163. Lemon

Out of all the people to appear out of thin air and get me out of the funk I found myself in, my father was the last person on the list. Even if he made the list.

But that is what happened. He fed me some passable spaghetti, and made me wash the dishes while he helped himself to some of the brandy from a bottle I’d opened, grumbling about me breaking into his prized collection even after I begrudgingly apologized, egging me on to call the university and cite reasons for my absence because apparently, they’d been trying to reach me after noticing that I had been skipping classes, but because I’d neglected all my calls whenever I saw they weren’t from Coraline and he even made sure that I called my friends so I could burrow their notes.

I lied and told Mal, Louise, and Annabelle that I’d been down with the flu, and then politely turned down their offers to come to visit with food. I did not want anyone to know that I’ve been wallowing after a breakup like some teen girl in a coming-of-a