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He and his dad were fine, Christopher Diaz was telling anyone that asked, practically daring someone to suggest otherwise. Were they fine? No, obviously not. But that wasn’t the point. The point was that, after six months with his grandparents, he was getting tired of the constant prying into his relationship with his dad. If he had to hear the saccharine voice of his abuela telling him one more time that he could be honest with them, he was pretty sure he was going to scream. And then they’d somehow make that a reflection on his father, too.
So, no, maybe he and his dad weren’t fine, but God was he glad to be back in LA, back in his home, back in his room. When he closed his bedroom door behind himself after coming home from the airport, he had had to resist the urge to systematically kneel and kiss every single one of his missed belongings – his stacked bookcase, his computer, his messy pile of video games, his dinosaur poster that he was probably getting a little too old for. He had missed it all with a desperation that bordered on embarrassing.
Obviously, he didn’t let his dad see any of this. Call him mean, but he wanted to let him stew in his guilt and uncertainty, just a tiny bit longer. He didn’t need to know that Chris had been ready to call him, crying and pleading to come and get him, only moments before his dad had announced himself that he was on his way down to Texas. For the sake of Chris’s pride, that decision was fortuitous timing.
It also meant that Chris could continue being mad in peace, not having needed to lower himself to begging his own dad to bring him back home. He could hold onto the grief and anger of these past six months, the wounds of which he still felt fresh and tender. It wasn’t even the initial crime of the whole dead-mom-doppelgänger thing that was the main sore spot, though that had certainly taken its toll, but more so everything that followed. Was it ridiculous to say that he felt abandoned, when he was the one who had left in the first place? When he was the one who ran away, leaving his dad alone in their empty house? Reasonable or not, he had felt abandoned.
How did he say to his dad without sounding crazy, I didn’t think you’d let me go. And even if he did let him go, I didn’t think you’d let me stay.
There wasn’t a way to do it, not even now that he was home. Chris had gotten what he’d wanted, technically speaking, and yet the wrongness of it had haunted him every single day that he was away. Sure, he’d had a nice enough time – his cousins were fun, his aunts were kind, his grandparents were caring, if a little overbearing. But it wasn’t home. It was a long, drawn-out vacation, one that he’d gotten his fill of within a week. He had wanted to call his dad, to tell him that’s enough, come get me, I can still hate you at home. But he hadn’t been able to bring himself to do it, to make that first move and to pick up his phone.
He was a little ashamed at the way that everything had gone down on that fateful last day – the way he had completely ignored his dad, the way he had called his grandparents behind his back, the way he had walked out without a goodbye. Chris knew that he’d had every right to be furious with his father, to yell and scream at him, but the coldness of the goodbye had prickled at him as soon as he walked out the door, and during all the months since. That feeling of remorse made him even more angry, because his dad had done something selfish and cruel, and he deserved to feel bad for it. He deserved every ounce of Christopher’s coldness.
It just was an unfortunate side effect that the workings of the cold shoulder had rebounded right back onto him. Chris felt stupid for it, but he just missed his dad. His self-imposed exile had started to seem like a bad idea pretty quickly.
And his dad had given him an out. With his last words to Chris, he’d told him, “Just say the word, and I’ll come for you.” Chris had known that he had meant it, that he would have raced down to Texas within moments of him asking, zero questions asked. But he didn't want to have to say the word. He wanted his dad to say, that’s enough, get your ass back home. But his dad had stayed silent on the matter, cautious and unsure in their phone calls, a manner that Chris had never seen from him before. It made him uneasy, and he didn’t know how to broach the subject. Or any subject. Their infrequent calls were filled with an awkwardness that was completely unfamiliar to their relationship. His dad had done his best to bridge the gap, but his attempts were clumsy and unsure. Chris had been able to see the insecurity sitting plainly on his dad’s face, and he’d turned away from it, not knowing how to deal with this side of him.
Six months. He had been in Texas for six months, waiting. And while he wasn’t sitting longingly by the window, forlornly waiting for the sight of his dad’s big stupid truck, he was waiting all the same. He was swimming in the lake with his cousins, and he was waiting. He was eating dinner with his grandparents, and he was waiting. He was hanging by the park with his new friends, and he was waiting. He was stomping unhappily on the walk to Sunday church, and he was waiting.
