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She’s solid. She’s every guy’s perfect girl. She’s definitely, one hundred percent without a doubt the girl I’m supposed to spend the rest of my life with.
    I think.
    She really should have stayed for the whole game.

layla
    Brett comes home and the roles are once again reversed. This time he’s ignoring me. Although not in the usual way. He’s not playing deaf—he’s pissed. He stalks around the apartment and everything he does is punctuated with a loud bang. He tosses off his shoes—
bang
. He hangs his jacket up and slams the closet door. He goes into the bathroom and slams that one, too.
    “Great game,” I say, when he finally comes out.
    “Yeah? What was the final score?”
    “Thirty-seven to fifteen?” I say, my pitch just slightly raised, which might suggest I wasn’t positive, but I did check before I got home. Still, the way he hurled the question at me, I feel panicky and wonder if there was an extra field goal or something.
    “You don’t have to come to the games if you don’t want to,” he says.
    Instantly I feel like crap. I
do
want to go to the games. I want to support him, at least. I’ve always supported him. It just didn’t feel like he cared either way anymore. But apparently he does.
    “I’m so sorry, babe,” I say, and mean it with all my heart. “Brooke was itching to take off and I didn’t think you’d noticeand I haven’t seen her in a while and we wanted to catch up and—”
    “It’s okay,” he says, taking in how awful I feel. “It just bummed me out.”
    “I’m sorry,” I reply, and then smile as I walk to him. “How can I possibly make it up to you?”
    He meets me halfway, and I know I’m forgiven. Sure, we may have hit a rocky patch lately, but when we do connect—when we’re on the same page—it’s paradise. We both know that.
    I knew I loved Brett the first time he took me to my dad’s grave. I didn’t know where we were going when he kidnapped me after school that rainy Friday, and I wasn’t in the mood to go anywhere, let alone somewhere against my will and with no clue as to where we’d end up. We were too young for him to be proposing but not too young for him to try his hand at romance in an outdoor, public (albeit remote) place. This was before my mom passed away, so when we got to the graveyard I was certain he’d taken his quest to obtain my virginity to a whole new level.
    “A graveyard? Seriously?” I spouted, hand on one hip, mouth pursed in a smirk, one eyebrow cocked.
    Brett reached his hand out and softly touched my sure-of-itself eyebrow with a finger, guiding it back down to its natural position. “Yes, a graveyard,” he said, and he kicked dirt from the front of a worn-away headstone.
    “Not on your twisted life, pal,” I said, but before I could get the words out I noticed something in his face. He was serious, and we weren’t there to have sex. He held his hand out for me to take, which I did.
    Brett inhaled a deep breath and then nodded toward the headstone. “Layla, I’d like you to meet the deceased Nick Brennan. Er, Foxx.”
    I stood there for a moment in shock. The back of my throat started to feel like it was coated with a layer of cotton candy. Iswallowed a few times to make it go away, but each time it became more difficult. Had my father died? Nobody had told me? It would be fitting, since he’d left me out of the loop on everything else that had happened since 1988 when I’d last seen him.
    “I don’t understand,” I said, as I started to tremble.
    “No, no …” Brett rushed reassuringly, taking me in his arms and holding me close. “He’s not
really
dead.”
    My wayward eyebrow poked back up. “Brett, what in the name of …?”
    “Your dad’s a shit. I say we bury him.”
    Nine words. Uttered as though he were telling me what time it was. That’s all he said. But what I heard was this:
    “That poor excuse for a father has caused you so much pain, it’s criminal—whether you want to admit