Rayne & Delilah's Midnite Matinee(72)
He hugs me back. “How you doing?”
“You mean besides that I’m about to sit down to eat a sorry, expensive salad while watching a person whose ego is the size of a sack containing every human sorrow and his Russian mobster bodyguard eat two thousand dollars’ worth of steak and lobster?”
“Besides that.”
“Besides that every time I try to talk about our show—which is my whole reason for spending an evening with this actual loon—he finds some way to talk about how amazing he is? And meanwhile, my best friend, who arranged this, is on a potential collision course with virtually certain heartbreak three hours away?”
“Besides that.”
“Besides that part of me is terrified about where this night is heading, but I’m also feeling weirdly compelled to see it through to the end?”
“Besides that.”
“Oh, then great, thanks.”
We smile and quickly kiss.
“I’ve been hanging back,” Lawson says. “I have a lot I could say, but I don’t want to mess in your business.”
“Yeah, let me handle it.”
“If you need me to step in at any point…”
“I got this.”
“Hang in there,” Lawson says. “I know he seems like a nut, but maybe he can help y’all.”
“I sure hope so because—” I almost slip and tell Lawson what’s riding on tonight. But right now is not the time or place. “Otherwise we’ll have wasted a perfectly good evening that we could have spent playing in the pool and kissing.”
Dad jumps back to avoid getting his feet splashed.
“Sorry,” I wheeze in a just hurled and might still hurl a little more voice, doubled over with my hands on my knees. I had the presence of mind not to say “Sorry, Dad.”
“It’s okay, hang on.” He slips on a pair of shoes beside the door and leaps clumsily over the pool of barf on his front stoop. He uncoils a hose in the front of the house. “Okay, stand back.” He sprays the puke into the bushes, thoroughly diluting it.
I’m hearing my dad’s voice again. The same voice that told me to go to sleep. That asked me what I wanted for Christmas. That told me to pick up my toys. His voice.
I watch him in the fading light. He’s wearing a polo shirt with SynergInfo embroidered on the chest, tucked into khakis. He’s got a little belly paunch. He has a gentler slope where his jaw meets his neck than I remember. Fine lines surround his eyes. His hair is thinner and shorter than he used to wear it. He’s never looked more like a dad. He’s never looked less like my dad.
While he works, I see him stealing glances at me. He has a stunned expression. There’s something else mixed in. Guilt? Anger? Sadness? Wonder? All of the above? He keeps moving his mouth like he’s about to say something but stops himself.
“Derek?” a woman’s voice calls from inside the house.
Dad leaps up the steps. “What, sweetie?”
Wow, it’s weird to hear my dad responding to a new name.
“Everything okay?”
“Yep! I got called into work, and as I was leaving I saw Boomer had puked on the front porch.”
“Has he been eating grass again?”
“Probably. I got it handled. Go back to sleep.”
The sound of the woman’s voice burns my ears. And he lies so well and so easily.
He coils the hose. “Hang on,” he says quietly. “Let me get my keys.” He runs inside and comes back a moment later with keys, some Kleenex, and a cold bottle of water.
I’m standing there, shell-shocked, the bitter stench of puke in my nose. He goes to hug me. “DeeDee.”
I put out my hand to stop him. “I—Please just—”
“Yeah, yeah, right. Got it,” he stammers. “Okay, we gotta leave. Then we can talk.”
I nod and follow him to his Jeep. We get in and he pulls away. He hands me the bottle of water and the Kleenex. I blow my nose and drink half the bottle. We’re silent for a second.
I’m being driven somewhere by my dad. I never, ever thought that would happen again.
“You used to spit up a lot as a baby. Your stomach got tougher as you got older, but you still…” His voice trails off. Several seconds pass. “How?”
“I hired a PI. Who was that woman?”
“That was, um, Marisol.”
“Are you guys—”
“My fiancée.”
“Wow.” I have that sensation right before you slip on ice. “When’s the big day?”
“September.”
“Wow.”
“She’s…pregnant. That’s why she was asleep when you arrived.”
“Wow.” (I’m having some vocabulary issues.) “Boy or girl?”
“Girl.”
“Wow. So I’m going to have a half sister?” I’m reeling inside. I feel like a billy goat just butted me in the stomach.
Dad thinks it through for a second. “Yeah. You are,” he says softly.
“A half sister that I would’ve never known about if I hadn’t tracked you down.”
Dad opens and closes his mouth a couple of times. Finally: “I don’t—I—I don’t know. Maybe not.”