All You Never Wanted by Adele Griffin Page B

put down his cell. He was talking to me through a piping mouthful of the intestinal jihad that was his custom-order deep-dish.
    “My dad?”
    “Yeah. Alex never mentions him.”
    “What do you mean? You mean my biological dad?” I was still confused. “As in, do I ever hear from my deadbeat, alcoholic, ran-as-far-as-he-could-go-geographically-without-leaving-the-continental-U.S. dad?” I was stalling, kneading up an alternative story so I wouldn’t have to share my cliché pain about what it meant to have your father decide he didn’t want to be attached to his wife and daughters—or to anything at all.
    “I mean, Alex gave me his basic drill. That he’s lost touch. And he lives in some houseboat in Jacksonville. She said it was tough on you two and your mom, making ends meet. Pre-Arthur, obviously.”
    “Yeah, yeah. It had sucked.” I squirmed. Tough, oh sure, it had been tough. Once upon a time, before that Wonka ticket of a two-week temp job had planted Mom in Arthur’s path. A.D. (after Dad) but B.A. (before Arthur) we’d lived in a world ofmaxed-out credit cards and a near-empty fridge and Mom juggling seventy-, eighty-hour workweeks while Alex and I delivered all our babysitting and Topshop earnings into the cookie jar.
    We’d known ShopRite circulars and Marshall’s layaway for winter coats and the wolf at the door at the end of each month when the bills came due. There’d even been a month we’d gone without electricity. Dinners and homework by candlelight. And no, it hadn’t been romantic. It had sucked. But it hadn’t one hundred percent sucked. There’d been good times. Movie night with salted caramel popcorn. Odds-’n’-ends Saturday dinners. The three of us in Mom’s bed on Sunday morning.
    And we’d celebrated what we could, since there wasn’t much. That online writing contest I’d won. Alex making Topshop Employee of the Month. The Valentine’s Day when Mom’s heart-shaped banana bread pudding had turned out perfect. People point at divorce and call it a broken home, but it hadn’t been. We’d healed ourselves, a family unit of three.
    “You’re smiling. Nostalgic for how much it sucked?”
    “Sometimes it wasn’t so bad.” I was cracking my knuckles. “Not as bad as you might think. I miss it a little.”
    Joshua gave me a look. “Meaning?”
    “Meaning me and Alex and Mom were closer, we hung out more, back in those days. It was fun.”
    The flat of Joshua’s palm smacked the table—I jumped. “If you miss being broke, Parrott, you’ve forgotten what it’s like. Nothing fun about it.” And from the way Joshua threw down those words, I didn’t want to pick them up and mess around with them.
    “Well, as for my dad,” I said, doubling back to what was theslightly easier subject, “we’re better off without him. Right now he’s probably sitting in some old-man dive bar. Making a dozen new loser friends to replace the old loser ones he made and lost last week.”
    “Never feel like you need to visit him, ever?”
    “I see him every morning in the mirror. I think of him as the ghost version of me. And who needs to visit your own ghost?”
    Joshua liked that. I waited, my face open to whatever he wanted to say next. He was drumming his fingers. He had something to unload. “Listen, Thea, I gotta resell Brandon,” he said. “Some kid found me on Craigslist, he knows I can make shit happen. He needs Brandon for his frat-boy party. He’s paying me pretty decent.”
    I pressed my back against the booth and looked at Joshua hard. “So stealing Brandon the Whale has got nothing to do with Alex?”
    “No, no—it’s got plenty to do with her. Everything. She’ll fall down from joy, I swear, when we haul that whale into the house. But I’m gonna slide the truth a little. I’m gonna tell Alex that I’m putting Brandon right back at Stratford when …”
    “When he’s actually being sold to a fraternity cookout.”
    Joshua nodded. “Sunday.” He wanted me