She looked up at me. “They split, like, ages ago.”
I nodded.
“And they were split it seems like before we were born.”
I was alarmed she held that knowledge and further, I had no clue how to reply.
“She needs to get over it,” Cleo told me.
“Something like that is difficult to get over, Cleo. Anything that hurts is difficult to get over. You just have to take the time it takes to lick your wounds and when they finally heal, or when they heal enough you’re able to carry on, you do that. You carry on. But things like that shouldn’t be rushed or the healing can go wonky. It may take your sister a little time, but she’ll get there and the people who love her just need to be patient.”
She stared up at me.
Then she said, “But she got Sprite on your jeans.”
I smiled at her and replied quietly, “Jeans wash, darling.”
She again stared at me but she did it like it was the first time she’d ever seen me and I was a being heretofore undiscovered.
I helped her power through that by tipping my head toward the restaurant and asking, “Do you think we’ve given them enough time? Should we head to the truck?”
She looked to the restaurant, saying, “I don’t know.” She turned back to me. “Dad doesn’t get mad very often. But when he does…”
She trailed off and I nodded quickly.
“Then let’s hang out here a bit,” I suggested. “Keep warm. I’ll be on the lookout and we can make a mad dash if I see them coming.”
She grinned up at me again without any guard behind it and I was again struck by how her beauty blossomed when she did that.
We chatted until I caught sight of Logan heading our way. I gave her the heads-up and we moved out the door quickly. Once out, I took a chance, grabbed her hand and ran on my high heels, taking her with me.
And I was delighted to find, that as girls were wont to do, for no reason at all, we both found this hilarious, started giggling in the middle of it, and were in the throes of hysterical laughter by the time we made it to the truck.
This might have something to do with the tension casting a pall over the evening and us needing to release it.
But I really didn’t care what caused us to do it. We had our moment of bonding and it had come early.
I was batting five hundred and in these stakes, that wasn’t as hot as it normally would be.
Even so, I’d take it.
Logan and Zadie showed, Logan still looking angry, Zadie looking chastised and sulky. The sulky part caused her to cast baleful glares at me.
Logan beeped the locks and muttered, “Didn’t give you the keys. Two of my girls standin’ out in the cold. Sorry, babe.”
“Cleo and I found our ways to stay warm,” I assured him.
He looked to me. I grinned at him. He studied my grin and I watched as he became visibly relieved.
I turned and got into the car.
Once we were all in, belted up, and rolling away, Logan grabbed my hand again, firmly and demonstrably, held it, and announced, “Not sending my girl home without supper and I don’t feel like eatin’ franks and beans or makin’ Clee-Clee eat it. We’re hitting Chipotle.”
“Right on,” I murmured, and Cleo giggled in the backseat.
I looked over my shoulder and gave her a grin.
She smiled back.
When I caught sight of Logan while turning back around, I saw his profile in the dashboard lights looking vaguely surprised. The squeeze he gave my hand was not-vaguely pleased.
Logan took us to Chipotle. Cleo and I chatted through ordering and food making. Zadie stayed removed and sulking.
During that time, I put on a brave face but I did it realizing that I’d been so anxious about meeting the girls, I hadn’t thought of something just as important. That being when dinner was done, it meant Logan and the girls were going to his RV and I wouldn’t see him again until the next day. We wouldn’t make love. I wouldn’t sleep beside him. I wouldn’t wake up beside him.
And in realizing this, I decided it was totally not too soon for us to move in together.
It was too soon for him to push too much with the girls (way too soon for Zadie).
But I didn’t want him to be gone and be alone again.
Mostly I just didn’t want him to be gone.
Sure, I had Chief and Poem now but they had no clue who I was. Essentially, I was the stranger who put food down for them.
I needed Logan.
And even if it was only three nights, I was going to miss him.
We got our food takeaway, Logan instructing them to put my burrito in a separate bag, and he headed us to my house.
