After School

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The last class let out at four. Kyle walked Allison to her car in the far lot, and she went up on her toes and kissed him, a quick press of lips and then a slower one, and pulled back with her hands on his chest.

"Text me when you're home. Think about vacation stuff. I'm gonna look at beach pictures all night instead of sleeping, and it's going to be your fault."

"Put that on my gravestone."

She laughed and got in, and he watched her back out, and then he turned toward home on foot, because his place was only fifteen minutes' walk and the evening was warm, and he'd made it maybe three blocks when a car he didn't recognize slid up beside him, low and black and clean enough to see his reflection in, and the window came down.

"Kyle."

Kyle stopped walking. His whole body stopped, all at once, like a hand had been put on his shoulder from inside.

His father was behind the wheel. Older, grayer at the temples, heavier through the shoulders, but the smile was identical. The exact smile. The look, top to bottom, and the smile sitting on top of it.

"You want a ride? Get in, I'll drop you."

"No." It came out flat and fast.

The smile didn't move. "Seven years, and that's the greeting to your own blood. Treat your father like a stranger."

"You're a stranger." Kyle's voice came out steadier than his chest felt. "Except you're the worst one. I'd be never polite to you, Jenkins."

"Jenkins," his father repeated, tasting it. "Your mom's teaching you to say my name instead of calling me father. She always did talk too much."

"Everyone talks too much compared to you."

A laugh, short and real, which was the unsettling part. Then Jenkins'sceyes went past Kyle's shoulder, back up the street, to where Allison's car had been. Kyle didn't turn around.

"Saw the little girlfriend pull out. That the one? The cheerleader?" Jenkins nodded to himself, like confirming a delivery. "Good body on her. You did well. Picked yourself a sexy one, son. Hot little thing."

"Jenkins."

"Kyle," his father corrected, mocking, and leaned his arm out the window. "You hitting that yet? Serious question. Because I can't figure it out. A girl built like that, walking around your campus with her stomach out, and you've never once been in that pussy? I can tell. I can always tell. You've got the face of a guy still paying rent on his hand."

"You don't talk about her!! You don't talk about her at all!!"

"Aren't you a bit too young to have a girlfriend?"

"Aren't you a bit too old to be alive?"

That taken him back. Even Jenkins tried not to get angry, he keeps his calm and his emotions and simply smile to him.

"Well that settled!! I'll fuck her later."

Kyle's eyes went wide. "What the hell-"

"Relax." He said it lightly, the way you'd say I'll call her later, and Kyle's stomach dropped through the pavement. Then his father's mouth curled. "I'm kidding. Mostly. The way things are going, it's more like you'll be the one fucking her. That's the joke. Keep up."

Kyle stood there with his fists at his sides and his heart going mad, and he realized he had no idea what his father was even saying anymore, and that this had been true for the whole conversation.

"How'd you get money for a car like that?" he asked. It wasn't the question he cared about. It was a rock to stand on. "That's a hundred-thousand-dollar car."

"Work went good."

"What work?"

"The kind that pays." Jenkins tapped the wheel with one finger. "Here's the thing, Kyle. Here's why I stopped. Remember when I said those years ago, when I want to hand you money? When you need for rent, Tuition, rent, whatever you want."

"I don't want anything from you."

"You do, actually, you just haven't hit the wall yet where you find out. Every kid finds the wall. But fine, you know what, I respect it. I came today for a different reason." He reached over into the passenger seat, unhurried, and picked up a thick envelope, the padded kind, heavy in a way paper isn't. He held it out the window.

Kyle didn't take it. His father held it there, arm steady, and waited, and the smile never cracked.

"What is it?"

"You'll find out when you open it."

"What's in it?"

"Open it and find out." The arm stayed extended. "Take it. You don't have to use anything in there today. Not tomorrow. Hold it until the time comes, and you'll know when the time comes, because the time will come on its own. And when it does, you're going to want what's in this envelope, I promise you that. It's going to change your life." A beat. "And mine."

"Why would you give me something that changes my life? You didn't care if I lived or died seven years ago."

"That's not true," his father said, and for one second the smile was gone and something else was on his face, something Kyle had never seen there before and couldn't name, and then the smile was back like it had never left. "It's complicated. And you've got your mother's whole listening face on, so I'll save it. Take the envelope, Kyle."

Kyle took it. He didn't decide to. His hand just came up, because it was heavy and because some animal part of his brain said this is a resolution to an open loop, take the loop, and his father's grin spread wide as the weight transferred.

"There. Was that so hard?" The engine woke, low and expensive. "Holidays are coming. Two months. Better start looking for a place to spend it." He pulled away before Kyle could answer, or maybe he wasn't waiting for an answer, and the car shrank down the street and turned the corner and was gone.

Kyle stood on the sidewalk with the envelope under his arm and his pulse in his ears, and he realized he'd been clenching it so hard the cardboard had bent.