Page 79 of Loverboy
My gasp is full of rage. “What?”
“Yeah.” He smiles, but it’s sad. “My mother never expected that to happen, I guess. She sort of stuttered through an explanation. She told me he was married to someone else, and he had two other children, and a penthouse somewhere on Park Avenue.”
“Oh myGod. And I thought my father was a dick. You have siblings that you’d never met?”
“Still haven’t. They’re better off not knowing their father is a tool.”
My heart aches to hear it. “What happened the next time he came back?”
“He didn’t. I told my mother I hated him, and I didn’t want to see him again. It was just something you say in anger, you know? But she must have told him to stay away. And he did—at least as far as I can tell. She struggled after that, and I felt kinda bad. But she never complained. She died the year before I met you, so I never heard the whole story—the version you’d tell your adult kid when he was ready.”
I lean back against the sofa, stunned. “I’m sorry, Gunnar. And you haven’t seen him since?”
“Nope.” He shakes his head. “And I never did make it to a game at Shea Stadium before they tore it down. That’s my strange little tale, Posy Paxton. Now you know. Our fathers have a few tricks in common.”
“You figured it out well before I did, though. I spent two decades of my life trying to please mine.”
“We both tried to please him, if memory serves.” Gunnar reaches over and gives my elbow a squeeze.
Sitting here on the sofa in the dark apparently makes both of us feel confessional. “You know, right after I got the bar manager’s job, I walked in on my father making out with one of the waitresses.”
“Really. I wish I could say I was surprised.”
“Well I was. But there they were. She was that blond—a few years older than I was. A Parson’s student, I think?”
“Greta?” Gunnar guesses. “Was that her name? Or Gretchen? I think I saw them together once, too. There was a lot of giggling, and then she came out of his office. I wondered.”
“You never said anything,” I grumble. It was a terrible shock seeing my father lip-locked to a college girl. He and my mother never seemed to have a very happy marriage. And they divorced a few years later. But the flagrance of my father’s actions had stunned me.
“What was I supposed to say? I was a college kid, too, paying his way through school on tips. You don’t critique the company the boss keeps. I didn’t even have proof.”
He’s right, of course. “You understood him before I did. And I lived with the man for two decades. Maybe that’s the biggest difference between you and me—wits and cynicism. Your job acknowledges the underbelly of humanity. Mine assumes that everything is fixable with a slice of very expensive pie. I guess it’s no shock that you’re more successful.” I kick the edge of the coffee table in frustration, and all I get is a pain in my toe.
“Hey now, don’t do that.” He reaches down and grabs my feet, pulling both of them into his lap. “In the first place, you run the most successful pie shop in SoHo.”
“Theonlypie shop in SoHo.”
He smiles. “That’s not the point. Your optimism is the thing I like best about you. There’s a bar with your family’s name on it—you decide to figure out how to run the place, with no help from the man who’s supposed to pass it down to you.”
“I had help from you, though,” I point out.
“So what?” He shrugs. “You got in there and rolled up your sleeves. You measured gin by the half ounce, and invented a song to help you remember all the ingredients in aHarvey Wallbanger. Even when you were irritating, you were really pretty cute. And that’s because of your upbeat attitude. We can’t all be cynical grouches.”
“Vodka, Galliano and orange juice. Plus a dash of self-righteousness and incompetence. I was an irritating rookie, wasn’t I?”
“Occasionally.”
“You told me I should wear V-necks, and my tips would improve. Instead of thanking you for the advice, I gave you a lecture about feminism.”
“I deserved it. That was just gratuitous on my part,” he says with a grin. His strong hands begin to massage the arch of my foot, his thumb lovingly stroking my skin.
“Omigod,” I moan, and then slap a hand in front of my mouth. There’s a chance my sister is still awake, reading one of her favorite dirty books and listening for signs of mischief upstairs.
Gunnar snickers, and then switches feet. I basically melt back onto my sofa and try not to moan like a porn star. I spend a lot of time on my feet, and they’re often achy at the end of the day. Nobody has given me a foot rub since…
Ever. I have literally never had a foot rub like this. Gunnar works his hand up my ankle and then back down again, stroking the muscles, smoothing the skin. And how did I not know how sensitive the bottoms of my feet were? The longer the massage goes on, the looser I feel.
And, fine. I’m turned on. All it takes is a foot rub and I’m ready to strip off my clothes and let him do me on the sofa. The sooner the better.
