Joni finally kisses me a couple of weeks later, at work one Thursday night. She does it right in the middle of the freezer section, as we’re stocking boxes of rice-crust pizza. I reach back for her to pass me another handful of pizza boxes, but she grabs my wrist instead. I turn, and her lips collide with mine. I don’t waste a single second. I kick the freezer door shut and pull her to me. Her kiss is even better than I remembered. She walks me back until I’m pressed against the cold door, but the heat between the two of us is enough to keep me warm.
How the hell did I get so lucky? I don’t deserve her. But if she wants to be with me—and right now it seems she does—I’m sure as hell not going to say no.
When we part, the world zooms back into focus. I look around quickly. No managers or coworkers in sight. Excellent.
“Let me drive you home tonight?” I murmur against Joni’s ear. “There’s something I want to talk to you about.”
“Will there be more kissing?” she asks, grinning.
“I’ll have to think about it,” I say with a wink.
? ? ?
“What are you doing Thanksgiving weekend?” I ask Joni as we drive toward Clinton.
“The usual dinner stuff on Thursday. I already put my Tofurky order in at work. Why?”
“Well, you know how Meg found my father’s address and stuff?” We haven’t really talked about the pink journal since I read from it at the memorial, but I know she hasn’t forgotten.
“Yeah.”
“I was thinking about taking a trip down to New Jersey. To…I don’t know…see.”
She looks at me. “Really?”
“Yeah. Why, bad idea?”
“No, I think it’s great, if that’s what you want to do.”
“So will you go with me? We could leave the Friday after Thanksgiving and be back by Sunday.”
She places her hand on top of mine, resting on the gearshift. “Absolutely.”
? ? ?
“Are you going to call him first?” Mom asks as she helps me load my and Hope’s bags into the car. She’s been completely supportive of my decision to go meet Michael, but I can tell there’s a part of her that’s worried. Whether it’s worry that I’ll find some spark I’ve been missing in my relationship with her, or that Michael won’t be as receptive to me as I hope he will, or that even if he is, I won’t get the answers I’m looking for, I can’t tell.
“I don’t think so. I’d rather say whatever I need to say in one shot, instead of splitting it up between phone conversations and stuff.”
She closes the trunk. “What is it that you’re going to say?”
“I haven’t really gotten that far yet.”
She pulls me into a hug and holds me tighter than usual. “Good luck, Ryden. Call me if you need anything. Drive safely. I love you.”
“I love you too, Mom.”
“And I love you, little monster,” she says, nuzzling her nose against Hope’s. “Have fun, you guys.”
I swing by Joni’s, load her and her bag into the car, and hit the highway. I hand her my phone. “You’re in charge of the GPS,” I tell her. “I already input the address into the system, but let me know when there are turns coming up. It’s almost a six-hour drive, so we’ll have to stop for diaper-change breaks. And you can have control of the radio if you want. I don’t really care what we listen to. No hip-hop though.”
She flips to the same pop/rock station my mom always listens to and starts singing along with a Katy Perry song. Okay, maybe I shouldn’t have relinquished control of the radio quite so easily.
A while later, when we lose the station, instead of searching for another, Joni turns it off.
“What are you going to say when you meet him?” she asks.
That’s the Question of the Day. “I don’t know.” I’d hoped all the driving would help me come up with something. So far, it hasn’t.
“Okay,” she says. “Why do you want to meet him?”
The answer hits my lips automatically. “I feel like I won’t ever truly know how to be a dad until I meet mine.”
“But you’re—”
“I know what you’re going to say. Don’t.”
“What?”
“You’re going to say that I’m already a good dad and he won’t be able to tell me anything I don’t already know.”
“Yep, that’s pretty much exactly what I was going to say.”
We drive in silence for a long time after that.
Well, sort of silence.
Because there’s been this quiet hum in my head ever since I laid eyes on Michael’s contact info, and the closer I get to him, the louder it’s becoming. The hum grows into a full-on chorus, a chorus of people I know. And all the things they’ve told me—all the advice I refused to listen to—are suddenly resounding in my brain in multipart harmony: