Still, I was trying to make space for the stupid feelings plaguing all this dumb life change and the aftermath of a potentially traumatic coffee experience. It was easy to be a grown-up—one of those things that just sort of happened. But it was a hell of a lot of work to be a well-adjusted, mentally healthy grown-up.
Honestly, I didn’t know what to expect. I liked to be emotionally prepared for things. Or at the very least, I didn’t want to be emotionally unprepared. Friday night had been an unexpected, uh, example of why I didn’t like to walk into situations without my emotions in check.
Not that I had any hope of bossing any of my feelings around that night. But that was an outlier in my usually rigid emotional control. Ahem.
I’d spent yesterday on the phone with all the tedious companies—starting with my landlord. He’d been surly per usual. Then utilities. There was mail to redirect. Moving boxes to track down. And all the other million to-do list tasks in order to upgrade apartments.
Eliza and Adleigh had come over around lunch, bearing Thai takeout, beer, and scrubby clothes. They helped me pack up half my kitchen and all my bookshelves. This morning, I’d made good progress on my bedroom. But both days, I’d been forced to stop what I was doing to shower and get ready. Yesterday because of work. Today because of this coffee.
All I wanted was to be excited by the incredible gift the Englishes had offered me.Stability. A stable living arrangement. The ability to squirrel money away. Options.But even that wonder had been upstaged...overshadowedby Chris.
I had been about to put my drink order in to avoid the whole who-should-pay dilemma when he stepped in the building. My skin tingled with awareness. And a foreboding gurgle lurched in my stomach.
When I instinctively turned around, he was there. Afternoon sunlight lit up the sky behind him, and he was framed by hanging plants. He looked like a portrait. A portrait of a future version of the dad I remembered.
When I was little, I had been obsessed with worrying if I’d forget what he looked like. The idea of running into him somewhere random, like the grocery store, or a roller-skating rink, or the movies, and not recognizing him haunted me. I would make my mom print countless pictures of him. I’d tuck them into books or in the corners of my closet, pin them to my walls mingled with all the other pictures of my life and friends and present happiness. I’d stare at his face and wonder if I looked like him.
But when I got older, I realized it didn’t matter if I could recognize him. He would have reached out if he’d wanted something to do with me. And that thought stayed with me year after year after year. Until I decided it was a worthless,childishthought.
He hadn’t.
He didn’t reach out.
I’d let myself forget his face so I didn’t have to remember the pain.
Only now, I realized it was all for nothing anyway. I didn’t have to look at pictures to recognize the current version of him. He’d hardly changed. More wrinkles around the corners of his mouth and edges of his eyes. His hair was salt and pepper but still dark. He wore jeans and a T-shirt and black boots. And I knew without approaching him he would smell like tobacco cigarettes that he hand rolled himself, his old leather jacket, and spearmint gum.
Our gazes clashed for a moment, and he smiled politely.
I took a step back, gasping. I recognized him. Couldn’t help but recognize him. But he didn’t recognize me.
Maybe I looked entirely different than I did as a little girl. I’d grown a whole lot more than he had.
Or maybe he hadn’t spent hours staring at my pictures. Perhaps he’d never imagined what I’d looked like grown. Maybe he hadn’t thought about me at all.
There was only one way to find out.
I took a steadying breath and stepped forward. “Chris?”
He looked at me a second time and recognition dawned. “Ada?” There was a slight hesitation, and then he said, “I thought that was you, but I didn’t want to bother you just in case.” He chuckled. “Thought it might be awkward if I introduced myself as Dad and got it wrong.”
I laughed too. Or at least I made a sound that was supposed to be a laugh. I was too nervous to really have a handle on my mouth.
“Adleigh is coming too,” I told him. I didn’t know what else to say. But leave it to my sister to leave me in the lurch. When I was always five minutes early, she was always fifteen minutes late. “She should be here any minute.”
“Great,” he said. He cleared his throat. “Well, should we get a drink while we wait?”
“Sure.”
But he didn’t move. Instead, he stared at me intently as if memorizing my face. “God, Ada, it’s so good to see you, darlin’.” He took a deep breath. “You’ve grown into a beautiful young lady. I just can’t believe how”—he made a half-shrugging, half-pointing gesture—“old you are.”
“Old?”
He laughed at himself. “Well, I wanted to say how grown up you are, but it sounded, erm, stupid.”
This time when I laughed, it was more natural. “Well, telling me I look old is definitely better. Good choice.”
His eyebrows lifted at my sarcasm, but he grinned. “Forgive me, I’m a little out of practice.”
