A Dangerous Friend

Oh Dad, She's Driving Me Mad

It wasn't that Jade didn't like her dad. They'd been awkward and distant when she'd been at school, but after her mom had left him in her endless quest for upward mobility some of the stuffing had been knocked out of him, and with it some of the stuffiness. As she'd mellowed and he'd relaxed, they'd become closer, almost friends.

Which was why it was always difficult coming to him for money.

They sat at opposite ends of a long dining table, a legacy from her mom, who'd taken her dad's last minor pay raise as an excuse to turn their modest house into a kind of miniature Downton Abbey, complete with a chandelier, which hung perilously low over the table and required conversation to be conducted either around, below, or through it.

"So," her dad said, from somewhere on the other side of the glass curtain. "Why are you here?"

Jade sighed. Her father's mellowing hadn't robbed him of his directness. "Can't a girl come to have dinner with her dad from time to time?"

"Yes, she can," her dad replied, unfazed, "but she doesn't. So come on. Out with it."

"Well..."

"A girl only comes to her dad when she needs money, she's pregnant, or she wants him to punch someone. So which is it?"

Jade laughed, despite herself. The thought of her dad punching anyone was ridiculous, and they both knew it. "The first one."

"Thank God for that. So what's it for?"

It looked like they were going to play the long game. "I'm a little up on my credit card."

"Uh huh. And why is that?"

"I... had to go away last week."

"For college?"

"No."

There was a long pause that said she was going to have to do better than that. "Okay, if you must know, I went to see Tori."

"Tori?"

"Maybe you don't remember her. She was the girl that helped me put on the play you came to see, the one where-"

"Oh, I remember her, all right," her dad said. "It's just I've never heard you call her 'Tori' before."

"Yes, well-"

"It was always 'Vega' this and 'Vega' that, and on one occasion, 'who the goddamn fuck does fucking Vega think she fucking is', if I recall."

"Dad!"

"Well, it was. You seemed a little fixated at the time, even for you."

"Well, things are different now," Jade said, face burning at the memory. "We're kind of friends." She stabbed at her food. "Or at least we were," she muttered, chasing a pea.

"You fell out with her?"

"Sort of."

"I'm sorry to hear that," her dad said, with what sounded like genuine regret. "What did you do?"

"What makes you think it was my fault?"

"Wasn't it?"

"Well, yeah, but it wasn't just me."

"So what happened?"

"Do we have to go into it?"

"If you want money."

"Ugh. Right. Well, it turns out her partner doesn't like me."

"And why is that?"

"I don't know."