THE FIRST TIME YOUR FATHER TOUCHED ME

was when the three of us drifted to some seafood place on the boardwalk in the middle of an August heatwave. I could feel the polish aching on my nails and sweat coming down from under my arms. Your hand on my thigh, thumbing at my angel tattoo while your dad knocked our knees together under the table. My eyes kept watering. We reached for a crab leg at the same time.

I so badly wanted to slip a hand around him during that one New Jersey visit of the summer, but I could tell your mom was really in love by the way she glimmered around him at the cookouts. She always had me sitting in the freezing cold living room waiting for everything to be ready, even when she knew how long I had been a waitress. She’d watch how he pressed the meat into the grill, scan his charcoal marks, and touch the sweat on his back with an ease that half made me wish she was touching me. He’d ask her to throw him a beer and she’d take one out of the case, press it to the space between her breasts before handing it off to him. Her colossal, quiet, “I love you”. It made me feel like she missed him. I squinted through my sunglasses. The way she sat on top of the picnic table swinging her legs, sucking her straw, watching his elbows; it enraged me.