“Yes, well, if someone would have arrived when we were expecting her, you wouldn’t need to make an apology in front of everyone at the breakfast table, would you?” My dad’s voice filled the room, bouncing off the walls and filling the empty spaces. He wasn’t what I would call a hard man, just an unbending one. He knew what he knew, and what he knew was the truth. No exceptions.
That left anyone looking to have a relationship with him the person who’d have to make so many justifications and conditions until they broke. The only way to love an unbending person was to break yourself.
It was what I’d done with my father.
It was what I was hell-bent not to do again.
“Your mother had the good grace to tell me who your date was for the wedding. The same good grace you might have exercised so we had a bit of a . . .” My dad’s eyes finally landed on Boone. If looks could commit murder, my dad had just earned himself a life sentence. “Warning as to what was coming.”
“Don’t you mean who was coming?” I said in a tone that got closer to snapping than saying.
My dad’s gaze cut back to me, his silver brow lifting in a way that suggested he’d made no error.
Boone moved a bit closer to me, holding his head so high it looked unnatural. “I bet you never thought you’d see my face around here again,” he said, managing to project in the same manner my dad had mastered.
Dad settled back into his chair, lifting the newspaper in front of his face. “More like hoped I never would,” he said, as though he were speaking to himself. “But like my daddy always used to say, hoping is worth its weight in shit.”
My eyebrows drove into my forehead. My dad was of the South, for the South, and the essence of the South, which meant he followed a certain code of conduct that was exclusive to this part of the world. Part of that code included never cursing in front of the “gentler” gender and making up for those periods of abstinence by cursing it up with the rest of the Neanderthals who considered themselves the very pinnacle of human-dom. That he’d just dropped a shit bomb in front of a roomful of women meant my dad wasn’t feeling like himself. Either that, or he’d been possessed by a guy who’d spent a lifetime in a trailer park outside of Detroit.
“Why don’t you take a seat so we don’t starve our guests away?” Dad shook his paper open but couldn’t seem to distract himself from Boone and me hovering inside the room.
“There’s only one chair left.” I waved my finger between Boone and myself. “And there are two of us.”
Dad lifted his brow again, an expression of So? settling onto his face.
To my dad’s left, Ford covered his mouth as a laugh erupted from him. Everyone was still staring at us, and no one was taking the initiative to make the introductions, so I continued to stand there, accepting the gaping and snickers and invisible question marks hanging above everyone’s head. Waiting.
I’d spent half of my life waiting. Waiting for something that had never come to life. Waiting for something I couldn’t designate with a name even.
“It’s okay, sweetheart,” Boone said, his voice drawing out the term of endearment longer than necessary. “You can sit on my lap. Wouldn’t be the first time we’ve eaten breakfast like that.”
When I looked at him smiling down at me like everything was coming up roses, I found my eyes starting to narrow. I caught myself before anyone else seemed to notice.
I was just about to plaster on a smile and say something along the lines of, “Not when there’s company around” when my mom shot out of her seat.
“Now there’s absolutely no need for anyone to be left without a chair when we’ve got a whole storage room packed with them.” Mom lifted her eyebrows at one of the kitchen employees hovering in the corner of the room, then she plastered on a smile of her own. “I must have miscounted when I gave Frieda the number for breakfast.”
“You must have,” Boone replied, his smile more convincing than my mom’s, though I knew what he was saying between the lines. You didn’t miscount anything, lady. You simply chose not to count me.
“How did everyone sleep?” Dad gave up on his paper and dropped it into a crumpled heap on the edge of the table. He couldn’t stop watching Boone and me.
A chorus of “good” and “well, thank you” swept around the table. The new chair was just being nestled in beside the other empty chair. Frieda rushed back into the kitchen to grab another place setting, and Boone took my hand and walked me over to our chairs. My dad’s eyes lowered to where Boone held my hand. If you could kill the same person twice, my dad had just earned himself another life sentence.
“I don’t know if you want to call it sleep, per se,” Boone said, firing off a wink around the table before continuing, “but I had one hell of a night if you know what I mean.”