My dad was making pizza when I chose a stool to sit on. I poured some cereal into a bowl and stirred it around. 'Hey! You're going to spoil your appetite if you eat that. I'm making pizza,' Dad smiled, but there was a hint of worry in his tone.
'Great,' I said, chewing glumly.
'What's up?' He stopped slicing peppers. 'You don't like pizza? Has some social media influencer decried that pizza isn't a 'thing' anymore?'
I met his is eye and raised an eyebrow. 'No, as far as I know, pizza is still a 'thing', Dad.'
'All right, then,' Dad winked, 'I know that my pizza brings all the girls to the yard.'
I groaned, stifling a smile with my palm. Was this man really my father? 'Stop. Please. You're embarrassing yourself.'
He shrugged his shoulders, unbothered by my second-hand embarrassment. 'Whatever. At least one of my girls... my wife... appreciates me. You know, on one of our early dates, I invited her round to my flat and made her favourite pizza. She'd suggested a chain pizza restaurant. I had to educate her on the benefits of home cooked fare...'
'Well, she had good taste,' I agreed, thinking back to all the pizza parties my dad had indulged my friends and I with over the years. I was starting to feel less embarrassed about my father...
'I taught her how to make a great pizza,' he recalled proudly. 'She had flour on her cheek. I don't think she was expecting the cooking lesson. She was wearing a lovely dress, not suitable for what I was about to put her through, but she was a good sport.'
'Cool,' I smiled. 'Mum's always up for anything.'
My father smiled secretively.
'What are you smiling about?' My curiosity was piqued.
'It's nothing,' he said, a blush was spreading across his face.
'Oh come on!' My voice took on a whiny tone as I threw my chin up.
My dad rolled out the dough. 'Well, ok, if you insist. She took off her dressâ'
'Noâ' I started to say, realising the full extent of what I'd done too late.
But he was in full flow now. It was like I'd switched on his memory lane tap. 'And helped me in her underwear. I would have given her an apron, but she was worried that she'd ruin her dress. I wasn't complaining. Lillian was â is â such a beauty, Best night of my life.'
'Aaand happily ever after,' I finished off. Despite my father's tendency for oversharing sometimes, I was glad that he'd found the love of his life â my mother. It gave me hope that I too could replicate their love for each other with my own special person. It was just a question of who, when and where...
'Yeah, and and the rest, as they say, is history,' Dad smirked.
My dad went to the fridge to get out the dough which he'd made earlier that morning, humming a little ditty which I didn't recognise, but it probably would have been one of the 90s rock bands he was into.
'What's worrying away at you, sweetheart?' he said, taking the plastic wrapping away from the dough, plopping it onto the board which he'd previously given a generous sprinkling of flour. Christmas had come early in our house.
I internally debated how much I should tell him. And how or if I should even undertake such a delicate endeavour.
'I don't mean to pry...' Dad was saying.
'That means you do,' I cut in only to receive a light chuckle from him.
'But is this about Jonny? He came up to me the other day, saying that he was quitting. I don't know...' Dad mused, looking up from rolling the dough. 'It seems that he was upset by something. I couldn't really enquire into it. He had to go somewhere afterwards. Nice lad, though. Such a shame. Whip-smart. Extremely quick study, I have to give it to him. Never a complaint.'
Hearing my dad complimenting him in such an effusive way made me want to cry even more. Jonny hadn't deserved my poor treatment of him.
'Yeah, sort of,' I tried to wipe the stray tears away from my eyelids, but they insisted on crawling down my face like invisible spiders.
Luckily, my dad hadn't noticed as he was preoccupied getting the batch of homemade tomato sauce he'd made earlier from the fridge.
'Oh. I know how much you liked each other. Whenever you were on a shift together, you were always nattering about something. But you were really good together as a team.'
'Yeah. We were,' I whispered, trying to swallow my grief in. I wanted to dash out from the room, but my whole body was stuck to the chair. I think if I had tried to get up, my legs would have been like jelly.
'Wish him well with his studies though. Pleasure to have him working in the shop,' Dad was smiling, as though he was remembering all the fun and good times Jonny had brought along with him.
It got too much for me. The nostalgia. My dad's smiling face. Zachary Malone's harsh text message which I'd looked at a million times. I could recite it by heart. It was like a tattoo etched across my mind.
I didn't realise my dad had stopped spreading the sauce across the dough until I heard him push aside a stool and I felt his floury hand on my own, presumably because he was considerate enough not to want to ruin my clothes.
'What's the matter, darling?' Dad's voice was filled with anxiety and worry. My shoulders were hunched over the bar and every inch of me burned with disappointment and sadness for the way events had played out. I hadn't meant to string two boys along.
