Page 97 of The Other Side of Paradise
“Any feelings?” she laughed, and I put my hands up.
“Don’t look at me. He’s tried his hardest over the years to convince us of that. What feelings were those?”
She looked down, watching at where we left footprints in the sand that the low waves filled in behind us. “Um… do you know what happened with Ryan at brunch yesterday?”
I frowned. “I didn’t think she’d gone…”
“I think she wishes she’d skipped it too. Apparently things got a bit, uh, shouty. Your dad skipped it too, and he was telling me second-hand what he’d managed to get out of your mom, once he’d finally gotten her to admit something happened there. He was as frustrated about being left out of the loop as anyone, and he demanded to know what happened, she apparently went running off after the confrontation. But, from what he heard, Ryan shouted at everybody that she was bisexual and that she’d been seeing a woman here, and that she was arranging her own trip back.”
I stopped, not far from my beach towel, turning to her with my mouth open. “She told everybody? About all of that? And what’s she talking about, getting her own way back?”
“I talked to Brooklyn after, and she confirmed everything. Ryan had just wanted to get back and shut down and everything, so that was why they’d both been quiet about it since then… she says Ryan’s doing better today. But she also said you should reach out to Ryan to check in with her.”
Ugh, I really should have. I’d been curious, just… I’d, uh, forgotten, having Allison between my legs.
This was the weirdest, grossest thought, but actually, I was kind of proud of her. Up and putting it out there and telling everybody to deal with it if they didn’t like it… all those things I wished I could do, the things I told myself Iwoulddo in that kind of situation, but then I crumpled under pressure like a baby.
“I will,” I said. “But he didn’t yell at you? My dad, he wasn’t weird to you or anything?”
“No. I thought he would be. I mean, he did foist coffee on me when I arrived and wouldn’t let me say no, so that was a little weird, but I guess expected.”
I laughed. “Yeah, I think it makes him feel like he’s doing business, and he knows how to do business.”
“But he mostly just seemed worried about you. He, uh… he said he regretted talking to you the way he did, said you were right that he hadn’t been fair with you. He still argued with me a little, but he mostly was just… you know, listening. Wanting to do okay by you, I think.” She paused. “The coffee was good, too. He’d gotten it from this one small spot like halfway across the island, and I’d never had their coffee before, but it was really good. Is your dad a coffee snob?”
“Oh, yeah, a hundred percent.” I looked down, a knot in my stomach, and I trudged, slowly, sat down on my towel, and I found myself staring out to infinity. “Would it have killed him to say that tomeinstead?”
She laughed nervously, sitting down next to me, her side brushing mine. The casual intimacy of it, the way she steadied herself with a hand on my shoulder as she sat and then left her fingers at my side brushing my hip, the casual little things… I wanted so much more time to explore it all. “I think it wasalready killing him, so it probably would have. Um… I think he’s working his way up to it.”
“Hm.” I folded my hands in my lap. “I guess we all have our journeys to go through. Can’t fault someone who’s… moving forward.”
She paused. “You…” she started quietly. “You could still fault him. From what both of you said about the conversations, it seems like he was a real asshole to you about things where you did nothing wrong.”
“Yeah, but…” I swallowed. “I just want things to be okay. I want things to work out. I want to have a decent family that can actually talk to each other. If we have bumps and bruises on the way there, that’s okay, but I’m sick of burying our heads in the sand.”
She made an awkward noise, looking away. “Yeah… he, um. Another thing is, um, well, I think he’s… uh, fine with his daughter being bisexual. He didn’t seem too upset about Ryan dating Brooklyn, just asked me what she was like. And, um…”
I stared at her. “And?”
“And, um, yeah, just, you know. Chill stuff. I mean, chill enough. Relatively chill.”
“Allison, what did he say?”
She hung her head, hugging her knees into her chest. “I think I talked about you a little much,” she mumbled. “He asked if I was dating you.”
Something tightened in my stomach, and I put a hand on her shoulder. “What’d you say?”
“Um. I said no. I did a really bad job playing it cool. Eventually I got out of it by admitting I had a, uh, a huge crush on you and I just wished you were.”
She wanted to date me. I guess I could have pieced that together, but I still liked hearing it. “Was he, like… I don’t know… weird about it?” I said, trying to sound casual, natural.
“He, um.” She cleared her throat. “He seemed to mostly just care you weren’t hooking up with a… meatheaded lifeguard.”
I laughed, even as my chest constricted enough breathing felt weird. I slipped my hand to her back, turning back to my bag. “Well, I’m sure he’d like you,” I said. “You’re not at all meatheaded.”
“I wanted to tell him I was, but I, uh, thought better of it.”
I wasn’t really thinking about it—I leaned over and kissed the side of her head as I pulled my phone from my bag, and I enjoyed the way her breath caught when I did. “You don’t give yourself enough credit,” I said, and I shot off a text to Ryan.
