“If it makes you feel any better, no one at Château Moderne believes any of the nonsense,” he said. “When I was there last weekend, they were all talking about what a dipshit pile of mucus he is. They couldn’t stop badmouthing him. Whatever rep he’d tried to develop for himself, it’s totally gone now. That fact is probably enough to make him hide out for the rest of his life.”
“His mom doesn’t believe the lyrics, either. Well, not all of them,” I amended. “She’s still happy to accept the idea that I mistreated him, but at least she doesn’t think that I stole from him. She’s pretty aware of his financial shortcomings. Also, she was furious when she heard the part about how her name rhymed with ‘itch.’”
“You mean, when he called his own mother a bitch,” Silas said, and that was correct. “So what?’
“She started yelling more, but not at me. It was about how she’d been sending him money for his business and living expenses. I told her to look at his social media and she got quiet while she did. Then she started yelling even louder when she saw how he’d been out partying with his friends, on her dime. She said that she wasn’t giving him anything else, so I’m not surprised that he had to leave town. She was furious but she would never actually cut him off completely, so he’s probably living in her basement again. And maybe that’s it for Dax,” I concluded. “He’s going out with a whimper instead of the bang I’ve been waiting for.”
“Isn’t that on-brand for him? He tore apart your house when you weren’t there, he ran away from me, he sent his friends to do his dirty work, he hid behind a song with fake names to try to punish you. He’s been whimpering all along.” Silas nodded, satisfied. “I’m sorry I didn’t get to kick his ass over the state line, but at least he’s out of here.”
Dax had definitely been whimpering, and I couldn’t sleep that night as I thought about it. He’d done the same thing throughout our relationship, keeping me placated with vague promises and half-hearted gestures of affection. I’d made his life function, so he’d hidden things and slunk around so that he could continue to behave just as he wanted. He’d never had the backbone or drive to stand up on his own two feet without me or his mother to prop him, so he’d lied to both of us.
I turned over onto my side, and then onto my other side, and then onto my stomach. I’d been feeling sorry for Octavia and her “loneliness,” but she was much better off than I had been in my “stable relationship.” She was happy with her life and her choices. She didn’t need some guy, because she had her lizard. Why did I need one? I had a great thing going, with a wonderful job, good colleagues, a stable place to live, and excellent friends. I wanted to have a family but now my mind returned to the idea of sperm and egg, which was all that you needed for a baby. No, you also needed love—but I would provide more than enough of that. And I knew what I needed to do.
I did drive the kids to school the next morning, after we’d put Boris’s lunch bag in the trunk where we couldn’t smell it.“You should tell your grandma that you’re getting teased,” I recommended to him when we were on the road.
He shrugged, but Lyra spoke up. “He doesn’t want to hurt her feelings,” she explained. “But I said, you should tell. If you want, you can have Silas or Cammie help you. They will,” she continued to him. “If you have a problem, they’ll try to fix it.”
“Maybe,” Boris mumbled, and I was trying not to cry. I wasn’t emotional about the tuna fish, though, but at what Lyra had just told her friend.
We pulled up in front of the school and retrieved the lunch from my trunk. “I really can help you talk to your grandma, if you want,” I said, and Boris answered he would think about it.
“I don’t like tuna fish but I like how she makes it for me because she loves me,” he explained. “Bye. Thanks for the ride.”
“Bye,” Lyra echoed.
“Have a great day,” I told them. I wanted to hug her, too, and give her a kiss on the forehead like my mom had done for me. But there was no rush. I would be doing that soon enough, I thought. I watched them walk together toward the building and then Lyra turned around to look, and she waved. I waved back, smiling.
Then I wanted to talk about it, and there was only one person I actually wanted to tell. “Are you in class?” I asked, when Silas answered his old flip phone.
“Nah, I’m treating this as a real high school experience so I’m skipping,” he said. “No, I’m kidding. We’re on a break.”
“I knew you wouldn’t actually skip,” I told him.
“Yeah, you know me,” he said. “You really do. What’s up? Did Lyra forget something?”
“No, she got everything and she reminded me to grab my keys.” Then I told him what his sister had said, about how he and I would help and try to fix problems.
“Right,” he said. “That’s true.”
But he wasn’t getting it. “She always thought that about you, but now she thinks it about me, too,” I pointed out.
“I see. It took her a while to warm up, but she gets it now. She knows that she can trust you just like with me.” There was a long pause. “Are you crying on your way to work?”
I was. “I’m very happy,” I managed to choke out. “I’m so glad she feels that way.”
“It’s good to know that people care,” Silas said. “She needs you, you know? Me too. I mean, I do.”
Well, it turned out that it was mutual. I needed both of them just as much. We stayed on the phone and he made me laugh and also directed me through some tricky intersections.
“I’ll see you at home in a few hours. Don’t work too hard,” he warned. “You’ll need to be at your best, because I’m going to try to make lasagna for dinner and the kitchen may need a deep clean afterwards. Hey, did you ever get the feeling that baked pasta dishes need something else, like a little extra color and crunch? I was thinking about throwing in some sprinkles.”
“The kind that most people only put on ice cream?” I asked, but I was already looking forward to it. Not the unusual ingredients or the dirty dishes, but the three of us being there together.
Chapter 15
Acool thing I’d noticed about my former co-worker Juliet was how she could raise just one eyebrow. I’d first seen her do it on the day we’d met here at the office, and it was a talent that I admired. Although I couldn’t see her raising it at this moment, I had a feeling that it was happening. She had called after she’d gotten my text, which I had sent in response to a spreadsheet that she’d emailed to me.
“You’re saying no to all of them,” she clarified, and I said yes.
