The woman may be impossibly stubborn, but she’s right about this one thing. Maybe the alcohol will make this whole situation less painful.If a little liquid courage is what it’ll take to get her through this conversation, then so be it.
I hold off on the questions until after our wine is ordered and poured.
“Alright. The important stuff, you say?”
She nods, taking a gulp from her wine glass. “My Great-Grandma is the key to making this whole thing work.”
“Got it. Tell me about her. What does she value most?”
I watch Jules soften a bit on the topic of her great-grandmother. She may be afraid of the woman, but I can tell that she loves her. I make a mental note of that fun fact.
“Protecting our family is most important to her. Although she tends to go about it in the most controlling way possible.” Jules harrumphs into her drink.
“What’s the deal with the moral kick?” I ask her. “Why a marriage clause of all things?”
Jules gets a wistful look on her face. “My great-grandparents had this fairytale marriage. Married young. Proved their families wrong at every step. Had kids of their own. Great-Grandma doesn’t really talk about her husband now. Probably too painful. But I know that the two of them loved each other. Like a real, true soul mate kind of love.” She chuckles. “I think that’s why she feels so disappointed in all of her own kids and grandkids.”
I lift an eyebrow. “What do you mean? Your great-grandmother expects all of her family to find the kind of relationship she had? That seems…”
“Absurd? I’m not sure she’s naive enough to think we’ll all find true love, but she’s tired of all the scandals and cheating and out-of-wedlock shenanigans.” Jules shrugs her narrow shoulders.
“Hmm.” I nod. “So your dad is her grandson?”
“Yeah,” she mutters. “And, let’s just say, if the morality clause was around back in the day, my father would be a very poor man.”
“Cheater?”
“Ding-ding-ding. I’m an affair baby.” Imitating a game show host, she makes a sweeping gesture with her free hand.
I flinch. “Fuck. Sorry.”
She shrugs, but I can see the hurt swirling deep in those magical brown eyes. “I’ve never had much faith in that mananyway. I guess I’m kind of mad at my mom for being a gullible mistress. It’s hard because I love her so much, and it wasn’t her fault he was a lying scumbag. But still…” She fiddles with the stem of her glass.
I mentally fill in the blanks, piecing together the things she’s not saying. Clearly, Jules has suffered a lot because of her family dynamic. “That couldn’t have been easy on you.”
“I got used to it.” Her lips twist to the side. “You can’t exactly choose your family. Remember my sweet half-sister who you met during your walk of shame?”
“That was your half-sister?” I get a full-body shiver just thinking about the woman who was sitting on Jules’s couch the morning after our little tryst.
“Yep.”
I snort. “She seems lovely.”
“Oh, she is.” Jules rolls her eyes, her voice full of sarcasm.
“My dad is a jackass, too,” I volunteer. “He had a whole other family on the side that my mother had no idea about. He left us to struggle financially, all while he was funding a whole other household at the same time.”
“Yikes…” Jules offers.
“I know my mom’s not to blame. She deserved so much better.” I exhale heavily. “I wish she wouldn’t have let the asshole in and out of our lives the way she did over the years. She should have cut him off the first time he bailed on us.”
“Damn. Who knew we both had daddy issues?”Jules lifts her wine glass toward my ginger ale, clinking it softly. “Here’s to having shitty sperm donors, I guess.”
I find myself nodding again. “To shitty sperm donors,” I agree.
A weirdly comfortable silence fills our table in the moments after connecting over our shared pain. We’ve found commonground within our complicated family situations. This new emotionally vulnerable side of Jules truly makes a mark on me.
From the beginning, I made up my mind that Jules is not my cup of tea. But now, each time we talk—like really fucking talk—I peel back a new layer of this prickly woman.I’m starting to wonder if, maybe she’s not so prickly after all.
