It turned out the rule follower had teeth and nails. She didn’t back down from me, didn’t run away. It didn’t take a genius to figure out she didn’t like me, but that didn’t stop her from giving me a kiss that still plagued my thoughts from time to time. She’d intrigued me that night.
In the aftermath, Mason had acted strangely. It was then it occurred to me he may have had some kind of a crush on the girl. When I pressed him, he’d assured me that wasn’t the case, just like he was insisting now that he didn’t like her.
Was he lying? Fuck if I knew. I wasn’t a mind reader. If anything, my social skills were in serious need of improvement. But I wasn’t going to treat Mason with kid gloves. If he had a problem with me finding out if Molly was still a great kisser, he’d have to tell me outright. That’s how our friendship worked. No bullshit. We took each other’s word for what it was, and so far, that had worked out damn well.
The barista called out my order. I grabbed it off the counter, gave the blond girl a wink, and walked back to my car.
Now the distasteful part of the day began.
Being a stalker wasn’t something I’d chosen for myself. Who the hell wakes up and decides to stalk somebody? Psychopaths, maybe, but I wasn’t one of those. At least, I didn’t think so.
It just kind of happened. I remember the first time I pulled up outside my biological father’s workplace and saw him crossing the parking lot, a backpack slung over his shoulder, a brown paper bag clutched in his hand. I began to wonder about him. Who made him lunch? Where did he live? Did he have his own family?
I drove home with those questions swirling inside my mind, wrote some music, and then drove back eight hours later to watch him leave work. He lived twenty minutes away, in a one-story bungalow, with his wife and young daughter. I watched them have a family dinner through the big open window and tried to imagine myself sitting at the table with them.
I couldn’t visualize it.
Instead of satiating my curiosity, that day made it even more starved. Until then, all I knew of my real father was what my mama had told me, which hadn’t been much. She’d met him when she was on a month-long work trip to LA. They’d had a whirlwind romance, and a few weeks after she returned home, she’d discovered she was pregnant. When I got older, I wondered why she didn’t get rid of me—Mikhail had surely wanted her to—but I could never bring myself to ask.
When I found out I’d be moving to the States, I’d decided I wanted to find my father. I’d bugged my mama with questions. What was his name? How old was he? Where did he live?
This made her angry.“Zabyd pro eto, malchyk. Ti nechevo horoshevo ne naydesh. Etot mujshina tebe ne khto. On pro tebya daje ne znayet.” Forget about it, boy. You won’t find anything good. This man is nobody to you. He doesn’t even know about you.
Naturally, hearing that discouraged me, but when Mase and I moved to LA, I knew I had to do it. It was a long shot, but what if he still lived in this city?
When I tracked him down with the help of a DNA test this past June, I didn’t tell my mama. Not that we spoke much these days anyway. I hadn’t even told Mase. This felt like something I had to handle on my own.
The parking lot outside the five-story office building was nearly full, but I managed to grab one of the guest parking spots right outside the main door. My father worked as an operations manager at a company that sold custom window blinds. He’d held this job for five years according to his LinkedIn profile. Before that, he’d spent a decade at an international logistics company, which is how he’d met my mother. She’d worked at the Moscow office of the same firm. After she returned home pregnant with me, Mikhail made her quit. She’d never gone back to work again.
I watched as a few familiar faces walked past my car. I’ve been coming here for the past God knows how many Wednesdays, so I’d begun to recognize some of them. It was weird to know who my father’s work friends were when I had yet to speak with him.
Every time I showed up here, I told myself I’d get out of the car and confront him when he left the office for lunch. But every time, I found an excuse not to do it. Most days, he wasn’t alone. It didn’t seem appropriate to accost him in front of his coworkers and announce I’m his son. Other times, he looked worn down. Stressed. What if meeting me was enough to give him a heart attack? I didn’t want that on my shoulders.
But there’d been at least two times when he was on his own, seeming just fine. Why hadn’t I approached him then?
I wasn’t scared of a lot of things. If anything, fear had often guided me in the right direction. But this fear felt different.
It felt existential.
I could deal with Mikhail, my fake father, not loving me. But could I deal with my real one wanting nothing to do with me as well?
I didn’t know. And that scared the fuck out of me.
* * *
Three hours later, I was driving home. I would have approached him today, I swear I would have, but he never came down for lunch. Something at the office must have kept him busy.
When I got back to the house, there was a white car in the driveway taking up my usual parking spot. “Car” might be too generous of a word. The thing was practically falling apart. I glanced at the time. Three pm. This was Molly’s? Had Mason seen this thing?
I parked across the street and walked over to examine the monstrosity. It had to be close to fifteen years old, and the bumper was covered in black tape. If I took it off, I was sure something would fall right off. There were a few deep scratches on the front door, a dent near one of the headlights, and what looked like rust on the edge of the hood. What the hell was she doing driving this thing? I mean really, it looked like it was on the verge of exploding in the middle of the highway. How did she even get it insured? Did she have a goddamn death wish?
Scowling, I marched to the front door and ducked inside the house.
Molly was sitting at the dining table, her laptop open in front of her, and her fingers pounding out a rapid rhythm across the keyboard. Her hair was up in a messy bun thing at the top of her head, and she wore a simple green dress. It was pretty obvious she wasn’t trying to be sexy, and yet somehow, she was. My attention drifted to where the dress rode up a bit and showed a good bit of thigh.
Fuck, how had I managed to ignore this girl for nearly an entire year?
I braced my hand on the wall. “Is that your car out there?”
