eat a couple pieces of bread just for something to do with our hands, we’ll warm up. Remember that we’re hungry.”
“Okay,” she says. “Is Dad okay?”
“Yeah,” Ed says. “He got a call from Lucius and went into the library.”
“Do you yell at him a lot?” She asks, feels a flare of protectiveness in her chest.
“No,” Ed says, shakes his head. “No, that’s maybe the second or third time? Ever? I fuckin’ hate it, too.”
“Does he yell at you?” She asks, and that’s—She’s protective of Ed, too, feels it in the same place.
”No, fuck no,” Ed says, shakes his head. “Sometimes he’s gotta talk over me ‘cause I get going a little, but never at me.” He shrugs. “We got a lot of shit going on, kid, but at the end of the day we’re always trying to understand each other better, to be better partners.”
“I’m really lonely,” Alma whispers, looking over at him. Ed offers his hand through the space between the chairs, and Alma reaches back and imagines he holds hands with Dad like this, too, and that makes her really glad, even as tears spill down her cheeks. “I don’t get why I can’t just be happy.”
“Takes work for some of us,” Ed says, then he scoots off his chair and crouches in front of her, picks up her other hand and holds them both in his. “It’s worth the effort, though. I can promise you that.”
“How do I even start?” She asks.
“Therapy,” he says, simply, and she grimaces. “Yeah, I know, it’s not always fun. Step one is talk to your Mom and Dad.”
“I will,” she says, nods.
“Now, actually, let’s get ready for dinner,” he says, and stands with a grunt: she can hear his knees crackle.
“Oh, my God,” she says.
“If you make a comment about me being old,” he starts, but he’s grinning.
“But you are, you’re so old your bones are loud, fuck,” she says, and he laughs and pats her shoulder as he goes inside.
“You’ll get here one day,” he calls.
And she’s hopes she’s even half as happy as Dad and Ed when she does.
She waits for Dad and Louis to get wrapped up in their own things before she heads back outside to join Ed in the garden. She plops into the soft grass at the edge of the vegetable beds where Ed is still spreading rocks.
“Heya, kiddo,” Ed greets, stays where he’s crouched in his cut offs and a pink tank top and a sun hat.
“How’d you know you liked guys and not other people?” Alma asks Ed’s back. It’s fucking hot, and the sun’s pouring down, but Ed’s never let that stop him before. She adjusts her grip on the parasol Dad sent her outside with and picks at the grass.
“Huh,” Ed says, then shrugs. “I dunno, I just kind of always…knew.”
“Gosh,” Alma sighs rolling her eyes.
“I know, not super helpful,” he says, then he drops from a crouch to put his butt on the ground and kicks his legs out. “I didn’t really have a lot of opportunity to figure out shit. Didn’t even kiss anybody until I was about your age.”
“What?” Because like not to be weird, but Ed was probably pretty attractive when he was younger, considering how people react to him now.
“Late bloomer,” he says. “Why do you ask?”
She sighs.
“Just, like. I don’t. What if I don’t like anybody?” She asks. And she’s. She’s not an idiot, she knows about asexuality and that whole spectrum, and knows pretty well where she falls in it, just.
“Ah,” Ed says, then shrugs again. “Then you don’t.”
Alma blinks.
“That’s it?” She asks, and Ed laughs.
“Yeah, kid, that’s it,” he says. “Why, what did you expect me to say?”
“I dunno, like. I just haven’t met the right person or something,” she says, shrugs.
“Nah,” Ed says, shakes his head. “Who’d you hear that from?” Alma rolls her eyes.
“More like who haven’t I heard it from,” she sighs.
“Don’t tell me your dad—“
“Oh, no,” Alma interrupts. “I haven’t talked to him, yet.” And she does feel bad about that…
“No?” Ed asks. He picks up the container of rocks next to him and starts sorting through it, tossing some in an empty flower pot, and others over his shoulder into the grass.
“Just. You know how he gets,” Alma says. Ed raises his eyebrows and grins.
“I do,” he says. “What’re you worried about?”
There’s a scab on her knee that she’s been trying not to pick at, but it draws in her fingers like magnets now.
“I don’t want him to be sad,” she says.
“Why would your sexuality make him sad?” Ed asks, and she frowns. It sounds dumb when he says it like that.
“He’s obsessed with love. And if I tell him I’m never gonna be attracted to anybody, he’s gonna get sad that I won’t fall in love,” she says.
“Aw, damn, kid,” Ed says, and she feels foolish, finally gets her thumbnail under a corner of the scab and lifts. “Not being, like, sexually attracted to people doesn’t mean you’re never gonna fall in love. And even if you don’t find somebody that you wanna be with romantically or whatever, that doesn’t mean you won’t feel love or be loved. I think that’s what your dad wants for you more than anything else.”