When he got the truck in the courtyard, he turned to the girls.
“Stay here. I’ll be back,” he ordered.
I turned to them too. “I’m sorry the night didn’t go as planned. But however it went, honestly, it was a pleasure to meet you both.”
Zadie gave me a glare.
Cleo replied, “You too, Millie. See you later.”
I grinned at them, even though Zadie continued glaring through my grin. I got out and Logan grabbed my burrito bag and got out with me. He also came in with me after I opened the door.
He waited for me to unarm the alarm before he pulled me in front of the cupboards where the girls couldn’t see us through any windows and dropped the burrito bag on the counter. Then he tugged me into his arms.
“Shit night,” he muttered. “Sorry, baby.”
I slid my arms around him. “It wasn’t like we didn’t know it was gonna be a rough ride.”
“Didn’t think it’d be that rough.”
I didn’t either but in order to give Zadie a fighting chance, I lied for her.
“You were in the Dad Zone so I didn’t want to intervene, but honestly, Snooks, it was probably an accident.”
“It wasn’t an accident,” he returned. “She’d been bitchin’ about havin’ to go to dinner with you, us goin’ someplace we went as a family, since I picked them up from school. I knew she was gearin’ up to do somethin’ stupid. I didn’t know it would be that stupid. And we got a rule. They don’t do much that ticks me off. But they’re doin’ something like that, I let ’em know and they know exactly how I let ’em know. If they don’t quit doin’ it, there are consequences. Just sucks we all gotta eat cold burritos and I gotta leave you a lot sooner than I wanted.”
He was going to miss me too.
It felt funny that it would be the case, but that made me feel better.
“Perhaps we shouldn’t have picked the Spaghetti Factory,” I remarked.
“It’s her favorite restaurant, which is why I picked it. Tryin’ to get her in a good mood. But, Millie, she can’t mark every joint in town we been to with her mom as a sacred place. There’s new memories to make and she’s gotta get her head outta her ass and make ’em.”
“Maybe tomorrow will be better,” I suggested, even though I seriously doubted it would.
“Maybe,” he muttered. Then, “Gotta go, babe. Gotta feed my kids.”
I nodded even if I didn’t want to. I wanted to hold on and not let go.
But his girls were in the truck and their food was there too. It was getting late and we all needed to eat.
So I rolled up on my toes, but before I kissed him, I whispered, “Do me a favor and text me when you get back safe and you’re settled in.”
“Would do that anyway, babe.”
I smiled at him.
He gave me an eye-smile back and a squeeze and dipped his head to lay a hard, deep, short kiss on me.
When it was over, he let me go and I walked him to the door.
He was through it when he turned back to me and ordered, “I’m not here, boys are on duty, but arm the alarm anyway. Hear?”
I tried not to give him an annoyed look. “I always do.”
“Good,” he muttered, leaned in, lifting a hand to curl around the side of my neck and touched his m
outh to mine.
He then walked away.
I wanted to give Zadie the relief of seeing the back of me (for the night) but I didn’t think that was the right thing to do. Further, I needed both the girls to know how much their father meant to me. I also wanted them to know I wanted them to mean something to me.
So I stood in the door and waved as Logan turned around.
I saw him do a chin lift. I saw Cleo (now in the front seat) give me a short return wave.
I also saw Zadie ignore me entirely.
They disappeared and I closed and locked the door and armed the alarm.
Then I turned to my house, my beautiful, perfect, empty house that was glowing charmingly with lamps lit here and there.
It suddenly didn’t seem so perfect.
On that thought, Poem came running in, Chief chasing her. They were on a direct trajectory to slamming into the back of the couch and they tried to put the brakes on, skidded and slid until they hit the rug where they rolled and disappeared under the couch.
Slowly I smiled.
Then I burst out laughing, grabbed my burrito, and went to the cupboard with my wineglasses to pour myself some wine.