Finally, after what felt like an age, I looked up to meet my father's warm hazel eyes, the ones I'd inherited from him. But before I even had the chance to tell him as much as I could, Dad blurted out, 'Did you go out with Zach? And did Jonny get jealous? Or was it the other way round?'
I stared at him, shocked and amazed that he'd have the instinct to semi-guess what had happened. Then again, he had known me for seventeen â almost eighteen â years. Some of my friends dads were completely oblivious to the romantic going-ons of their kids, either by choice or not. Louisa's conservative dad had all but given up trying to understand his daughters love life. He was just relieved she came back home in one piece. It seemed like my dad was a mind-reader. I didn't know if I should have felt comforted or scared that he knew me like his favourite book.
'I... uh, dated Jonny for a while and we broke it off. It was connected to Zach, but that's all I'm saying about it,' I chose my words carefully.
Dad nodded solemnly. 'I see. I suspected there was some sort of love triangle. Your mother was the one who though you and Zach were an item. He sent her a bottle of Chanel perfume because she mentioned it was our twentieth wedding anniversary coming up soon,' Dad beamed, pleased that my mother was happy with her gift.
I would have been happy too, and a small part of me was, but instead I wanted to crawl up into a ball and cry... perhaps die?
Dad was absentmindedly stroking my back, forgetting about the huge flour stain he'd leave on my t-shirt. I didn't mind nor did I bother reminding him. It felt nice to be comforted by my dad.
'Recently?' he said.
'What?' I was momentarily jolted out of my negative thoughts.
'You said you guys broke up. Was it recently?' he asked delicately.
'Yeah,' I said miserably, 'IâIâI went round to Zach's place. We hit it off...' Defeated by my father's curiosity and understanding, the words finally came out of their own accord. To his credit, he listened to me spill my guts out. He wasn't as upset as I'd though he would be. If anything, he was extremely patient with me. He expressed his disappointment that I had kept my romance with Jonny a secret as he and my mother would have loved to get to know him on a different level.
Moreover, he was also disappointed that Jonny had had got caught in the crossfire.
'Do you think I treated Zach badly?' I mustered up the courage to ask the question that had been bothering me since the evening I confessed to Jonny.
Dad was silent for a moment, considering the question. 'Well, I think he was confused. It's obvious he enjoys your company a great deal. I don't think he's angry at you. Upset maybe. But I think with Zach he thought you were leading him on a bit... not that you were,' He said the last words quickly to reassure me. 'For all the bluster, he seems like a very sensitive young man.'
It was my turn to be silent for a bit.
I could kind of see where my dad was coming from. I had lead him on by agreeing to go back to his place. We had flirted quite a bit. I thought I was paying him back but in reality I was probably no better than he was. And Zachary Malone really wasn't so bad.
'Thanks, Dad.' I hugged him tightly.
'What are you going to do about Zach?' he said, pulling away from me.
'I don't know,' I said truthfully.
'Well, whatever you do, I know you'll do whatever you feel is best, Candy.' Dad kissed me on my forehead. He tucked a strand of my hair, which had escaped from my ponytail, away from my cheek.
As I turned to leave the room, my dad called out to me. 'You should probably change out of your t-shirt unless you want your mother to see...' he jested, attempting to rise a smile out of me.
I gave him a watery one in return.
Departing with a sincere kiss on Dad's cheek, I dashed away from the kitchen, to my own bedroom to be alone with my thoughts for the first time in ages since I'd made the reveal to him.
Surprisingly, he had taken it well. The regret and sadness I'd experienced as a result of Jonny's and mine's break up was curtailed for the moment. It was like my speaking to my father about it I'd let a butterfly out of a jar, free to flutter around, weightless.
A lot had happened over the course of a few weeks. It was like a tidal wave of emotions I'd never known I could experience had overwhelmed the previously serene, content shores of my mental seascape.
Jonny's cheerful dingy sailed away; whereas, there was still the ominous shape of Zachary's fin scalping through the water, on course for... what? Destruction? Or a cataclysmic release?
I couldn't distinguish between the two... they seemed to err on the same side.
We, all three, were riders in the storm.
* * *
The night was dark and brooding.
Later that evening, my belly full of pizza and sparkling peach soda, I sent a conciliatory message to Zachary. It felt like the right thing to do.
Zach, I'm sorry about what happened. I hope we can make up? Hope you're okay & enjoying your well-earned rest after all those exams! I miss our conversations... and I'm not just saying that.
xx Candy.
For a couple of days I waited for a response, but none came.
I didn't blame him if he didn't want to know me. Business would carry on â as usual. Just because my world had stopped rotating, it didn't mean that everyone else's had too.
There was still Heather's wedding cake to be taken care of. My dad had vowed that it would be special.
It would be one of the highlights of his long, illustrious career.