Alma stops picking and looks up at Ed to see him with his fingers dug into the container of rocks and staring at the dirt.
“That’s what I want for you,” he says, looks up at her. “To love and be loved, ‘cause it’s the greatest feeling in the world.” Ed always talks a little funny, keeps everything he says a little vague, a little your-dad-and-me, so to hear this…
Alma’s eyes sting, and she returns to picking at the grass instead of her skin. Starting to hurt anyway.
“Besides, there’s a million ways to love in this world. Sexually or romantically, those are just a couple. Honestly, I don’t even think they’re the best,” Ed says, and Alma cocks her head.
“Aren’t you in love with my dad like that?” She asks.
“Yeah,” Ed says immediately, emphatically, and Alma can’t even muster the wrinkled nose. “I’ll love him like that my whole life. But the love that feels best is when we’re just together, just being ourselves beside each other. Or when. Like when I’m in a room with our whole family, maybe even just a couple of ‘em, maybe even just you or Louis, and I think: fuck, I’m really happy, just ‘cause I’m here with these people right now.”
“Oh,” Alma says, and suddenly it makes sense. It seems silly that she hasn’t said it before now. “I love you.”
“Fuck,” Ed says, and Alma knows his knees are fucked up, so she crawls the couple feet over and hugs his sweaty shoulders and doesn’t even feel like complaining when he hugs her back with his sticky arms. “I love you, too, kiddo.”
“Doug!” Alma yells, then takes off at a sprint, kicking sand behind her as she goes.
“Oh, Alma, truly,” Dad sighs as Ed cackles.
“Mary!” Doug shouts, and Alma stops short as Doug launches the ball to where Mom has her hands up in the waves lapping at the beach.
And she starts toward Mom but clocks the eye contact with Ed.
Mom wouldn’t throw it that close to Dad.
Would she?
Alma sprints left as the ball leaves her mom’s hand, and she intercepts!
And lands across Ed’s legs with the ball clutched to her chest.
“I win,” she says, looking up at him. Ed has his eyebrows up, surprised, then he laughs.
“Yeah, kid, you win,” he says, and she sits up next to him on the blanket.
“Darling child, will you get me a new seltzer?” Dad asks, and she looks over to see him glance down at her feet where his cherry seltzer is soaking into the sand.
“Shit, yeah, sorry Dad,” she says, wrinkles her nose.
“I got it,” Ed says, leans over to the cooler and then jerks and squeezes his eyes shut. “Fuck, hey, Alma, move a sec.”
She’s standing in an instant, steps away as he kicks his leg out and curses at the sharp crack.
“Jesus, Ed,” Stede mutters. “Are you sure that’s normal?”
“Yeah, babe, just gets stuck,” he says. “Thanks for the quick feet.”
“Sorry,” she says, feels like shit.
“What, huh?” He asks, eyebrows raised and eyes big.
“I know you’ve got shit with your, I didn’t mean to hurt you,” she says, bites her lip and feels like crying.
“No, no, you’re good, you didn’t do anything,” Ed says, waves his hand. “Been giving me shit all day.”
“Okay,” she says, then sniffles.
“Ah, shit,” Ed whispers.
“Alma, darling, what’s wrong?” Dad asks, has his book closed and everything.
“I don’t know,” she admits, and then she crouches and wraps her arms around her legs and presses her face into her knees. It’s dark; she can’t see anybody looking at her like that if she’s in here.
There’s a cool hand on her back, and she looks up to see Ed sitting in front of her.
“Alma?” Mom asks, then she’s crouched down too. “Hey, sweetheart, what’s wrong?” She wishes people would stop asking her that.
“It’s like all the times I feel like crying I just can’t keep in anymore,” she says. “Like every little fucking thing sets me off, and I hate it.”
“That can be an early side effect,” Mom says.
“Well, I hate it,” she says, feeling waspish. She’s not being fair, but she can’t get herself to give a shit or be nice.
“It sucks, kid, but it’s also kind of a good thing,” Ed says, and he looks like he knows what crap that sounds like when she glares at him. “Keeping everything bottled up means it’s begging to be let out. Meds help your brain regulate, eases survival mode. Lets the shit out so you can heal about it. It’s fucking uncomfy.”
“If this lasts more than a week, we’ll try something else,” Mom says. “It’s shit, I know.”
Alma heaves a great sigh, feels tired to her bones.
“I just want to be happy,” she whispers, and Mom hugs her tight, and they tip over, but Ed catches them because of coursehe does.
“I want you to be happy, too, baby,” Mom whispers, hugs her so close. And it feels nice for a second before it becomes suffocating and overwhelming between the sun and the sticky air and her parents’ body heat.
“I can’t breathe,” she says. Mom lets her go and sits back into the sand.
“I gotta head up to the house,” Ed says. “Wanna come with, get out of the heat for a bit?”
