Page 54 of The Chef

“No,” I reply.

“You’re married?”

His tone is sharp and angry.

Wait, he’s annoyed because he thinks I’m married and have a family?

Does that mean he likes me? He’s doesn’t hate the kids; he’s just upset that it might mean I’m married?

Is this what’s been bothering him today? Does this explain all the angry glances at me and the kids?

Oh.

“I’m not married, Cliff,” I reply, flashing my ringless hand. His eyes glaze over me, thinking. “Pearl and Davy are my brother’s kids.”

Cliff’s face slumps. Recognition flitters across it.

He understands now.

I’m not married. He understands the kids aren’t mine. He understands he made an unfair and mistaken assessment of me.

I bet he feels like a right idiot, almost berating me like that. Thinking I have kids I haven’t told him about.

That explains that shocked and irate expression he shot at me from across the shopping mall yesterday. He thought Pearl was mine and that I was hiding the fact of her existence from him for some reason.

Well, he was wrong.

“I’m sorry,” he says, and I know he’s sincere. “I thought they were yours. I thought you were married.”

“Well, I’m not.”

I don’t really want to rub in his mistake, especially seeing how embarrassed he looks. But he did act so annoyed when I arrived with them in tow, it’s hard not to make him feel sorry for how he’s treated us.

“I’m a right idiot,” Cliff says.

“Yes, you are.”

“Please forgive me.”

“Don’t act like you’re in a Jane Austen novel,” I reply. “Let’s just move past it.”

“Sure.”

Davy runs back into the living room from the backyard, full of energy. Brave, he sprints over to Cliff and tugs at his pants. A little whirlwind of built-up energy.

“Are you Bay’s boyfriend?” he asks Cliff, bursting with that blunt confidence of a kid.

Cliff opens his mouth, flustered.

He’s clearly not dealt with many kids before. He’s not spent much time around them.

I like it. I like how embarrassed he’s become in the last few minutes. First the realization that Pearl and Davy are not my kids, that I’m not secretly married, and now his pitiful attempts to answer my nephew’s awkward question.

“I’m… uh, her boss.”

“But you can still be boyfriend and girlfriend.”

“She’s just my… friend.”