Back in his room, he takes another deep breath and fishes his phone out of his bed. Claire texted.
claire: how was your test?
chris: uhhhh. I didn’t go, dad called me out sick
chris: I might have accidentally told him
claire: of course you did 🤦🏽♀️
chris: sorry, he was telling me about the barbecue Buck planned for tonight and I didn’t know how to get out of that and I panicked
claire: how did he react?
chris: good. like, really good. he’s not mad. he’ll help us, he said. he’s also very mushy rn
claire: okay
And Chris winces as he reads her simple okay, so unlike Claire at all. He hates not knowing what to say.
chris: sorry
claire: it's okay dw ❤️
claire: ask him how your mom told her mom, this is nerve wrecking
Claire must still be in school, and Chris feels guilty about that too, that he got out of it and she still has the telling part ahead of her—that, and chemistry class. And he’d wager that his dad is the easier one to tell, both because Dad’s been through this from the other side too, and because, critically, Chris is not the one pregnant. So he wheels himself back to the door and relays Claire’s question, it’s the least he can do. He can hear the stupid mushy smile in his dad’s voice when he answers, even from two rooms away.
chris: he said she greeted her with ‘surprise, grandma!’
claire: lmao
claire: forget about eddie, your mom is my new hero
claire: won’t do that to my mom though
chris: better not
claire: can’t deal with her heart attack on top. smh
claire: how did your dad tell his folks?
This time, Dad doesn’t yell back, and when he comes into view, he’s also not smiling. Dread mixes into the curiosity, because Chris knows that face. “What?”
“I mean, pretty similar to how you told me.” The face-scrunch is back in action, and working overtime by the looks of it.
“How did they react?” It doesn’t really take a genius to notice that there is a big difference in how his abuelos treat him versus how they treat his dad, or even how they treat his tías versus his dad, so Chris knows they probably didn’t handle it well.
Dad looks like he’s far away, or down a memory lane.
“Shitty then,” Chris sums up.
“They calmed down ultimately,” Dad says, and Chris notices that that isn’t a ‘no’. “And they couldn’t be prouder of you, you know that.”
As if that was the question. As if Chris needed that reassurance. The jury is still out whether this is gonna land Chris on their shit list, but he’s pretty sure they’ll find a way to blame it on his dad anyway. He huffs. “But not you.”
“What do you mean?” Dad honestly has the gall to look confused. Chris rolls his eyes.
“Dad, I’m not an idiot. I know how they treat you.” If not from his childhood, then at least from his year in Texas and his grandma’s pointed words.
“Chris, that’s—”
Chris isn’t having it, he slaps the doorframe loudly, and the way his dad almost jumps and stops talking is gratifying. “Don’t say it’s okay because it isn’t!”
“No I—I just mean it doesn’t have anything to do with you.”
“It kinda does, if my existence’s the reason.”
“It isn’t.” Dad runs his fingers through his hair again, and at this point, it stays like that, sticking up weirdly. “Don’t look at me like that, they—they were like that before. It’s fine.”
Roughly four months of therapy with his dad together, and Chris knows he won’t be able to change his dad’s mind on that this easily. That doesn’t mean he’s not going to try again. For now he settles on rolling his eyes once more.
“You’re getting a pass for yelling and rolling your eyes at me today, because you’re having a day, and I know it’s not easy to deal with everything at the same time,” Dad tells him calmly after like a minute of silence. “But it’s not actually something I appreciate.”
“I’m sorry,” he says sheepishly. He doesn’t know why he keeps lashing out.
Dad grins and then ruins the moment by ruffling Chris’s hair, like that is something Chris appreciates.
claire: ???
claire: hello??
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