amity // phan

thirteen.

-dan-

As soon as my dad opened the door for me, the world switched to black and white.

The whole party experience- all those colours, noises, feelings- seemed very far away. All I could see was my dad standing in front of me, a million feet tall and filling up the doorway.

"Dan," he said quietly. "Why don't we talk in the kitchen?"

Shit.

I shrugged, swallowed, nodded, walked in the door. Inside the house, the world wasn't even black and white anymore. It was just black.

"Hi, Dad," I mumbled, kicking my shoes off.

The air between us was cold. His grey eyes were unreadable. It hardly needed to be said: the two of us didn't get along as well as we used to.

It's not that my dad was mean or anything- or that he didn't love me. But he'd always been that guy. The attractive kid on a hockey team or a football team, then into college, then into the military, then married.

And I spent most of my spare time pressing flowers.

A minute later, and we were sitting on opposite sides of the kitchen table. I sat stiffly, the chair biting my back. My fingers were drumming on the table, filled with nervous electricity.

"Is there something that you want to tell me?" he asked.

His voice was as cold as ice.

"Dan?"

His eyes were colder than ice.

"I went to a party," I said after a moment. His hair had more grey in it than I remembered.

There was a pause.

And then my Dad smiled.

He smiled.

He freaking smiled.

Even more surprising:

"I was around your age when I went out to my first party, you know."

I was frozen for a moment, just watching him.

"You were?"

He nodded, leaning back a little bit in his chair, and abandoning that always-perfect military posture.

He was acting so completely unlike himself. It was like I walked into the wrong house. The kind of house where parents and kids just sat down together and had conversations for the hell of it.

Somehow, by going to this freaking party, I'd become visible to him for the first time in years.

"Actually, that was the night that my friends and I tried drinking for the first time," he said. "Did you- have you?"

It took me a second to figure out what he was asking.

And it took me another second to decide that I'd lie to him.

"I did just a little bit," I said hurriedly, the words feeling tight in my throat. "I had two beers."

And he leaned back in his chair some more, and he laughed.

He laughed.

He freaking laughed.

And in that second, time went backwards. I could see the guy he used to be when he was my age: his hair was brown, not grey. And his eyes were full of so much more than they were now. He was the kind of guy to go on adventures at night with his friends, and the kind of guy who got what he wanted just because he was that damn likeable.