“Grace! C’mon. Don’t be embarrassing!”
“What’s embarrassing? You love Leo! We love Leo!” She swayed a little on her heels. Oops. Someone should have been watching Gracie’s glass. “Leo. Leo! Leo, let me tell you, you’re so much better than Saina’s last boyfriend. He was super-hot, but he was kind of a dick.” Grace clapped a hand over her mouth and looked at Barbra. “Sorry! Sorry! It’s true, though!”
Saina tensed. Every time Grayson came up—and she tried to make sure it was as rarely as possible—she imagined Leo imagining them together that morning, a postcoital shame that had never quite dissipated.
But Leo let his dimples show and was about to say something as Grace talked over him, drunk. “Also, your babies will be so cute! Mixed babies are the cutest!” She shot Barbra a look, not noticing as Leo winced. “It’s true! They are! C’mon, Leo! Don’t you want to see what it would look like if you reproduced?” She stopped abruptly and looked down at her shoes. “Oh! I have to tie these.”
They were all quiet for a moment, and that was beautiful, too. The night was both liquid and crisp, delicious and dark, the leaves rustled wildly in the trees. And then Leo was tugging her gently by the elbow, leading her away from Barbra and Grace, who had headed towards the car. The silence extended onward, but Saina didn’t notice until she realized abruptly that it should terrify her. Finally, Leo said, “Actually, I should probably tell you something. Saina, I do have a child. A daughter.”
Time stopped. Space collapsed. Every star shut down. There. There was the catastrophe she’d been waiting for.
“Before you say anything, I know. It’s bad I didn’t tell you,” he said.
“But why? Why not? I wouldn’t have cared!”
“I don’t know! It was stupid! I was scared to! The first real thing you told me about was how your fiancé knocked up this girl and left you, so I didn’t really think that I should lead with that piece of information. What was I supposed to say? And then everything was so good, and it’s not like I meet a million amazing girls up here.”
“So you just wanted to hold on to me because you were worried that no one else would come along?”
“No! No. I wanted to hold on to you because I fell for you.”
“And how long were you going to keep it a secret?”
“It was never the right time. When we got back together, I was going to tell you, but at first it was . . . it was just so good that I didn’t want to mess everything up, and then you were worried about your speech, and then your family was coming, and you were stressed about that. You’ve had a lot to deal with, and I didn’t want to be the guy adding to it.”
“So I’m the delicate flower who can’t handle anything?”
“No! No. I was trying to be considerate. I was trying to be a gentleman. Okay, I hear myself. I know. It sounds so stupid now.”
“Do you see her?”
“My daughter?”
“Of course your daughter!”
A long pause. “Not right now.”
Suspicion pulled at her. Why not? What did Leo do? Was this becoming one of those stories where the perfect man turns out to be a murderous imposter?
“Since when?”
He sighed, long and heavy. “Since a few months ago.”
“Why not?”
“Her mom and I got in a fight about stupid shit.”
“What.”
“What?”
“The stupid shit. What was it.”
“She and I had started hooking up again and I guess she thought, you know, that since we had a kid together, and we were sleeping together, that it was going to be happy families.”
“And then?”
“I met you. That day. At Graham’s restaurant.”
“And then she wouldn’t let you see your kid? That’s crazy.”
“I know! She’s crazy.”
“I hate it when people say their ex-girlfriends are crazy. It’s so fucking misogynistic.”
“Saina, life is messy, okay? It’s not . . . things don’t just fall into place for everyone.”
“Why are you saying that to me? You think I don’t know that? Hello, you were there when we read that article, weren’t you?”
“Yeah, but shit happens in your life and it becomes a story in a glossy magazine. That doesn’t happen for other people. Shit happens in my life and it just sucks. Nobody writes an article about it.”
“You think that makes it better? No. No. That just makes it all so much worse. It’s like living in a tiny village where you know that everyone’s talking about you, but it’s all of New York City.”
“But I do live in a tiny village. And the only reason I’m still here is because this is where they live.”
“Why don’t you have any pictures of her? What’s her name? How old is she?”