Breed Me On The Bike

DO NOT THINK OF RUNNING

CORA

His eyes go past me to the lot, then back to me. He sets the pen down too carefully.

“What did she say?”

“I walked in on her.” My voice stays flat and I am grateful for it. “Her and Avery. With Miles. In our bed.”

Dad looks at me for a long second. Something moves through his face and then it is gone. He picks up a rag and wipes his hands like there is still grease on them.

“That is ugly,” he says. “I am sorry you saw that.”

I wait for the rest.

He wipes the same spot on his thumb.

“That is it?” I say. “I just told you your wife was in bed with my fiancé and my stepsister and you are sorry I saw it?”

“Vivian is Vivian,” he says. “She does what she wants. That is not why you drove over here like this.”

The shop fridge kicks on. The radio keeps playing. I can hear a wrench hit the concrete in the open bay.

“She talked about you owing Iron Dominion,” I dropped.

Dad goes still.

That is the first time I feel it, for real, under my ribs. Not when she said it. Now. Because he does not laugh. He does not frown like the name is random. He just stops moving.

“Dad.”

He puts the rag down.

“She said you owe them,” I say. “She said you could not pay. She said you used me. She said the wedding was fake and Miles never touched me because you promised them I would stay untouched and they are coming to collect me tonight. That is what she said. So I need you to look at me and tell me she made it up because she got caught.”

He breathes in through his nose.

“Come in the back,” he says.

“No. Out here. Tell me out here.”

“Cora.”

“Tell me she is lying.”

He looks at the open bay, then at the glass door, then at me. He comes around the counter. He does not touch me. He stops a few feet away and he looks older than he did at dinner on Sunday. The lines at the sides of his mouth are deeper. His shirt has the shop’s name on it and a dark smear on the pocket.

“It is not the way she put it,” he says.

My ears start ringing. “That is not a no.”

“Sit down.”

“I am not sitting down.”

“You are shaking and that is bad.”

“I am fine. Answer me.”

He rubs his mouth with his hand. “Your mother died and I kept you. I kept the house. I kept this place running when it should have gone under twice. I paid for your school clothes and your first car and that dress you cried in. I have been taking care of you your whole life, Cora. You know that.”

“I know that,” I say. “That is why I am here. Because you would not do this.”

He nods like I have helped him.

“Then do not stand there and look at me like I woke up one morning and decided to hurt you,” he says. “I got in a hole. It got deeper. The bank was not going to float me. Nobody with a clean name was going to float me. Dominion does not loan like a bank. They loan, and then they collect, and if you miss them they collect in ways I was not going to let happen to you.”

I take a step back and my hip hits a display of air fresheners. Two of them fall. I leave them on the floor.

“Are you telling me it is true?”

“I am telling you I handled it.”

“Handled it.” The words feel wrong in my mouth. “You sold me Dad.”

“Do not use that word.”

“That is the word for it.”

“I arranged something so you would be taken care of,” he says, his voice gets firmer, like I am the one who has gone off the rails. “So this shop would stay open. So the house would stay ours. So Vivian and Avery would have a roof. So the family would not get dragged into a mess because I was short on cash. You think I had a dozen good options? I had one that kept you breathing and off a much worse ledger.”

I shake my head. I keep shaking it. “No. No. You cried at the dress. You sat at the tasting. You told Miles he was good for me.”

“Miles did what I asked him to do,” Dad says.

The ringing gets louder.

“What you asked him to do.”

“Keep you close. Keep you home. Keep his hands off you. That was the agreement. You were supposed to stay untouched. That was the one thing they were clear about. I promised them you would. Miles made that easier.”

I laugh and it sounds like I am choking. “ I thought he was being good. I thought he loved me.”

Dad looks tired. “He kept you safe the way I told him to.”

“But he was in bed with your wife.”

“That is not the part that matters right now.”

I stare at him. I wait for it to matter. I wait for his face to change, for him to go for his keys, for him to say Vivian is done, Avery is done, Miles is done. He looks at the work order on the counter instead.

“I just told you they were in my bed,” I say, slower, like he missed it. “All three of them.”

“I heard you.”

“And?”

“And I cannot unsay a debt because my wife cannot keep her clothes on,” he says. “You want me to go over there and knock Miles’s teeth in? Will that fix the number I owe? Will that make Dominion wait?”

My eyes fill with tears and I hate it. I wipe them with the back of my hand and more come. I can feel my face getting hot. I can feel the shop, the radio, the open bay, the smell of oil, all of it staying normal while he talks.

“You are supposed to be on my side.”

“I have been on your side since you were seven years old and sitting on that stool eating crackers out of the box,” he says. “Do not stand in my shop and tell me I have not been. This is the only thing I have ever asked you for. One thing. After everything.”

“You did not ask,” I say. “You decided my future on your own.”

“Would you have said yes?”

I open my mouth.

He nods once, like that is the answer he wanted. “That is why I did not put it on you. I carried it. I let you have the life you wanted and the house with the porch light. I let you be a girl who thought she was getting married in two weeks. That was me being your father.”

“No, that was you lying to me.”

“That was me keeping you from panicking for months.”

I press my hands flat on the counter because my knees do not feel like they belong to me. The laminate is sticky. I look at his pen. I look at his name on the work shirt. I look at the old photo taped to the side of the register, the one of me in a soccer uniform from eighth grade, gap in my teeth, his hand on my shoulder.

“I am almost twenty,” I say. “You promised a club they could have me unused like I am inventory.”

“Watch your mouth.”

“Or what?”

His jaw tightens. For a second I see it, the version of him that used to scare me a little when the shop was behind and the mail piled up. Then he rubs his face and it is just my Dad again, and that is worse.

“You are acting like I put you on a corner,” he says. “I did not. I made a deal with men who already owned the debt. They want you in one piece. They want you clean. You go home. You pack a bag. You do not call the police, because the police do not go where Iron Dominion tells them not to go, and you do not make me look like I cannot deliver what I promised.”

“Deliver,” I repeat.

“Cora.”

“Say it. Say you sold me already.”

“I am not going to say it the way you want,” he says. “You want me to be a monster so this is easy to hate. I am your father. I kept you. This is the favor. You can hate me after. But don't pretend I have not earned at least this much from you.”

I cannot get enough air, it seems everything is punched out of my lungs.

“I came here so you would tell me it was a lie.”

“I know.”

“You were supposed to tell me it was a lie Dad.”

He looks at me and something in his face almost breaks, and then he puts it away.

“I could not pay them,” he says, quietly. “That is the truth. I used the only thing I had left that they would take. I am not going to stand here and dress it up so you can keep thinking I am better than I am. But I am also not going to let you talk to me like I threw you away. I did not. I bargained. I bought time. And tonight that time is up.”

The bell on the door sticks again behind me.

I do not turn.

Dad’s eyes go over my shoulder and then back to my face, and his voice drops.

“They are not coming to the house first,” he says. “Vivian texted me when you left. I told them you would come here. You always come here when you are scared.”

My keys are still on the counter.

I look at them. I look at him.

I still cannot believe it. Not all the way. Not even with his mouth saying it. Not even with the radio playing and the fridge humming and my eighth-grade face smiling off the side of the register.

My father loves me. That is supposed to be the first true thing. He is standing three feet away telling me I was the payment to a debt he owes and the only favor is that I pack a bag, and some stupid part of me is still waiting for him to take it back.

He does not.

He picks up my keys and he holds them out like I am ten and I forgot them on the counter after school.

“Do not think of running Cora,” he says. “It will be worse if you run.”