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In the upstairs hall, a light shone beneath Dad’s office door. I knocked twice, then pushed it open.
Dad was sitting at his desk, wearing his reading glasses as he typed on his laptop. He looked up at me with a smile when I came in, then got out of his chair.
“Hi, Dad,” I said.
“You’re home,” he replied.
As he walked toward me, I noticed little details. The UW sweatshirt he was wearing, which was his favorite. The tuft of hair sticking up unheeded on the back of his head. The crinkles around his eyes, the way the skin was starting to sag on his jaw. He was only in his early forties, but he looked older. Too old. I had gotten famous fast at sixteen, and Dad had had to rearrange his life, just like I’d had to rearrange mine.
He surprised me by stepping right up and hugging me, his arms around my shoulders. I blinked and hugged him back. It wasn’t that Dad wasn’t affectionate—he was. But this seemed different somehow. Like he needed this hug as much as I did.
I gave in, wrapping my arms around his worn old sweatshirt and digging my nose into the crook of his neck, like I was a little kid again. He smelled like laundry soap and aftershave that had long ago worn off. He was warm, and he hugged me tight for a long time. I had no idea why I suddenly felt like crying.
“You should be in bed,” I said when he let me go. “It’s late.”
“Too much work to do,” Dad replied. He patted his palm gently on the top of my head, like a grownup does to a toddler, even though I was almost two inches taller than him now. “I don’t mind staying up. They called me from the airstrip to tell me you landed all right.”
I nodded. “Alistair is partying downstairs.”
“He’s having a few people over.”
He looked so tired, more tired than I was. “You don’t have to work so much,” I said. “We can hire someone to assist you so you have time off.”
Dad laughed at that. “You’re my son! I can’t delegate my son like you delegate a few legal letters.”
“But we could?—”
“Don’t worry about it, Finn.” He was stern, but his eyes were still crinkled at the corners. “I’m exactly where I want to be, doing what I want to do. You worry too much.”
I scrubbed a hand over my face. I couldn’t think about this right now. I was so tired.
“Go change and wash up,” Dad suggested. “Then go down and unwind with Alistair and his friends.”
I almost laughed out loud. Me, hang out at Alistair’s party? Alistair was tall and thin, and he’d dyed his hair inky black. He wore it in a short cut that he gelled in spikes. He had a ring in his eyebrow. The whole look should have been stupid, trying too hard, but somehow he pulled it off in a way that amazed me and made me mad. I had Hollywood’s best stylist do my hair, at a cost that would make most people throw up, and Alistair looked cool with a fourteen-dollar cut and drugstore dye.
“I don’t think he wants me down there,” I said to Dad, as gently as I could. In Dad’s eyes, I was just as cool as Alistair, maybe cooler.
“Sure he does,” Dad said. “He’s your big brother. Alistair loves you.”
Another fiction in Dad’s mind. “He’s hanging with his friends. I wasn’t invited.”
“Because he didn’t know you would be home.”
I would do almost anything for my dad, but I couldn’t subject myself to the humiliation of knocking on Alistair’s door and begging to join his party. “I’ll clean up and go downstairs,” I said, which wasn’t the same thing.
“Good boy,” Dad said, squeezing my shoulder.
“But only if you agree to go to bed. Right now.”
“You have a deal.” He hesitated. “Finn. You know I love you, right? No matter what happens.”
So that was it. He was as stressed about the tour as I was. “Yeah, I know,” I told him. “I love you, too. Goodnight.”
The party was still going half an hour later, when I went downstairs, heading for the kitchen. I had cleaned up and changed into navy blue sweatpants and a tee, my feet bare. I wasn’t planning to see Alistair or any of his friends, but at the last minute before leaving my room, I thought about Alistair’s hair and felt self-conscious about my dark brown waves with subtle, professional highlights. I jammed a baseball cap on my head, just in case.
At the bottom of the stairs, I turned down the corridor that ended at the huge kitchen. For the first time since leaving Japan, I finally felt hungry. I’d get a snack, staying downstairs long enough to appease my dad before he fell asleep, and then I’d sneak back upstairs with no one the wiser.
But the party hadn’t stayed in Alistair’s rooms. I heard voices in the spare room off the hall, a man’s and a woman’s. I didn’t think the man was Alistair, which meant it was one of his friends.
