“‘Chickensqueezy?’”
“Yeah. Why? Haven’t you ever heard that phrase before?”
He stared, disbelief on his features. She also sensed him trying not to get snarky with her.
“What?” she asked. “Just spit it out.”
“It’s notchickensqueezy,” he finally said. “It’slemonsqueezy.”
“What?” Joaquin continued staring at her. “No,” she said. “That doesn’t make any sense.”
“Uh, and squeezing a chicken does? I’ve heard of lemonade but I’ve never heard of chickenade. You sure you aren’t conflating ‘winner winner chicken dinner’ with ‘easy peasy lemon squeezy’?”
“Oh.” Dewi thought about it. “I guess a lemon would be easier to squeeze than a chicken.”
Joaquin snorted. “Yathink?”
“Don’t push it,” she growled.
“Sorry, boss.”
CHAPTERTWENTY-ONE
DEWI
Dewi couldn’t have askedfor more perfect weather for the drive. As dawn broke it turned lightly breezy, with the wind blowing in from the east off the Atlantic and tempering some of the heat of the late March morning and making the humidity more tolerable.
It was just before 10:00 am when Dewi pulled the Saleen into the parking lot of Emily’s apartment complex. Wasn’t the ritziest place, but it looked like it’d been constructed sometime in the past ten years, based on the size of the trees planted in the common spaces and by how well-kept it looked. Joaquin had given Emily a heads-up that they were arriving. When they pulled up, she was standing outside waiting for them, her eyes red and nose puffy from crying.
Dewi immediately dropped into work mode as she draped an arm around the girl’s shoulders and escorted her back inside her apartment, a ground-floor unit facing the parking area.
Then again, considering Dewi was only four years older than Emily, maybe “girl” wasn’t the right word to use to describe her. Except Dewi had come to realize most people her own age felt younger to her because they hadn’t endured the weight of the pack’s safety crushing her shoulders for the past fourteen years.
After Dewi hit the bathroom, Emily ran them through what happened in detail. Dewi handed her key fob to Joaquin. “Emily, give Joaquin your car keys so he can get your car seat and put it in mine.”
“Why not take Emily’s car?” he asked.
“Because Henry and his mother might recognize it,” Dewi said.
“Oh. True.”
While he handled that, Dewi had Emily text her several pictures she’d snapped of Henry that morning, including one that had captured Fawny in the background.
Dewi halted in her tracks. Henry was a white guy with muddy brown eyes and a hairline that was racing toward the back of his head faster than a Formula 1 car.
Dewi turned to Emily. “Okay, I’m not usually one to put down someone’s appearance, but I gotta ask—”
“I know, Iknow. I wasreallydrunk when I met him,” she admitted. “But surprisingly enough, he was good in bed, and funny. He speaks Spanish pretty well, too, so it kind of impressed me when we’d go somewhere and he could order in Spanish and stuff. He knew how to work on cars, and…”
She sighed. “I was an idiot. I’ll admit it. But at first it was enough to carry us through a couple of months. We only saw each other a couple of nights a week because of our schedules, so he was able to put on an act. Believe me, I didnotmean to get pregnant. I also didn’t know I was pregnant at first. I was almost twelve weeks when I finally realized something was going on. We were close to breaking up anyway by that point, and that was the final nail in the coffin. I also didn’t know about all the other baby mommas then, either. He told me he didn’t have any kids.”
“In the future, if you’re going to date a bilingual dirtbag, don’t let beer goggles get you into bed with him, huh?”
Emily snorted. “Oh, believe me, I have learned a lesson.” She blinked back tears. “I just hope he doesn’t hurt Hannah. I’ll never forgive myself. I shouldn’t have texted him we were leaving. Dad told me not to, and I felt guilty for not trying one more time, thinking what do I tell her in the future?”
“That her father’s a pasty-white bilingual broke-ass, male-pattern-baldness-poster boy, baby-momma-collecting dirtbag? Or would you rather me pull my judgmental punches?”
“No, I deserve that.”
