“I know.” He lifts my hand to kiss the back of my knuckles. “I love you too.”
My phone buzzes again, and we both groan.
“You should probably deal with that, and I can go try yet again to talk to our daughter—holy shit, that is a big turtle.”
I follow his gaze to where there is, in fact, a big turtle slowly making his way across the patio in front of us. “That’s Newman. He’s a tortoise. He’s got a chunk of his shell missing, and his skin gets easily irritated by dirt and stuff, and he shouldn’t be out of the house. I must have left the sliding door open.”
“Right,” Blake says. “Newman.The house tortoise. I’ll get it all figured out.”
Now I’m kissing the backs of his knuckles. “I know you will.”
We both will, I think to myself as I go to lug Newman back into the house, Costanza padding along beside me, and start returning phone calls.
Twenty-one
Blake
When Ivy doesn’t emerge from her bedroom by noon, I knock once, and then invade her space. I was half worried she was on some sort of hunger strike, but she looks up at me from her bed, guiltily holding an Oreo out of a half-empty package.
I guess she has been out of her room at some point. Either way, I’m not going to pick a fight about that today. “Hey,” I say. “I still need to hear about how your first kiss went.” I sit down on her bed, like this is totally natural. A month ago, it probably would have been.
Now Ivy wrinkles her nose at me. “You can’t ask about my first kiss. You’re mydad.”
My heart squeezes. I’d always hoped that Ivy and I had a close enough relationship that she would feel comfortable talking to me about stuff, even if I am her dad. “Sure I can. You don’t have to tell me. But I’d love to hear about it.”
I lean back against the headboard and wait, and Ivy sighs. “You are so weird.”
Weird is a step up from ruining her life, so I’ll take it. “Just because you’re mad at me doesn’t mean I don’t care about what’s going on in your life. How was it?”
“It was kind of gross, actually,” she says reluctantly.
There is no part of me that is sad to hear this. “Yeah?”
Ivy nods. “I mean, at first it was okay, I guess. But then he put his tongue in my mouth, and he tasted like Cheetos, and he wiggled it up and down like a worm.” Ivy makes a gagging sound, and I laugh.
“Yeah, okay,” I say. “The tongue thing is good when you both know what you’re doing, but it takes some getting used to.”
Ivy looks sideways at me, like she expects that I have some agenda here. And I do. I want to connect with my daughter.
“You’re not supposed to be okay with this,” she says. “You’re mad at me.”
Sometimes she’s so much like her mother that it takes my breath away. “Yeah, okay. But that doesn’t mean I can’t hear about what’s happening.” I pause. “So, not in a hurry to kiss anyone else, I’m guessing?”
“I’m grounded for the rest of my life, anyway.”
“Because that stopped you before.”
When she sees that I’m smiling, one corner of her mouth turns up before she turns it back down again.
Good.This is progress.
“I know you’re upset about your mom and me,” I say. “But you have to know that this doesn’t change anything between us, right? You’re my daughter. Nothing can ever change how much I love you.”
Ivy shrugs, but she looks a little sheepish, so I think maybe she believes me.
“I know you don’t want to give up the condo,” I say. “And I get that. We’ve had good times there.”
“Ihave.Youwere unhappy.”
