Chapter Thirty: No Regrets
Sydney entered her bedroom that night to find Michael staring out the window. They were heading to Los Angeles the next morning; she and Michael had wanted to leave that night, but her father had thought it best that they all get a good night's sleep. Sydney thought there was a slim chance of that happening-- neither she nor Michael had slept much since the night before New Year's Eve-- but she hadn't wanted to argue.
"Ready for bed, baby?"
Michael turned to face her with a start; Sydney was surprised to see him hastily wiping tears from his cheeks. It wasn't that their situation didn't warrant tears. It was just that Sydney hadn't seen her husband cry since Emily was a baby, back when the two of them had been unsure their little girl would make it.
Kind of like now.
Sydney wanted to tell Michael not to hide his tears from her, to go ahead and cry. She didn't; instead, she rushed into his arms and let him hold her so tightly she feared he would crush her.
"I love you," he said after a moment, releasing her from his embrace.
"I love you, Mike," she responded, wrapping her arms around his neck and resting her head against his chest. "So much."
They stood there for another moment like that before Michael spoke again. "Tell me, Syd," he said. "In the last four months, did I say even one kind word to our daughter?"
"Mike--"
"Because it seems like all I did was lecture and punish," Mike interrupted, disentangling himself from her. He paced over to the bed and sat, tears gleaming in his green eyes.
Sydney moved to sit next to him, slipping an arm around his shoulders. "She knows that you love her, Michael."
"I know," he sighed, running a hand back through his hair. "I just feel like I haven't handled her growing up so well."
"You're her father, Michael, and you've had reason to be worried," Sydney said quietly. "She's dating a young man who's three years older, you caught her sneaking out of the house. Neither of those things are so bad, but she was your perfect little princess for so long…" she let her voice trail off. "I imagine it was hard to see her fall from her pedestal."
Another sigh from Michael. "She was never perfect, Sydney." He paused. "Maybe I liked to think that she was."
"It's okay," Sydney told him. "Daddies sometimes see their daughters through rose-colored glasses." Even as she said the words, she felt a pang. The same certainly wasn't true of her own father. He'd never met her first boyfriend, hadn't even been there to watch her leave for her junior prom. He'd sent her money for a dress from whatever corner of the world he'd been off to at the time and called and told her to try and be in at a decent hour. He'd stopped employing a nanny by that point; it would have served him right if she'd come in at dawn, puking drunk and missing her virginity. As it was, her date had dumped her for the prom queen and she'd come home bawling at ten p.m. She'd held onto her virginity until college, until Noah-- God, it seemed like it had happened so long ago.
"You know he loves you," Michael said quietly, as if reading her mind.
"Oh, it's clear he'll come through for me when I really need him," Sydney said, tears pricking the backs of her eyelids. "He's just never been so good at the day-to-day stuff, you know?"
Michael didn't say anything. Now his arm was around her, and he was lightly stroking her shoulder.
"Of course, I'm not completely blameless," Sydney continued. "I mean, I completely cut him out of my life for a decade to--" She let her words trail off, but they both knew what she would have said next: to be with you. She'd truly sold her soul to the devil for the man sitting next to her, and he his.
The thing was, she didn't regret it even for a second.