* * *
The next evening, I paid the taxi driver and hurried into Club to meet the girls.
I was late.
I was late due to relaxing far too long in the bath (because I needed to) and dealing with two kittens who had no clue what a bath was but who thought it was something they wanted to try (Chief) or something that was akin to torture and wanted me to stop doing immediately (Poem).
So for ten minutes the bath wasn’t relaxing since Chief took repeated but failed flying leaps in order to join me in it and Poem scuttled up and down the side, staring at me with her sad eyes, opening and closing her little kitty mouth in silent, terrified mews.
Now I was here to meet the girls and I wanted to be out all dressed up in an LBD like I wanted someone to drill a hole in my head.
The day had been bad.
No, not bad.
It had been comedy movie bad where you sit comfortably in your seat at the theater and laugh at someone else’s string of misfortune, happy that shit never happens in real life bad.
I threw open the door to the restaurant, spying the girls who were all dolled up in different but wondrous ways I would normally take a moment to admire. They were in the bar area at two high-top tables pulled together.
I didn’t admire them.
I just headed in their direction because that direction meant sisterhood and booze.
As I headed their way, I did notice that Claire was not with them. She was at the bar, openly chatting up a hot guy.
Not a surprise.
Fortune smiled on me for the first time that day when I ran into a waitress just as I made it to the table.
“I don’t know if this is your table,” I told her. “But swear to God, you’ll get a huge tip if you bring me a shot of chilled Ketel. No, three. And stat.”
The waitress nodded as Elvira called out, “And bring her a cosmo!”
I moved to one of two available seats, hiked my ass up on it, shrugged off my coat to hang on the back of my stool, and dumped my clutch on the table.
“Holy hell, you look awesome and awful at the same time,” Dot, across the table from me, declared.
I did look awesome. I lost myself in creating big hair and nighttime drama makeup, something I hadn’t done in so long, I wasn’t sure I’d ever done it.
Another reason I was late.
I looked to her. “Tina Fey may make my day funny if you were to write a movie about it. But in real life, it was anything but funny.”
“Oh no,” Tyra said.
My eyes went to her, noting distractedly that all the women weren’t dressed to the nines. They were dressed straight to the twelves. In fact, Elvira looked professionally coiffed. And Kellie, an equal opportunity partier, be it in a bar at a fancy restaurant or a biker hangout that had only one word to describe it—seedy—looked fabulous.
“You were with High’s girls today,” Tyra finished.
“I was,” I confirmed. “For lunch and a movie. This being the longest lunch known to man and the longest period of time spent with two female tweenies since time began.”
“I don’t get it,” Lanie, sitting beside me, said. “High’s girls are sweet.”
“Cleo is sweet,” I told her. “Zadie wants her mom and dad back together and therefore she’s not so sweet.”
“Ah,” Lanie murmured.
“What happened?” Veronica, sitting next to Dot, asked.
“Hmm… let’s see,” I began. “There was the moment when they picked me up and Logan had to use the bathroom before we went so he left me alone with the girls. This was when Cleo happily reacquainted herself with my new kittens and Zadie told me right to my face that cats were stupid and people who had them were even more stupid, not to mention, cat ladies were lame. She said this even though just the night before, before she remembered she was supposed to hate me, she’d fallen in love with the kittens on sight.”
“That ain’t so bad,” Elvira noted.
I looked to her. “Then there was the time when we were walking through the mall to get to the theater and Zadie and I were removed from her dad and sister and she told me that old ladies shouldn’t dress like I dressed, my clothes were too young, and I looked like a wannabe. There was also the time when we bought snacks for the movie and she noted her mother would never eat what I chose and that’s why her mother has a killer bod and I’m fat.”
“Yikes,” Tabby muttered.
“You aren’t fat,” Kellie snapped.
“What did High say about all this?” Tyra asked.
