Page 78 of Afternoon Delight
“Nothing.” That was a blatant lie, considering where Zak’s face had been yesterday. “I like him,” I conceded as Carole King started crooning You’ve Got a Friend. “But we both have a lot going on. And he’s too young for me.”
“Oh, is he still in high school? Is that why him and Roddie are friends?”
“I mean life stages.” I came back for my sandwich. “He’ll want kids, and I am not starting over.”
“Are you sure of that? Have you asked him?”
I thought of Zak’s wistful What if when he had talked about Roddie.
“Whether he does or doesn’t isn’t the point. We’ve both got a lot going on. I don’t live here. Your dad is putting up with Roddie being here because it’s only a semester and they’ve got a new baby. Eventually, he’ll want Roddie living in the same city, if not in their house. I’ve already spent too much time here. If Roddie’s in Toronto, I need to be there for him.”
“Mom.” A mix of perplexity and scoff flickered across her face.
“What?” I braced myself.
Her mouth opened, shut, then she gusted out a breath that gave up any attempt at being careful.
“Grandpa was sick. You had to be here. We know that. We came out and saw him and we know how awful and hard it was for Grandma. And for you.” She waved emphatically at me. “We never thought, ‘Oh, Mom’s forgotten all about us.’ Maybe you weren’t there, but you always answered if we called. You checked in all the time and you always knew what was going on with us. You know who wasn’t there? Dad.”
I made a strangled noise, but Shelby wasn’t finished.
“I mean, I love him and everything.” She rolled her eyes. “He gives me money if I need it and says, ‘Good job,’ or whatever when I get an A. But Roddie and I don’t talk to him about anything important. Roddie didn’t want to come out to Dad at all. He thought if you were there it would be okay, but he also thought you had enough to deal with, so he put it off.”
“I didn’t know that.” My heart sank. “Now I feel like shit for making him hold onto it.”
“Same here,” she said, surprising me. “I felt awful when I left for school because you were still helping Grandma and started going into work again, and Dad kept going away on his ‘conferences.’” She put bunny ears around that word.
Yeah, I had known about Wanda before I really acknowledged that I knew.
“But you and Roddie told me to go, so I did. Then Wanda got pregnant, so Dad had to tell you about her and you left. Roddie stayed with Dad because of school and everything, but when I asked him why he came here to stay with you, he said, ‘I honestly thought that if you and Mom weren’t there, Dad would notice me and act like a parent, but he never will.’ Dad’s a complete dick to Wanda. He doesn’t do anything for Freddie. So, like, we both want a relationship with our baby brother, but if Dad wants a relationship with us, he could start acting like it.”
I ran my tongue over my teeth, considering how to react. I don’t trash-talk Joel to the kids, but I don’t lie to them, either. I wasn’t prepared to defend him when he was reaping what he’d sown.
“Anyway, we know you’re here for us,” Shelby said, tone easing. “We’ve never felt like you weren’t. So don’t move back to Toronto because Dad expects it. Ask Roddie if that’s what he wants. And, like, post a photo of you and Zak so Dad sees it. Preferably with that wall of dildos behind you. How do you work here every day, staring at those things?”
“They’re like cans of soup.”
“Size-wise or...?”
“You’re dying to look around, aren’t you? Go for it.” I waved in invitation.
“I had to wait for your secret boyfriend to leave, didn’t I?” She brushed past me and began to explore.
Chapter 42
Meg
Zak was not my boyfriend, but he was a good friend. He came over Saturday evening to help me set up the garage sale. He brought Dale, who settled into a visit with Mom on the back patio, since the weather had turned really nice.
Roddie was in the shower, and Shelby had left Friday. She had a long drive and was picking up Weston along the way. She and Roddie had made a ton of progress this week. They had turned the divestiture of junk into a game with intricate rules and scoring values based on the speed of removal, the weight and volume of whatever was removed, and whether it resulted in a sale or a disposal cost.
Mom trounced them both when the guy who bought Dad’s Corvette came to pick it up. He had hurried over, worried she would change her mind or, now that she had made up her mind, that she’d be so impatient to get rid of it she’d sell it to someone else.
She had taken us all to dinner on Thursday to see Pretty Please because Shelby hadn’t seen the show. It was even more fun the second time, thanks to a catastrophic wardrobe malfunction that stopped the performance.
While the dancers crowded around their colleague, one joked, “Is there a doctor in the house?”
Mom popped out of her seat and said, “I’m a doctor’s wife. I can sew.”
