Page 49 of Rock Hard
Chapter Twenty
He felt so ... normal, sitting at the small table with his daughter, having breakfast, just the two of them. No half naked women or passed out dudes to be seen. No bottles littering the floor, no apparent damage to the walls or furniture, no stench of booze, smoke, or unwashed humans.
It wasn’t horrible.
Last night, he and Carly had made some real progress. They had shared a nice dinner—sadly, no gazelle—and binge-watched some B-movie cult classics. They still had a long way to go, but they had taken the first steps to connecting with each other.
“So, when do we have to be downstairs for you to get your award?” Rex dumped a plate of sausages over the triple stack of buttermilk pancakes, and then smothered it all in syrup. If he was expected to be up and moving before noon, he was going to need a lot of energy.
“The closing ceremonies start at one, but I haven’t won yet, Dad.”
“You will.”
“And you know this because ...?”
“Because you’re my daughter.”
That got a small chuckle, though her eyes still held worry.
“But, what if I don’t?”
He couldn’t imagine anyone as smart and stubborn as Carlynotwinning, but he didn’t know much about these kinds of things. Concerts, he understood. Intellectual assemblies based on science? Not so much.
“Then we’ll get them next year.”
Her brief smile faded as quickly as it had come. She turned her attention back to her still full plate and toyed with her own short stack, swirling the same bite-sized piece around in a puddle of syrup, but never lifting it to her lips.
He might not be very good at this dad stuff yet, but he recognized the behavior. Alice used to do the same thing—play with her food when she was worried about something.
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.”
Alice used to do that, too—tell him nothing was wrong when something very clearly was. It drove him and his lion nuts. Maybe if he had paid more attention or taken those tells more seriously, things would have turned out differently.
“Listen, Carly, I’m not really good at this, so you’re going to have to come right out and tell me what’s bothering you for me to get it.”
She was quiet for so long he didn’t think she was going to answer, but then she echoed the ache in his own heart. “I wish Alice was here.”
The words were spoken so quietly he doubted he would have heard them without his acute hearing. Her head was still bowed over her plate, but he could see her peeking at him through her unruly bangs, trying to gauge his reaction.
He finished chewing then sat back, raising the coffee mug to his lips to buy some time.
“Me, too,” he finally said. Hey, they were being honest, right?
“Why did you make her leave?”
“I didn’t make her leave.”
“Then, why did she?”
That was the question, wasn’t it? He had a few ideas, but he didn’tknow. Only Alice could answer that, and once again, she wasn’t answering any of his texts.
“Didn’t she talk to you before she left?”
“Yeah. She said it was complicated.”
Rex snorted. That was such an Alice thing to say, conveying so much and so little at the same time.
