thoughts of a father

Ed didn't want to say it, but he was thinking the worst about Prom, when Ollie arrived home in the wee hours of the morning.

"Were you going to stay out all night!" There, he'd yelled at him and Ollie just smiled as if he was happy about something.

"What did you do!" Ed was bug-eyed and possibly bitter.

"I love it when you worry about me." Ollie sighed and gave his dad a pat on the back. "I wasn't alone with Valentina. We stayed out talking with friends."

"You should have called." Ed was relieved but he didn't like being this tense. He was too old for this.

"I text."

"You did?"

He'd text Betty not him. Still, he thought he had a right to know.

"Betty didn't tell you?" Ollie smirked as if he and Betty were in this together.

Ed scrunched a frown. He told Ollie to get to bed. He was sure Betty was already asleep, but she was reading in bed.

"Why didn't you tell me?" He wanted to know as soon as he got to her room, pacing.

"Oh, I like to see you squirm, ever so often." She told him he was too cool, for the most part. "This is what being a Dad is." She smiled as she looked up at him.

He sat down at the edge of the bed and rested his chin on his hands while wishing he could pull his hair out.

"You don't know the first thing about kids staying out all night." She put her book away and rubbed his tense shoulders. "Daughters are the worst. They're more sneaky than boys." She said she trusted Dewey with his girlfriend, Angie. "Maybe, I trust her more." She laughed softly. "Never trusted Tiffany nor Brit, those two were party animals."

"A lot like you, I guess." He turned to her.

"What?" She gave him the eye that he better behaved. "Never."

Ed smiled with a laugh.

"Did you ever go to prom?" He asked.

"No. I was thinking about getting married, back then, and he wasn't in high school." She told him. "Did you?"

He shook his head no. They didn't have those sort of things where he lived.

"You were probably a troublemaker, just like Ollie." She smiled.

He winced.

To be young again, Ed wondered if he would have done things differently. Of course, Betty kissed him before he could think about it long.