Waiting, waiting, waiting.
His dad had been waiting for him in turn, he knew. He’d constantly imagined his dad alone at home, thinking of Chris just as he’d been thinking of him. It was a comfort to him, late at night in his dad’s old childhood bedroom, imagining him missing Chris. Eight hundred miles away from each other, and they were as tied together as ever – linked by a simple, urgent longing.
But six months had passed, and Chris had been beginning to wonder if his dad was planning to pull the same move as his mom, to simply let him go. The thought of it sat heavy in his chest every single day, that maybe, actually, his dad didn’t miss him as much as he thought he did. Maybe he was living freely, without the weight of a kid on his back, finally able to invite random women who looked like his dead wife over to their house in peace. He knew, instinctually, that it wasn’t true; the surety that his dad loved him was as sure as the knowledge that the sky was blue. It was an innate truth that Chris had never really been able to question. But six months had passed.
When, on a random Wednesday in November, his dad had called to tell him that he was at the airport, boarding a plane to Texas, Chris had almost been ready to burst into tears. Instead, he’d managed a nonchalant, okay, and waited until the phone call had ended and his bedroom door was closed before he cried.
He was home now. Three days had passed. They were stilted and awkward, but he was home, and the comfort of that knowledge sat warmly in his chest.
He sat in the kitchen on a gloomy Saturday morning, eating his cereal. His dad had bought him cinnamon toast crunch, just in case he wasn’t sure that Chris knew he felt guilty. He didn’t verbalise any thanks, but he felt reluctantly appreciative all the same. His grandparents had refused to keep anything other than oatmeal around for breakfast.
Yesterday, Buck had been here when he woke up, gathering ingredients from around the kitchen and looking so happy that it had bordered on manic. Chris had simply let the warmth of his happiness wash over him, unashamedly pleased at how much Buck had missed him. He’d known, of course. Buck had texted him incessantly while he was away, ending almost every conversation with i miss you bud!!! And Chris, not having had any reason to be mad at Buck, happily texted him back every time. He had missed Buck like a lung. It had also, oddly, felt like a way of connecting with his dad, without actually having to talk to him. Buck had always been a link between them, belonging to both of them at the same time and to both of them separately. His Buck, his dad used to sometimes call him, and it still even slipped out every now and then. His Buck.
His Buck wasn’t here this morning, and Chris tensed every so slightly at the sound of his dad’s footsteps entering the kitchen. Buck had been around a lot over these past few days, and Chris thought that both he and his dad had been inordinately grateful to have him around as a buffer. When Buck had suggested that he head home after that first day, both of them protested with a panicked No! Buck had looked between them, nodding a little hesitantly. His gaze had then landed on dad’s, where it lingered for a long moment, and whatever he saw there had him staying the night on the couch.
Chris may have been insulted that his dad didn’t want to be alone with him, but, to be fair, he didn’t really want to be alone with his dad either. It wasn’t even the anger and the hurt, which had mostly faded to a bare tinge, only really reanimating when prodded at. It was the tenseness that hung in the air, the awkwardness that neither of them could seem to wade their way through. Chris had been away from his dad for six months, and their relationship bore the marks of that fracture.
A little intake of breath sounded behind him. “Morning, mijo.”
Earlier in the year, that greeting would have been accompanied by a kiss pressed to the top of his curls, firm and fond. Chris had started shrugging that sort of affection off far before Texas, but his dad had incessantly made the effort anyway, and Chris had secretly appreciated it. Now, his dad just hovered behind him for a long moment, clearly caught between instinct and awkwardness.
He didn’t turn around, but merely spooned another mouthful of cereal between his lips. “Hey.”
Chris couldn’t see his dad, but he imagined the way that he would be nodding awkwardly behind him, grasping at something else to do or say, and falling flat. He stepped fully into the kitchen, heading towards the coffee maker. He was wearing grey sweatpants and a LAFD hoodie that was just a little too big on him – he was pretty sure that it belonged to Buck, not his dad. Now that his back was turned, Chris had the faint urge to leave, hiding away in his room like he had done for most of the past few days. But a larger part of himself wanted to push at this awkward, tense bubble that was surrounding them.
