I handed her cup over, scanning her outfit, another thing I’d learned too late I needed to do daily. It wasn’t until I had gottena call from the school about her halter top that I’d figured out she was going to fight me about this. Again, I’d gone through the defiance phase, and I understood it. This was some cosmic payback. She was wearing high-waisted jeans, and a dark flannel shirt with a tank underneath. “Can you button your shirt?”
“Dad.”
“It must have shrunken in the wash, or maybe you grew. It doesn’t fit well.”
“It’s supposed to fit like this.”
“Button your shirt.”
“You know I’m going to unbutton it when I get to school,” she huffed as her fingers found the bottom button.
“At least I won’t have to lie when the school calls me, accusing me of letting you come to school in a halter top. I can tell them that when I dropped you off, you were wearing a buttoned flannel.”
“You’re buggin’.” She rolled her eyes, but she continued to button her shirt as she moved to the door and grabbed her backpack.
“What are you doing?” I moved to the sink to rinse out the blender. “Have a seat. I still need to shower.”
“Dad, I have drama practice.”
“Hads,” I echoed the edge in her voice. “You always havedrama.”
“We gotta go now.” She headed toward the door, twisting the knob.
I wanted to scream out in annoyance. It should be illegal for people to parent teens without some special certification, which I was clearly lacking. I took a minute to wipe off the counter and checked the clock. She was right. If she wasn’t going to be late, we needed to leave, which meant I needed to change in under a minute. No shower for me. Now my goal was to slatheron so much deodorant it would make me smell like a deodorant factory.
This was my crazy life.
I could hire a driver to do this every day, but I had vowed I’d be the dad who wasactually therefor his child, and that meant every day I did school drop-off and pick-up. “Okay,” I muttered as I scrimmaged down the hall, calling back. “Go ahead and get in the car. I’ll be down in two minutes.”
twenty-one
Elinora
Outside the office, I shoved red licorice in my mouth as I paced the parking garage, waiting for Graham’s car. He was officially ten minutes late. Not that I’d never been late before. That was not the point. He was trying to find ways to annoy me on top of me hating him.
It was working.
I had been awake most of the night and decided the best way out of this contract was a new approach. Instead of being angry and fighting him, I was going to pretend he didn’t bother me at all. Once he realized he couldn’t affect me, he’d stop trying so hard and perhaps get bored. It was worth a shot.
His car rolled slowly through the narrow pass and stopped beside me. Swallowing my frustrations while plastering a pleasant smile on my face, I opened the door and greeted him cheerfully. “Good morning.”
With a suspicious side-eye, he watched me buckle in before echoing my greeting. “Good morning.”
I didn’t mention anything about him being late, or the fact that his cologne, or whatever he was obviously wearing to impress me, was so pungent, it burned my nose. “How are you?”
“I’m okay.” His eyes washed over my body as if he was searching for clues about something wrong with me before putting the car into gear and driving forward. “Do you need to stop for anything on the way out of town? A Cherry Coke?”
“Nope.” I pulled another strand of licorice from the small package I had stuffed in my coat pocket and purposely didn’t offer him one while I proceeded to chew it with my mouth open, smacking as loudly as I could. “Gorgeous morning out, isn’t it?” I said with half a stick of licorice in my mouth. If he insisted on spending time with me, I was going to make this as unpleasant for him as possible.
“Yeah, I love Florida mornings.”
“Before I forget…” I swallowed my candy, as I had something important to bring up. “I, ah, was going over some of the loan closing papers you conveniently left on my desk last night promptly at five, and there’s an error in the price agreement.”
“There’s never an error in price. The finance team is seamless.”
“I can show you.” I snaked a hand into the work bag tucked by my foot, and I removed the first stack of papers. “The purchase agreement on this condo, 4A at 1298 Duplin Avenue, is for 978K. I cross referenced that with the loan papers for 1.2M with some notes about taking additional funds for upgrades to the kitchen, fence, and adding new concrete to the driveway. I went back through the estimates for all those things. The loan is still at least a hundred thousand too much, if not way more. It’s not making sense why you need all that money, or even why the bank would allow you to take that out. The loan exceeded the property estimate, even with the improvements added in. It could be atypo on the part of the bank, unless you have a plan for those funds that isn’t outlined in the improvements?”
“That purchase agreement was made by Jonathan, and he’s been doing this for decades. I doubt there’s a mistake. I’m sure you’re missing something.”
