Page 4 of Fathers of the Bride
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Andrew Lane
Grrrrrr.He was too good-looking, too put-together, too charming and just altogether too much. How do you fly halfway around the world and look this good even five days later? I didn’t trust him, didn’t like him, and hoped to never to see him again.
“Welcome to the family,” I gushed. I was on my second Haku martini and that made things almost tolerable.
Raj and I had gotten to the restaurant early: Sushi Soul. A very of-the-moment spot serving a soul food/Japanese fusion. Very unique. Raj, my boyfriend, is a twenty-something Instagram influencer, which meant our first round of drinks was free. He dutifully took pictures of that round, the second round, and then my face as I was welcoming Avery—
“Stop that,” I said. There are things you do not want recorded for posterity. Many things.
“Sorry,” Raj said, not putting away his phone and not pausing with the selfies.
“Mr. Lane, I can’t tell you how much I love your daughter.”
“Uh-huh.” I bit the bullet and said, “You can call me Papa.”
“Oh no,” Kelly said. “We’ve decided to use first names. Avery has a dadanda stepdad, and then with Daddy and you, well, it just makes more sense to use names. Otherwise, we’ll never know who we’re talking about.”
“Except my actual dad,” Avery said. “I’m still calling him Dad.”
“If you can only figure out which one he is,” I said, a tad snidely so it took a moment before they laughed. Then I asked my daughter, “What do you think Daddy will have to say about that?”
Very carefully, she said, “He seemed okay with it.”
“He seemed—you mean you’ve already made your little announcement to him? You told him before you told me?”
“We flipped a coin, Andy,” Avery said, quickly.
“Andrew.”
“Oh, sorry.”
“So, I lost a coin toss?”
“I wouldn’t think of it as losing, sir.”
I couldn’t help but bristle at that. “Let’s get something clear. I really don’t like anyone calling me sir unless there’s a dungeon and a safe word involved.”
“Papa, behave.”
“Where are you staying?”
“In my old room,” Kelly said.
“You could have stayed with us—”
Raj made a sound somewhere between ‘meh’ and ‘ugh’ that I’d learned to interpret as ‘absolutely not’ with the threat of a weeklong pout. Kelly’s staying with us was out of the question. We’d been keeping the house precisely so Kellycouldstay in her old room,andRaj’s condo was only around seven hundred square feet. Still, that didn’t mean I wasn’t just a tiny bit offended. I could have bought a blowup mattress.
“Well, what’s done is done,” I conceded quickly. The waiter came by and asked if we were ready to order. I shook my head violently and said, “No, but we’ll have another round of drinks, stat!”
“Papa, take it easy,” Kelly said, but the waiter had already run off. “You don’t need to drink so much.”
Like she had any idea.
Brushing off her comment, I asked, “How did the two of you meet? Are you in the Peace Corps, Avery?”
“No, I’m not. I was in Malawi for Security Financial—”