“I’m mad at you, you know.” It wasn’t delicate, but it was as good a start as any.
His dad froze, his hands gripping a mug that he’d just taken from the cabinet. He lowered it to the counter in front of him, and slowly turned around. He was already nodding in understanding, and Chris resented it.
“I know, mijo.” His voice was remorseful and serious.
“Do you?” Chris’s voice was sharp now, egged on by the pitiful mask that his dad was wearing.
His dad looked at him firmly, not saying anything, but clearly not delighted by his tone. Chris, at least, felt satisfied that his dad had not been completely replaced by a body snatcher while he’d been gone.
“I do. Chris, of course I do,” said his dad emphatically. Chris swallowed heavily at the earnestness in his voice. He wasn’t going to cry. “You’re allowed to be mad. I messed up. You can be mad.”
“I am,” Chris argued hotly and pointlessly. “I don’t need your permission.”
Eddie shook his head, his dark eyes soft. “No, you don’t.”
Silence hung over the kitchen, the conversation going nowhere that it hadn’t already been. His dad had already given this guilt-ridden spiel when he’d arrived in Texas to take him home. Chris didn’t need to hear it again, but he also didn’t know what precisely he was searching for instead. He wanted something out of this conversation, and he wasn’t getting it, but he couldn’t even pinpoint what that it was.
He looked back down to his cereal, swirling the remaining morsels through the milk with his spoon. From the corner of his eye, he could see his dad look around the room searchingly, his eyes jumping from point to point. What he was looking for, Chris didn’t know. Possibly for Buck to come in and save the day, his joyful chatter filling up the silent space. But the kitchen remained quiet and empty, just father and son.
His dad stepped forward to the table, standing over it for a brief moment before he pulled out the chair in front of Chris. He didn’t look up, intent on the flimsy remains of his cereal. He felt the pull of his dad’s gaze on his face, the way it danced around the features that had grown ever so slightly more mature in their six month separation. Like he was memorising them.
“Chris,” his dad said. Chris pressed his lips together. “Mijo.”
The voice was more firm the second time, and Chris couldn’t quite bring himself to refuse the plea again. He looked up to his dad, whose eyes were wide and sincere. He opened his mouth, searching for something, grasping at the empty air, and then closed it again. His dad shook his head in frustration. Chris held very still, simply watching him. His dad was right in front of him, and yet Chris missed him.
For a brief moment, he remembered being seven years old again. I miss you all the time.
He had doubled in age since then, and it was still the truth.
His dad finally met his eyes again, reaching some sort of internal conclusion. “I fucked up.”
Chris glanced up, a little shocked and a little pleased.
His dad raised his eyebrows in an I know sort of gesture, and he repeated himself. “I fucked up.”
“You did,” Chris nodded sagely, a note of stubbornness in his voice. He tried to temper the smile that had grown at hearing his dad swear. He still needed to be mad.
“And I can apologise until I’m blue in the face. I will, if that’s what you need from me.” He looked at Chris intently. “But you know that, right? You already know that I’m sorry. You know.”
And Chris did know. It was one of the first things that he was sure of in the immediate aftermath of the incident. His dad was sorry. It didn’t fix anything, but he knew it. It was true then, and it was even more true now. He nodded slowly.
“And I don’t think you need another apology from me right now.”
Another slow nod.
“So look,” his dad said, shifting in his seat and looking straight at Chris, “I’m gonna talk to you, and I’m going to try to explain whatever the hell was going through my head when I did what I did. And you can continue being mad at me all you like, but at least you’ll know. Okay?”
Chris was helpless to do anything else but go along with whatever was happening. He, again, nodded.
“But, first,” his dad began, “is there anything that you wanna ask me?”
Chris hated himself for a moment, but he couldn’t quite stop the tears from filling his eyes, as much as he tried swallowing them back. Fuck not crying, he guessed, whatever. His voice cracked against his will. “Why didn’t you come get me?”
