Something Like a Love Song by Becca Burton

Author:Becca Burton [Burton, Becca]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781941530542
Publisher: Interlude Press
Published: 2015-11-07T06:06:29+00:00

Chapter 8

When Dylan pulls into the driveway, his dad is under the car, an old Fiat that he bought ages ago with the intention of fixing it up. He’d never gotten around to it, and it drove Adele crazy that Sam was always buying old cars, convinced that because he wrote car manuals he was capable of restoring them. The repairs always flopped, just like his plays, and sometimes, when Sam was gone, Adele would take the cars into a garage and have them fixed just so Sam wouldn’t add them to the long list of everything he’d failed at. He never knew—or maybe he did and just never said anything; but either way, it made Sam happy to be able to fix things, to create something with his hands other than words.

Sometimes Dylan wonders if the cars represent Sam’s broken relationship with his own parents, who had never approved of his decision to leave India and become a writer, marry an American girl and have a child who is not only hapa, but gay on top of it: the icing on the cake, Dylan figures, in a long line of his father’s faults.

“Hey, Dad,” Dylan greets him. Sam slides out from under the Fiat; his face is smudged with grease, his hair is a mess, his cheeks are red from the cold.

“Dylan.” Sam greets him with a nod, wiping stained hands on his pants.

“A little cold for fixing cars, isn’t it?” Dylan asks, his breath fogging the air around him.

Sam shrugs. “Wanted to get it done before the snow comes,” he explains, as though this is the most logical thing in the world.

“It looks great,” Dylan says, though he knows nothing about cars. His dad tried to teach him to drive a stickshift the summer after he graduated high school, and that ended with sore necks and a tension between them that took months to resolve. Sam nods and drums his fingers against his leg as though he’s trying to think of something to say. Sometimes Dylan wishes that the crippling insecurity that came with being a failed writer hadn’t torn his dad down to this shell of the person once so warm and friendly Dylan remembers from childhood.

“Just looking for Mom.” Dylan motions toward the house.

“She’s in her studio.” Sam looks back at the car. Dylan smiles at him, leaves him to continue his pseudo-mechanics and makes his way into the house.

Adele’s studio is an addition to the back, made of pine, with a wall of windows. It’s open and bright, and always smells like nature. The tension leaks out of Dylan’s shoulders just from entering the room.

She’s instructing a class—prenatal yoga, judging from the number of swollen bellies stretched out on mats of purple and green. Calming music plays from the stereo system Dylan helped install a few years back. Adele doesn’t see him at first, and when she does she arches her eyebrows, losing her rhythm only for a moment. Dylan waves at her. His expression is relaxed enough that she doesn’t stop class, and he takes a seat on the bench near the back.

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