Alma nods, and Doug helps them all stand, and she feels like ass.
“Sorry for, like, ruining your afternoon,” Alma mutters as they walk up the sand-covered wooden staircase.
“It’s barely one,” Ed says. “And cut yourself some slack. New meds are no fucking joke.”
“Yeah, I just. I don’t know, I just want to be past this,” she says.
“What do you mean?” He asks, and she shrugs.
“I’m gonna have to try a million different things to figure out if something can help me,” she says. “It’s shit.”
“You might. It is,” Ed agrees.
“And I just have to be okay with it being shit?” She asks.
“You don’t have to be okay with anything, kiddo. It’s always gonna be up to you, whatever you wanna do,” Ed says, and she glances over at him, catches the wince as they descend the steps that lead into the little pool area behind the house they’ve rented.
“If I decided I didn’t want to try any more medicine?” She asks.
“Then you’d talk to your doctor and figure out what they think’s gonna be the best thing for you,” he says. “And you’re an adult and get to choose what path you follow between that advice and whatever other data you want to gather, including how different shit makes you feel.”
“I actually kinda feel better. I just can’t stop crying,” she admits.
“Floodgates,” Ed says.
“What?” She asks. Ed opens the basement door and gestures for Alma to go inside. It’s cold, immediately, and she wraps her beach towel around her shoulders.
“Imagine a dam,” Ed says, leans heavily against the counter of the wet bar in the recreation room they’ve stepped into. “And the water’s your emotions. And you’ve spent a long fuckin’ time just pouring all that water into the reservoir. Reservoir gets filled, and then what?”
“It spills over,” she says.
“Uh-huh. And ‘cause our brains aren’t made of concrete, we can make that dam higher and that reservoir deeper every time there’s a threat of spilling over, so we do,” he says. “Now you’ve decided to stop building up the dam. New management says it’s unsustainable, so you gotta start taking down the parts you put up, but it’s not a one to one. And you can’t just take dynamite to it, ‘cause you’ll cause an actual flood.”
“So, random pieces of the dam come down,” she says, and Ed nods. “And the rain keeps coming.”
“Yeah,” Ed says. “It’s brutal, kiddo, but it’s step one, and you’re not alone, not for a second of it.”
“You really,” she pauses and looks up from the towel she’s trying not to pick apart. “Are you really happy? After everything you’ve been through…” She knows vague beats, knows there’s so much more to when Dad was in the hospital her junior year and all the years of Ed’s life before that, knows he’s stopped drinking recently, but she didn’t even know he had a problem with that, and there’s not much she can bring up just out of respect, because fuck y’know, that’s a wild thing to ask: what fucked you up so bad?
“I am,” Ed says, and he’s tearing up and looks up at the ceiling. “I’m happier than I ever thought I’d get to be. Not just ‘cause of your Dad. Right before I met him, I was also happier than I ever thought I’d get to be. Raised my fuckin’ standards right off the ground, your Dad did.”
“Yeah, he does that,” Alma says, smiling fondly. “I’m glad he finally did it for himself, even if…” She looks down again, thinks about the phone calls she overhears Mom’s side of when she’s home on the weekends, how often Dad excuses himself with tears in his eyes when they’re out to dinner or doing other family shit then comes back like nothing’s wrong.
“Hey,” Ed says gently. “Don’t you worry about your Dad.”
“Yeah, right,” Alma scoffs, sniffles.
“Yeah, I know,” Ed sighs. “I know, he’s real easy to worry about.”
“What was your dad like?” She asks, and she watches Ed clench his teeth and look away and regrets asking. But Ed exhales a long breath and looks at her again.
“Mean,” he says.
“I’m not a kid, you know,” she mumbles.
“I know that,” Ed says. “It’s not about you being able to handle hearing something. It’s. Well, shit, there’s some stuff in the world you shouldn’t have to know if you don’t need to.”
She swallows, feels a little queasy.
“It’s that bad?” She asks, and Ed makes a little scrunched face and nods. “Fuck. Fuck, I keep stepping right in shit.” Ed laughs, which makes her feel a little better.
“Welcome to the minefield,” he says.
“Yeah,” Alma says. She steps across the little space and hugs Ed, squeezing him tight when he returns it and drops a kiss on top of her head.
“Let’s go make some sandwiches,” he says.
“Okay,” she says.
And they’re in the kitchen when Doug and Mom come up the stairs, and Mom is giggling like anything and Doug has this big grin on his dorky face, and she can see Dad and Louis coming down the little walkway in the shade of Dad’s parasol, and Louis is talking about either the Trans Am or Lord of the Rings, because nothing else really gets him going like that anymore, and Dad’s grinning, just smiling and.
Yeah, her eyes are stinging, but it’s not a sad feeling in her chest.
No, she’s happy.
Right now, in this moment, she is happy.
It’s nice.