His dad took a sharp intake of breath, wincing, almost looking like he was in physical pain. He didn’t ask for clarification, he didn’t say I did come get you. He knew that Chris was asking why he let him leave in the first place – why he didn’t care enough to fight for him to stay. He scrubbed a hand over his face, letting his fingers dig into his skin harshly. His dad dropped his arm down, and looked back at him.
“I really, really wish, Chris,” he began, his voice a little gruff, “that I always knew what I needed to do to be a good dad for you.”
Chris stared, hanging onto the words. He ignored the few tears that escaped his eyes and trailed slowly down his face.
His dad fiddled a little with his hands as they rested on the table. Chris’s eyes caught on the movement. “But, to be honest, I’ve never really known.” He shook his head. “I– I messed up a lot. Too much. I messed up even when I thought that what I was doing was the right thing. Even when I thought, here’s where I can get it right.” A small, rueful smile graced his mouth, and then slipped away a moment later. He met Chris’s eyes with a firm gaze, repentant and loving all at once. “All I have ever, ever wanted in this life is to do right by you. To make sure you grow up happy, and healthy, and safe. That has been my job, my purpose. Since I was nineteen-years old, that is all that I could have possibly wanted from this life.”
Chris startled a little. He looked sharply at his dad, who looked like he was trying to convince Chris of his earnestness through sheer force of will. But Chris’s brain was caught on something.
Nineteen, he thought. Nineteen.
Chris couldn’t quite fathom it. He had always known, he supposed, that his parents had had him while they were young. Hell, his dad was only thirty-three. He had done the math before and landed on that age. Nineteen. But he’d never really considered it. His dad was simply his dad. In Chris’s head, he had never really existed as anything else. He had always just been his dad, and there wasn’t anything else to it.
But Chris had just spent six months living in his dad’s childhood bedroom, surrounded by evidence of his youth. His baseball trophies decorated the shelves. Yellowed posters of older emo bands were taped to the wall. Pictures of him and his high school friends were pinned to a cork board. His poorly graded tests sat in the drawers of the desk. Bed sheets patterned with race cars adorned the duvet. It was a kid’s bedroom. And it belonged to his dad.
Upon entering the room, Chris had initially had the thought that it was like a preserved relic from an ancient past. His dad as a teenager, Jesus. He had wondered why his abuela had left it untouched. If it hadn’t been for the absence of dust sitting atop any surface, Chris would have thought that the room had remained unentered over the past fourteen years – as if it was waiting for an occupant that would never return. As it was, it was like a time machine into a not-so-distant past. The emphasis on not-so-distant seemed to grow more stark with every passing day. He would be trying to go to sleep, and his thoughts would be caught on his dad – only a little older than Chris, and still living in that bedroom, aged nineteen. Sometimes he could almost picture him standing in the room, a double of the boy in the printed photographs – young and happy and handsome. His dad.
“Nineteen,” he accidentally said aloud, still lost in thought.
His dad’s brows shot up. “Uh, yeah. Nineteen.”
Chris swallowed. “That’s … young.”
He blinked at Chris. “Oh, um. Yeah, it was, I guess.” Something rushed into his eyes, and he leaned forward with urgency. “But, hey, listen to me, yeah?” Chris, unsure, nodded. “We were young, and we didn’t know what we were doing, okay? But I laid eyes on you, and I knew, I knew that you were the best thing that would ever happen to me. I need you to know that.”
Chris had never seen such desperate honesty in his dad. He blinked at the sight of it, but nodded. Of course he knew that. And he said so, wanting to remove that naked earnestness from his dad’s face. “I know that, dad.”
His dad nodded, relieved.
“So, yeah we were a little young, and maybe that–”
“Were you scared?” Chris interrupted.
Nineteen.
His dad looked at him, a little blankly, but Chris could swear to something sitting behind that expression on his face. Something sad.
He smiled a little, but it wasn’t a particularly happy smile. “A little bit, maybe. I mean– Yes. Yes, I was scared.” He bit his lower lip, looking at Chris guiltily, as if this admission was something cruel. But Chris simply nodded. He searched for some words to match what he was feeling, but he came up empty.
“I’m fourteen.”
His dad searched his eyes at this non sequitur, nodding slowly. He looked hesitant. “You are.”
