After an hour or two of math on a Friday afternoon, Trina declared victory on her homework with only about eighty percent completed. She went off to grab dinner with Chris, leaving me alone in the apartment for a few hours before my show. As soon as the door closed, I instantly regretted not telling Trina about the fight that Ryan and I had the night before.

The entire day had been spent debating calling Ryan and then chickening out. I skipped all my classes and stayed home, frantically writing music. I felt like I’d just been run over by a train. I was embarrassed, still angry, and hurt. Not necessarily in that order.

Although I still felt the same emotions that I’d felt the night before, when I woke up with a hangover the next morning, everything felt duller and achier than white-hot and sharp. It was hard to work up the same passionate anger that I’d felt before. Mostly, I just felt bad. I channeled that feeling into songwriting, but it didn’t kill the pain.

I should’ve kept a closer eye on the clock when I as at Victoria’s. I shouldn’t have let hours go by without letting him know what I was up to. I was rude.

Then, when I finally did text him, I shouldn’t have picked a fight. He clearly hadn’t wanted to get in an argument with me. He tried to get me to call him, so we could actually talk. Instead, I insisted on a means of communication that prevented any tone from being easily understood. I was stubborn.

On top of everything, I’d jumped to conclusions. But now that the damage was done, I was too ashamed to call him, and even though I hadn’t been one hundred percent right, I wasn’t sure I wanted to apologize. He hadn’t called me, either. That couldn’t be a good sign. I definitely shouldn’t have said those things about his dead girlfriend.

My phone rang a moment later. Startled, I pressed it to my ear.

“Hi,” I answered. “You didn’t have to call. I’m really ok.”

To my shock, it was my father’s voice that answered. “Rosie?”

I blinked. “Oh, sorry dad, I thought you were Trina,” I told him, “I was just texting with her. So, when you called, I thought it was her.”

“Oh.” My dad’s voice sounded confused, but he quickly got over it. He laughed a bit and I could imagine him shaking his head. “Well guess what? My trip next week got moved. I’m in town right now.”

I blanched. Right now? He was here, in Austin right now?

“That’s great news,” I choked out. My heartbeat had jumped up and was galloping away against my ribs. It was not great news. It was horrible news. It was the worst news possible.

“I’m not sure yet when I’ll be free from my meetings,” he was telling me. I was zoning in and out of the conversation as my panicked mind tried to find a solution. “Probably around six. Do you still want to get dinner?”

My mouth was moving up and down, but no noise was coming out. I snapped it shut and took a couple of deep breaths. “I have a gig tonight at a local bar. You should come. We can get dinner afterwards.”

As I waited for his reply, my heart pounded hard. I was holding my breath. I hadn’t intended on telling him the truth, but I wasn’t willing to just continually lie to him, either. I wasn’t much of a liar.

My mom may have her issues, but she’d always imparted on me the importance of telling the truth. She might be hard to take, but my mom was honest. Sometimes to a fault. She never had any problem telling her truth to people, no matter how rude it was. It contributed to more than a few of her firings over the years. One time a boss asked her if the pants she was wearing made her look fat. My mom said no, instead it was the fact that she was objectively obese and needed to go on a diet. She got fired. Things like that happened to her a lot.

“That sounds nice,” my dad said carefully. I could almost tell he was making a decision not to express his disappointment over the phone. My dad never liked to have the big discussions over the phone. He liked to have them in person. At least that meant I had a few more hours to figure things out.

“Great,” I replied. My voice was breathy from holding it for so long.

“Great,” he echoed. I could almost believe that he felt as lost as I did. Then he cleared his throat. “Ryan and his girlfriend are going to come to dinner with us afterwards, at least that’s the plan.”

Ryan and his girlfriend? I coughed. No... My heart hurt.

“Ok.”

“Ok,” he repeated my monosyllabic reply. “Well, I’ll call you when I’m free.”

“That sounds good. Talk to you then,” I said. My dad said something about loving me and being excited to see me and then he hung up too. I barely registered his words. A headache was coming on. Now, with only hours until my show, everything had gotten a thousand times more complicated.