Since Dane had an important meeting this morning, he’d dropped me off at the hotel and promised to return in time to drive me to the airport.

As I was redrafting a few adjectives, my phone buzzed with a new text message.

Text message from Dad: I’m downstairs in your hotel’s lobby. Come and meet me now.

Shit. I forgot to make dinner plans with him.

Grabbing my purse, I took the elevator downstairs and spotted him alone in the corner. He was staring straight ahead, sitting in front of five full shot glasses.

“Hey, Dad,” I said, sitting across from him.

“Christina.”

“How’s Baby Noah?”

“He’s fine,” he said, his face devoid of any emotion. “How are you?”

“Great. I uh—I meant to say goodbye before leaving, but—”

“You were too busy spending all of your fucking time with Dane.”

I said nothing, unable to read or sense where he was going with this.

“I spoke to him not too long ago,” he said. “He came over and decided to tell me what the hell was going on between you two, behind my fucking back.”

His eyes were narrowed, and the veins in his neck were swelling by the second.

“It’s not what you think.”

“Isn’t it?” He crossed his arms. “How old were you when he first came onto you? Did he seduce you whenever I left the living room? Was it during one of those weekends when I asked him to drive you and your other friend to the lake?”

“I barely paid attention to Dane back then.”

“Was he Dane then, or was he Mr. Holland?”

“I…” I hesitated to answer. He’d always been introduced to me as “Dane,” and I never learned his last name until someone happened to mention it in passing. I knew that wasn’t the right answer, though. Not now.

“He was Mr. Holland.”

“Then did he first come onto you? Before or after your senior year of high school?”

“What?”

“He’s too old for you, Christina.” He looked as if he were seconds away from losing his shit. “I knew he was attracted to younger women here or there, but—”

“But you have no idea what the fuck you’re talking about.” I cut him off, unable to take anymore. “He didn’t groom me when I came to visit you back then. He barely spoke to me at all.”

He picked up a shot glass and tossed the liquor back.

“I met him on the goddamn Words & Letters app.”

“Watch your tone. Now.”

I sighed. “I met him on the app, just like I met all of my other friends except Daniella,” I said. “I know you’ll find that hard to believe, but it’s the truth. When you left years ago—when you decided that you couldn’t bear to be in the same state anymore, we had to move.”

“I’m well aware of what happened when I divorced your mother, Christina.”

“Are you?” I glared at him. “Because I don’t recall getting a single, ‘I’m sorry for pulling you out of school during your junior year and making you start all over via online-school, since me and my wife are too petty to pick who’s responsible for paying for private tuition anymore’ card. Did it get lost in the mail?”

“That has nothing to do with you and Dane.”

“It has everything to do with it.” I refused to let him win this argument. “The two of you were so determined to ruin each other’s lives that you ruined mine in the process.”

“Christina—”

“All of my fucking friends are online,” I said. “I have twenty others that I’ve never met in person via the app, and I can guarantee you that if I knew who Dane was when we first started talking, I would’ve never continued. We were only talking, though. That’s it. Nothing else.” My heart was racing a mile a minute, and I could feel my blood boiling. “But now, it’s something more and I honestly don’t give a damn whether you agree with it or not.”

I walked away without saying another word, without bothering to look back.

SEVENTEEN

Christina

My Last Day in Spokane

Several hours later, I packed the last pair of jeans into my suitcase and zipped it shut. My chest still felt heavy, and as much as I wanted to pretend like my dad’s approval didn’t matter, it did.

Between him and my mother, he’d always been the more understanding one—the one who didn’t jump to conclusions or hand down punishments until he had all the facts. He was the one I could call at two in the morning about any mistake and he never judged me for it. He never lectured me in the moment; he always talked things out.

Then again, I wasn’t sure if there was a precedent for something like this.

I double-checked the drawers in the bathroom and looked under the bed to make sure that I wasn’t leaving anything. Then, with dread still pooling in my stomach, I finally looked at my phone.

There were ten missed calls from my Dad, one from Daniella, and a new voicemail from my mother.

I hit play on her message first.

“So, your father just called me flipping the hell out!” Her voice was louder than usual. “Here I was thinking that he was onto me about the comments I posted on that skank’s page, but it was about you and Dane.” She paused for a long time. “But you know, before I could wrap my mind around whether this was acceptable or not, Dane called and told me everything.”