Chris shrugged, no longer able to feign the nonchalant facade that he had worn earlier. His eyes were no longer damp, but his ruddy cheeks still bore the tracks of dried tears. “You weren’t that much older than me.”
His dad titled his head, looking at Chris keenly.
“I mean … I was an adult,” he hedged cautiously. “A new one, but, still.”
“Yeah, but– a teenager.”
His dad pressed his lips together, frowning a little. His eyes darted around Chris’s face, clearly not really seeing where he was going with this. Chris didn’t know either, to be honest. But he was simply stuck thinking of his dad – young and scared with a baby, and then young and scared in a warzone.
“And you enlisted then? In the army?”
His father seemed more comfortable with this line of questioning, and he nodded firmly. “Yes, I enlisted.” His eyebrows scrunched in thought, evidently a little unsure about whether he should continue or not. But he looked at Chris again, and added more. “That was an example, I guess, of me thinking that I was doing the right thing. When really, I had no idea what I was doing.” He paused. “I guess I, uh, thought that I could provide for you and your mom. Maybe I figured that I could prove that I was,” he winced a little, “a real man, I guess.”
Chris pondered that for a moment – all these little moments that led to his own existence, that led to them sitting at this table, engaging in a long overdue conversation.
He wasn’t quite sure whether he should follow the line of questioning that he wanted to. But his dad must have seen the conflict in his face, because he gave him a nod of encouragement, his familiar eyes radiating a warmth that almost made him tear up again.
I miss you all the time.
“And mom?” Chris asked, letting the question that he had always wondered slip out.
His dad looked surprised at the query, his eyebrows shooting up and scrunching a little. He shifted in his seat. Chris watched him with sharp attention, his own eyebrows furrowed in thought.
“What do you mean, mijo? What about your mom?”
“Was that–”
He paused, hesitant. His father leaned forward, eyes darting around his expression, clearly trying to get a read on it.
Chris continued. “Was, uh, that you thinking that you were doing the right thing?”
His dad froze. He looked at Chris, and Chris looked back at him. They sat in shared silence for a few drawn-out moments.
His dad shook his head, as if to rouse himself out of his stillness. “No, of course–”
“Dad,” Christopher said sternly, more firmly than he had ever spoken to him. Silence rang in the air for a moment.
His father looked back at him, his head ducked a little. He looked away again, releasing a large breath of air. Leaning back in his seat, he glanced up at the ceiling. Without moving from this position, he questioned, “Why do you ask that, Chris?”
There wasn’t anything annoyed in his voice like Chris had feared. Instead, his dad just sounded defeated. Like a man waiting for the axe to fall.
“I’m not– I’m not upset, dad.” He swallowed, unable to look at his dad either. His gaze locked onto the fridge, onto the calendar filled with Buck’s barely legible handwriting. “But, you know– I mean, you could tell me. I’m not a kid. If anything– If there was something you needed to tell me, or wanted to tell me, you could.”
Silence hung over the kitchen again. Chris felt strangely close to crying once more, for no particular reason this time. The image of his dad – young, scared, nineteen – hung over him.
He heard his dad swallow harshly, and he glanced back towards him. He was still staring up at the ceiling, seemingly bracing himself for something. He released another deep breath, and finally lowered his head. He still didn’t make eye contact. His eyes were focused intently on the table in front of him, on the curves and grooves in the wood.
“I, uh, talked to a priest, while you were gone.”
Chris’s eyebrows rose, vaguely surprised and vaguely puzzled. From the complaints he heard from his abuela every Sunday, Chris had gotten the impression that his father had stopped attending any sort of church service by around the eighth grade. Abuela still clearly hadn’t gotten over the affront of that.
His dad shrugged, but his eyes were a little wild where they focused on the table. Christopher saw his hands begin to fidget.
“I don’t know. I was– I was feeling lost, without you. And guilty. I’d blown my life up, and I didn’t know what to do.”
The honesty of the words sent a shock wave through Chris. His father had apologised to him a hundred times, but it hadn’t struck him quite so hard before. He had never put it so simply and honestly. He’d blown up his life. Yeah, that seemed right. Unfortunately, he had done it to both of their lives. Chris stared at him intently, waiting for him to continue.