“Since she purposefully dumped her Sprite so it would hit my lap the night before,” I started, and all eyes at the table got big, “she learned and waited for times when Logan couldn’t hear and she did her best to do it when her sister couldn’t either.”
“Sticks and stones,” Elvira declared. “Girl, you gotta be tougher than that.”
I again looked to her. “Zadie sat across from me at lunch and kicked me the entire time. She got me in the shins so often, both are black and blue, and that is no joke.”
I held my leg out to the side, where Carissa was sitting. I had sheer black thigh-highs on but the bruises still could be seen.
“Holy cow, that is no joke,” she muttered in horror.
I kept on with my tales of woe.
“I was sitting next to Logan so I couldn’t adjust too much or he’d notice so I tucked my calves under the chair. That was when she kicked my knees.”
“Oh my God,” Kellie fumed. “What a brat!”
Absolutely.
It hurt to say but all evidence was pointing at the fact that it wasn’t that Zadie could be a brat.
She just was one.
“Not to mention,” I kept going, “any time she could get away with it, she gave me a look that told me she was plotting my murder. She sneezed into her hand once and immediately touched me, making it look like she was being nice but really rubbing her snot on the sleeve of a blouse. A blouse that’s dry clean only. And twice she gave me the finger.”
“I can’t believe this of Zadie,” Carissa said. “I’ve only met her a couple of times and she’s super cute.”
“And you didn’t tell High about any of this?” Tyra asked.
“No,” I answered.
“Why not?” Justine asked.
“Because he lost it during the Sprite incident and we left without even ordering food. He took us for takeaway Chipotle but only after giving Zadie a talking-to. It wasn’t pretty.”
“Good for him,” Elvira declared.
Normally, I would agree.
In the circumstances, I didn’t.
That day, with Zadie hiding her behavior, Logan had been happy. Straight out, not hiding it, had all his girls together, a biker stomping through the clouds in his motorcycle boots.
So it was also t
hat I didn’t have the heart to ruin it for him.
“I’m not sure it was the right thing to do,” I said to Elvira. “It’s only given her more impetus to try to push my buttons. If he’d left the Sprite thing as being a possible accident and I’d been able to breeze through it, maybe I could have gotten through to her. Now it’s like she’s on a mission.”
“This isn’t okay behavior,” Tyra stated. “Including purposefully dumping a drink on your dad’s girlfriend. It’s good High sent that message.”
“You’re right, it’s not okay behavior,” I replied. “But it’s clear she didn’t get the message. And I broke through with Cleo. She isn’t texting me to make a date to bake cookies together but it’s not like she’s just tolerating me either. We have our moments and they don’t come often but it’s like night and day with Zadie.”
“What does Cleo think of what her little sister is doing?” Tabby asked.
“She doesn’t like it,” I answered. “But I’m not seeing any big sister sway between those two.”
The waitress arrived and set my drinks on the table while Lanie shared, “I see that. Zadie lives in her own world. Cleo’s a good kid through and through. She’d twist herself in knots for her mom or dad. Zadie’s kind of a princess.”
“Yeah,” Elvira agreed as I lifted a shot and threw it back. “It’s like Cleo senses her mom and dad weren’t happy, so she bent over backwards to be the good kid who’d make ’em that way. Zadie just thinks everyone exists to make her happy. It’s cute when you’re her age. Not so cute when you get older.”
As awful as it was to admit it, from what I’d noticed, this was the truth.
Cleo was alert, responsible, almost adult. She rushed in to help her dad any time there was even the minutest thing to assist with, like carrying our drinks and munchies at the theater or collecting the menus to hand to the waitress.
That in itself was concerning.
I didn’t know kids too well, especially girls her age, but she seemed way too young to be that deeply in tune with what was going on around her and that deeply keen to try to smooth out any edges. Most especially her knowledge that her mother and father never really were together and the fallout from that, most notably Zadie.
I knew kids were sharp, they noticed things, those things affected them and they behaved accordingly, in bad ways and good.