But he gave it. He gave it easy. He knew I wanted it.
And now he wanted it.
It wasn’t his to have, unless I was willing.
But dammit, my mouth ran away from me again, and I gave it.
Though, I had enough control to give the CliffsNotes version of it.
“Dad’s a dick. Stepdad one was a loser. Mom’s a saint. No siblings, except Dad’s offspring from wives two and four, which means I have two half-sisters I don’t know, since he moved back to Michigan where he moved here from, and hasn’t been back in ages, not for my proms, not for my graduation, not for anything. And as far as I can tell, I don’t want to know my half-sisters. Though, I can’t know for sure, considering all Dad does is complain about them being spoiled, greedy brats, and Dad complains about everything. But I tried reaching out, they didn’t reach back, so I stopped trying, and they never started. Therefore, I guess, technically, I do have siblings, but I also don’t.”
“Right,” he said softly.
I spoke no more.
“Mom’s a saint?” he pressed.
Shit.
He gave a lot.
So I gave more.
“Single mom, essentially even when she was married the second time, and I had everything I needed and occasionally stuff I wanted. She worked hard. We always had a roof over our heads. Food on the table. Fun times. But kids are kids. They sense things. They hear things. And I heard her begging and crying on the phone for him to pay the child support he never paid because she had four cents in the bank, four days until her next paycheck, and we were almost out of toilet paper.”
And I would learn that I needed to exercise a lot more control when the heat wafting off Gabe at my last made the air in the Jeep stifling.
“I’m fine,” I pointed out swiftly. “She’s fine. Stepdad two is the shizzlesticks. Confirmed bachelor, until he met her. Rugged mountain man who lives in a cabin and maybe was on his way to being Ted Kaczynski, without the insane parts, obvs, until he met Mom. He’s good not having kids. He’s good treating me like the daughter he never had. I’m good he treats her like gold. They live remote outside Prescott, and she’s living her best life in a two-bedroom cabin with not a soul near them but regular wine dates with her girls in town. They don’t have much, don’t need much, but so she can be social, like she is, she works in a coffee house part-time to get her fix of being with humanity.”
“Bet that works for you, she’s still young and only has to work part-time after workin’ hard to provide for the both of you.”
He would totally win that bet, and it would be a huge-ass jackpot.
However, I did not confirm verbally.
“You mentioned you spoke to him. You got a relationship with your father?” Gabe asked.
“He calls occasionally and gabs with me like we’re best buds, but outside that, no.”
“He calls?”
“It would be impossible for him to prove to himself he isn’t a deadbeat piece of shit if he didn’t.”
“And you take the calls.”
I turned again to him. “Gabe, he’s my dad.”
It was then I noted how tight he was holding the steering wheel.
And there went the heart-squeezing thing again.
Before I could think better of it, I reached out, touched his forearm and whispered, “I get what it is. I get what it isn’t. Robbie adores me. He tells me filthy jokes that make me double over laughing and piss Mom off. And he goes out to buy my birthday and Christmas presents all by himself. Sometimes they’re a hit, sometimes they’re a miss, but all the time they prove true it’s the thought that counts.”
His grip on the steering wheel loosened, so for my peace of mind and our future conversation that this wasn’t going to happen between us, I removed my hand.
“My uncle, with Luke, it was bad,” he said. “So bad, Luke took off after high school graduation and disappeared. To this day, no one knew where he was for years. He came back a changed man. Focused. Intense. Scary. I cannot fuckin’ tell you how happy we were when Ava came back on the scene. She was his neighbor growing up. Luke had a good job. Money. He had brothers in his team with Nightingale. A life. Women. But he was an island. I think my dad worried he always would be. Until Ava.”
There was a weighty pause and then…