“And he, uh, told me something,” he shared. “He said that we can’t take care of others if we don’t first take care of ourselves.”
His dad paused, letting that sit in the air. Chris waited to see where he would take this, his gaze fixed on his father’s unsure features.
“He said– He told me that I needed to stop punishing myself.” He looked up to Chris, holding onto eye contact, even where Chris could see that he wanted to hide away from it. “And he was right.” His dad shook his head, frustrated, but his gaze stayed intent on his son. “I have let you down, again and again, all because I was hiding from myself. Because I thought that I was doing the right thing, the correct thing, but I–”
His eyes were wide and sad. He had never seen his father look so apologetic.
“Your mother was my best friend.”
Chris swallowed, sitting a little more upright. His cereal had gone entirely soggy and inedible, but his attention was entirely fixed.
“I loved her. Of course I loved her.” A pause. “But– but not in the way that I should have.”
The confession sat in the air, tender and raw. His dad looked hurt by the words, even as they came out of his own mouth. He finally looked away from Chris again, his eyes darting back down to his hands. Despite having weeded this confession out of him, Christopher didn’t quite know what to say. He left the air open for his dad to say more.
And he did. His voice cracked through the words. “I’m gay, Chris.”
Chris’s eyes watered again, and he blinked the tears away rapidly. He swallowed the lump in his throat, nodding, nodding, and nodding along to what his dad said. Those were the words that he had been waiting for.
Nineteen. Scared. Gay.
His anger had entirely disappeared, at least for this conversation, and all that remained after the bruise of hurt vanished was a tender, aching love for his dad. His heart bled with it.
“Okay,” he said, inadequately. “I love you.”
His dad looked up, his eyes wet and shining. His face was cracked open, and Christopher finally got a real glimpse at the man inside.
Nineteen. Scared. Gay.
He repeated himself. “I love you.”
His father shook his head emphatically. “No, Chris, look, this isn’t about–”
“I love you.”
A sigh, frustrated and sad and fond, came from his dad. Father and son looked at each other for a long moment.
His dad nodded, his wet eyes filling up with more tears. “I love you, Christopher. More than anything in the whole world. I love you.”
Chris nodded. “I know,” he said simply. Most of their relationship wasn’t simple, but that was. That pure fact that, no matter what, they loved each other. His dad could have inconvenient mental breakdowns and Chris could flee the state, but – they loved each other. Chris, after months of hurt and grief, smiled at the sweet simplicity of that.
“And,” his dad continued, not taking notice of the few tears that had slipped down his cheek. His eyes were fixed on Chris. “I was hiding a lot of myself, for a very, very long time. I didn’t even know that I was doing it.” He swallowed, his voice thick. “What I knew was that I was trying to be something that I wasn’t. I was scared and angry and stupid, and it ended up hurting you.”
“And you.”
His dad pressed his lips together, glancing down. When he looked back up again, his eyes were more full of tears than before. He let out a brief, sharp laugh, clearly frustrated and exasperated at the emotional state that he found himself in. Christopher, with teary eyes of his own, could relate. His dad wiped his eyes harshly with the back of his hand.
But he nodded, accepting. “And me.”
They let that sit in the air, thinking over the hurt that had been festering between them over the past few months. Thinking that, maybe, neither of them needed to hold onto it.
“I want you to be happy, dad,” Chris told him. “Whatever that looks like.”
Dad looked at him like he was a gift. He shook his head, eyes full of pure and unadulterated love. “Jesus. When the hell did you get so wise?”
Chris smiled cheekily. “Must have been when I had a few months away from you.”
His dad’s bright laugh choked on the air. He reached a hand up to grab at his heart, as if wounded. “Wow.” He shook his head. “Wow.”
“Too soon?”
“Too soon? Ten years from now will be too soon!”
Chris grinned cheerily, the first time he had done so with his dad in over half a year. His heart lit up alongside his smile.
His dad’s smile lessened slightly, but remained no less sincere. He nodded. “I want you to be happy too, Christopher.”
He shrugged. “Let’s be happy then.”
And his dad beamed.