Dad said, “We don’t have the space and besides, we eat stuff like Chef Boyardee. How the hell are we going to have a dinner party?” So I e-mailed Aunt Patti, and she said she would make lasagna, and I said to Dad, “Next time, don’t wig out, come to your Problem-Solver.” That’s me.
Fact number two: Luke is spending all this time in Pine River, it’s like over a week now, and he’s got to be sick of sleeping on the couch. But everyday he gets up and goes to the ranch, and every night he comes back—sometimes super late—and talks about what they did. So one day, I asked him, “What’s there to do out there when the sun goes down?”
He said, “What?” Like I was speaking Greek.
And I said, “You’re up there super late all the time. Are you building latrines in the dark?” I thought it was kind of funny but Luke said something about me being an ass.
So later, Dad told me to lay off, that we needed to work together to get Luke back to Denver because houses don’t build themselves, and that Luke was letting this woman get under his skin. Only it was hysterical because it was clear that Dad thinks the woman under Luke’s skin is Julie.
I know it’s not Julie because Dani told me about “the lunch” Julie and Luke had. Dani heard half of it, heard Julie begging for him to take her back and Luke saying that wasn’t going to happen. She said you could have driven a Mack truck through the gulf at that table and Luke would have been happy. She said he looked like he wanted to fold himself up into a little ball and bounce away. (Side note: It would be awesome if Luke could make like Rubber Man and turn himself into a ball and bounce away.)
To be fair to Dad, he has this misperception because Julie keeps coming around. She was here Wednesday night with that evil-eye baby of hers, and it so happened it was the same night Marisol got mad at me for suggesting she’d put on a few pounds (well she has, but it’s not like I’m complaining. I like the way her butt looks). Anyway, Marisol let Julie in. So we sat in the living room watching Castle with that baby staring at me, and Julie was trying to ask me questions, like “has Luke said anything about when he’ll get back to Denver?”
To which I responded with a succinct, “Nope.”
I wasn’t going to tell her that the guy he’s working with has called him a bunch of times asking him this question that the other day, he told Luke that he had one more week, and then he was going to have to do something, because this guy couldn’t handle all his work. I heard Luke tell him he’d be back by the end of next week, no problem.
I was about to tell Julie that, but then the baby started crying and she had to go, and I didn’t try and stop her—the woman talks while my show is on. She was walking out of the house just as Luke drove up. I thought for sure he’d walk right around her and come inside, but no, they sat down on the porch steps and talked for like an hour. When he came in, he was sort of smiling, but not in a happy way, sort of in a “I can’t believe it’s butter” kind of way.
He took one look at me, pointed his finger, and said, “Not one word about her, Leo. Not one, or I will knock your block off.”
Well, they don’t call me Big Mouth at the hospital for nothing, and I said, “Agreed. Not one word about Julie. So what’s up with you and Blue Eyes?”
Luke looked startled and said, “What the hell, Leo? Why are you always trying to create drama where there is none?”
I said, “Hold up there, Cowboy, I’m not creating anything. You haven’t gone back to Denver, you spend every day at the ranch, and the only person you talk about is Madeline Pruett, and for the first time in like a hundred years, you are not hot to trot after Julie Daugherty. It doesn’t take a genius to see what’s going on here, but I am a genius, and I get it.”