Teacher's Pet

That was all it was. I just wanted to feel normal. If that meant feeding the beast, then that couldn't be that bad. Not if all the other time I couldn't even think straight because I was fiending too hard. I'd just take a little. Not enough to get me high, just enough to-

I heard my phone vibrating somewhere in the room. I got up. Where the hell did I leave it? It wasn't on the bed, not on the couch, not on the floor, either. I walked out into the living area and saw it on the piano. I went over and picked it up, sort of surprised someone was calling me. I was scared for a second that it might have been Kirsten, but it wasn't. It was my dad.

What was he doing calling me? I wasn't upset that he had; I just thought he had been traveling and was wondering where he was calling from. I took the call.

"Dad?"

"Nate. How are you?" he asked.

"I'm great. I wasn't expecting you to call me. I thought you had gone somewhere."

"I got back this morning. I'm at home," he said. Home was San Francisco. That was where he was. The same house I'd grown up in. He had never moved out. He had a lot of other homes around the country, but he always went back there.

"Did you have a good trip?"

"I called to ask about you, Nate," he said, laughing a little.

I sat at the piano with my back against the keys. He wasn't about to let me get away with not talking about myself. He and I were close; I liked talking to him. I probably should have made more of an effort to reach out to him since he was always checking up on me.

How did he know to call at just the right moment? Two minutes more, and I'd have had a needle in my arm, hating myself.

We had became close sort of by force when my mom died. I never saw him with another woman again. He had hired people to help with me when I was a kid, but it was always women old enough to be my grandmother. Never young au pairs from Central America he'd fuck on the side. The older I got, I wished he would find someone, especially when it was time for me to move out.

I'd been better about talking to him when the band had just started out. He'd always hear songs I was working on before anyone else, and I'd send him our music that we released independently myself, so he didn't have to buy it.

When the stuff with the band and Kirsten started going south, we stopped talking as much. He’d hired a lawyer for me during the divorce and had been really supportive since. He knew about the dope, but I spared him the gorier details of my addiction. Dope or not, I was in a bad place regardless, and he knew that.

"I'm okay," I said shortly.

"Is it all still the same?"

"I'm staying somewhere else. The beach house is gone. It's a golf course now. I'm at the Four Seasons."

"Oh, Lanai?" he said. He'd heard about it.

"Have you been?"

"Only once for less than twenty-four hours for work. Never got to really see anything, but it's a great choice. Beautiful island. Do you like it?"

"Uh, yeah, it's great. I'm having a great time," I said. I wasn't lying. I knew it was a beautiful island from what I'd seen of it coming here from the airport and looking down at the beach and ocean from my private terrace. I did like it.

The fact that I hadn't been outside or spoken to another person face-to-face for nearly a week straight was less important than letting him know I was okay. I would be okay, eventually.

"You learned to swim in Hawai'i, do you remember that?" he asked me.

I did remember. I was the only mainland kid, and I didn't know how to swim. After almost drowning myself trying to join them when they would go out into deeper water, my dad put floaties on me. By the time we were heading back to the Bay, I knew how to swim.

"Yeah. It’s great being back."

"How long will you be gone?"

"The whole summer. I need the time alone. LA's a disaster."

"You know you can always come home. If you want to move, you can have the house in Marin," he said.

I smiled, sighing. I was a twenty-seven-year-old man. I already had a house, and I didn't need to hide out in one of his properties. I wasn't that far gone...yet. I appreciated the offer, though. It was his way of looking out for me.

"Thanks. I'll remember that. I'm doing good, though," I said more brightly than I felt. "It’s nice here. Quiet. I don't have to talk to anybody if I don't want to. It's beautiful, too. I think it's good for me."