5 by Spanish Fly Guy

Author:Spanish Fly Guy [Guy, Spanish Fly]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2011-03-07T23:40:17.047000+00:00

• • •

The light was on in the upstairs flat Ryan shared with his father. Ryan might not have noticed if it was still light out, if he hadn’t stopped at the chocolate shop for a drink with Mirya and Chance. It’d been an awkward drink. Some tourists started pawing at the windows like Night of the Living Dead even though most of the lights were out and the “Closed” sign was showing. Mirya couldn’t stop babbling about what she was going to wear to the Clambake. And it had been beyond awkward figuring out where to look to avoid meeting Chance’s eyes. But even if it hadn’t been dark out with the living room light showing through their thin plastic roll-up shades, and even though Ryan had indulged in an extra shot of Jaeger, he would have known his father was home before he even got halfway up the stairs, because you’d have to be dead to not notice the smell.

Dad smelled like the ocean. It was a matter of semantics, really. Ryan used to think he smelled like seaweed and dead fish. But in an attempt to put a positive spin on his father’s hiatuses from the trawler, every time he caught that whiff of brine, Ryan had reminded himself that he was smelling the ocean.

And then he forced himself to stop thinking about it.

His father sat on the couch hunched over a TV tray. Light from the table lamp bounced off the chalk-white ceiling and cast a glare on his deeply bronzed scalp where his hair was wispy-thin. He was looking at bills. What else would he be looking at? It wasn’t as if he ever read because he enjoyed it.

Ryan longed to sneak to his room, shut the door, and leave his father to contemplate the bills in peace.

But his mom always used to make such a big deal out of it when his dad was on shore. “Being a fisherman is dangerous work,” she’d remind him each and every time his father shipped out again.

“You never know which time you say goodbye to him might be the last time.”

Ryan never realized he should have been applying the same logic to his mom. The last time he said goodbye to her, she had an encounter with a distracted driver trying to figure out why her cell phone didn’t work. Obviously, the lady wasn’t a Brightside native or she wouldn’t have bothered trying.

Ryan’s father looked up from his bills and squinted—the squint was permanent—and he sighed. Which also seemed permanent. “They cut your hours again at the T-shirt shop?”

“Uh…no.”

“Your last paycheck seems about twenty dollars short. I thought maybe she let you go early a couple of days.”

Ryan thought back through the last pay period. “No, I burned a shirt, melted the decal right through it.

You need to use a lower setting for glitter and I forgot to—”

“Ryan.”

Ryan trailed off. It was a relief to be able to stop re-living the failure even though he didn’t like the way his dad had said his name.

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