A Cosmic Kind of Love(101)

He didn’t.

He just took a second and then nodded slowly.

Deciding to take advantage of this newly patient version of my father, I leaned across the table and said, “If you don’t want to talk about it, just tell me, but I would like to hear more about your parents. Where they came from. What they were like.”

I knew I was pushing it.

Yet my father surprised me again. Though his eyes flared with emotion, maybe even anger, he eventually responded, “One day, son. I will tell you one day. But not here, not now. When we’re somewhere private and I can find the words.”

This was a compassion I’d never experienced for my father, not even when my mother died—because one, I was consumed with my own grief, and two, he was so stoic I wasn’t even sure what he’d felt at her loss. The loss of his parents, the way that it happened, and most likely the consequent years in foster care, had a profound effect on my father. On who he’d become.

Knowing that made his actions over the years a little more understandable. Maybe losing Miguel and Mom, and then seeing how close he’d come to losing me over his treatment of Hallie, had woken him up. Had exacted a change.

And I believed no matter who someone was or what age they were, people were capable of changing for the better.

If I could offer that faith to a stranger, I could certainly offer it to my father.

Sitting back in my seat, I let the subject of my grandparents go. “Did you catch the Yankees game?”

Baseball was the one sport my father followed religiously despite his busy schedule. He groaned, reaching for his glass of water. “Did I see it? Are you trying to upset me by bringing it up?” From there, he launched into an irritated diatribe that made me laugh, and for the first time in as long as I could remember, I had a good time in the company of my father.





FORTY





Hallie


Bad timing.

It could ruin everything, just as much as good timing could change a life.

Unfortunately today was all about the bad timing.

After Chris had let me into his apartment, he didn’t even kiss me hello before he ducked into the bathroom to wash up for our dinner plans. That led me to standing in Chris’s bedroom, staring at the bathroom door, trying to drum up the courage to confront him about how distant he was being once again. I thought his whole weird, distracted phase was over, but the day after our argument regarding those photos of him and Darcy, he returned to being off planet.

By the time Friday arrived, my worry over his behavior and mixed signals was making me a little frazzled.

I couldn’t keep it in anymore. It was all I could think about, and it distracted me from work, from life, from everything. I’d tried to pay for lunch with my MetroCard today. Yesterday, I’d sent an “I love you” text to my client Christine instead of to Chris. She replied, “Thank you?”

So it was the ultimate in bad timing that Chris’s phone (returned per my mother, who did want to talk about the photos and made an annoying disbelieving hmm noise when I explained them to her) binged on his bedside table.

And the name that flashed on his screen was “Darcy.”

My heart lurched in my chest, and I reached over to tap his screen. And I didn’t even need to think about invading his privacy because the preview on the banner was enough.

Her text started with Today was fun . . .

Blood whooshed in my ears.

Today was fun? He’d seen her today? Today when I’d asked him to join me for lunch because I hated the distance between us and he’d told me he had lunch plans with his father?

Okay.

Now I was way past worried.

Why would he not tell me he’d seen Darcy today unless he had something to hide?

Tears threatened, and I felt this itchy, panicky sensation.

I didn’t think love was supposed to feel this way. Althea and Michelle didn’t have this kind of drama in their lives.

Oh God, was I destined to repeat my parents’ mistakes?

NO! a loud voice screamed from the back of my head.

No, I would not end up in a relationship like theirs.

The bathroom door suddenly opened, and Chris stepped out in just his underwear. I ignored how beautiful he was as he shot me a look of confusion. “Why are you just standing there?”

I waited for him to pull on his jeans before I lifted his phone and handed it to him.

Frowning, he took it and swiped up the screen. He froze at the sight of Darcy’s text.

“You told me you were having lunch with your father today and that’s why you couldn’t meet me.”

A muscle ticked in his jaw, and to my shock, Chris glowered as he looked up from his phone. As if he were the wronged party. “I did have lunch with my father today. Darcy showed up with a friend. My father asked them to join us. It was a coincidence.”

“And you didn’t think that was worth mentioning?”

He hauled a T-shirt on and left the bedroom. Chris spun around in the middle of the living room. “I would have told you tonight, but you saw the text before I could. I can’t keep doing this with you, Hallie. I can’t keep assuring you that there’s nothing going on with Darcy.”

I scoffed. “You think her turning up to the restaurant is a coincidence? Chris, there are over eight million people in this city and over twenty-six thousand restaurants, and she just happens to walk into the same one?”