Loverboy (The Company #2) - Sarina Bowen Page 0,75

seats were cheap, right? And I was starting to notice that my dad had really nice clothes, and that he brought expensive-looking bottles of wine to our house to drink with my mother. So when my thirteenth birthday was coming—it’s in July—I just asked him if he could get tickets. There was a home game that day, too. Against the Colorado Rockies.”

I hold my breath, because I don’t know where this story is going, but I’m betting it’s no place good.

“He said we’ll see, like parents everywhere.” Gunnar chuckles. “But then, three days before my birthday, he turned up with a wrapped gift, telling me to open it on my birthday. So I asked him about the baseball game. And he said—sorry, kid, I’m traveling. I was crushed, because I’d spent the week picturing us in the stadium together, eating hot dogs and popcorn.”

I wait, knowing the story isn’t over.

“On my birthday I opened the present, it was a new glove with a ball. That seemed like a nice consolation prize to me, because at least it was baseball. And then I sat down to watch the game on TV, even though he wasn’t there.” Gunnar chuckles bitterly. “Maybe three minutes later I saw his face on the screen. He was sitting in the second row—the power seats—with a hot dog in his hand, and his arm around another boy who looked something like me.”

My gasp is full of rage. “What?”

“Yeah.” He smiles, but it’s sad. “My mother never expected that to happen, I guess. She sort of stuttered through an explanation. She told me he was married to someone else, and he had two other children, and a penthouse somewhere on Park Avenue.”

“Oh my God. And I thought my father was a dick. You have siblings that you’d never met?”

“Still haven’t. They’re better off not knowing their father is a tool.”

My heart aches to hear it. “What happened the next time he came back?”

“He didn’t. I told my mother I hated him, and I didn’t want to see him again. It was just something you say in anger, you know? But she must have told him to stay away. And he did—at least as far as I can tell. She struggled after that, and I felt kinda bad. But she never complained. She died the year before I met you, so I never heard the whole story—the version you’d tell your adult kid when he was ready.”

I lean back against the sofa, stunned. “I’m sorry, Gunnar. And you haven’t seen him since?”

“Nope.” He shakes his head. “And I never did make it to a game at Shea Stadium before they tore it down. That’s my strange little tale, Posy Paxton. Now you know. Our fathers have a few tricks in common.”

“You figured it out well before I did, though. I spent two decades of my life trying to please mine.”

“We both tried to please him, if memory serves.” Gunnar reaches over and gives my elbow a squeeze.

Sitting here on the sofa in the dark apparently makes both of us feel confessional. “You know, right after I got the bar manager’s job, I walked in on my father making out with one of the waitresses.”

“Really. I wish I could say I was surprised.”

“Well I was. But there they were. She was that blond—a few years older than I was. A Parson’s student, I think?”

“Greta?” Gunnar guesses. “Was that her name? Or Gretchen? I think I saw them together once, too. There was a lot of giggling, and then she came out of his office. I wondered.”

“You never said anything,” I grumble. It was a terrible shock seeing my father lip-locked to a college girl. He and my mother never seemed to have a very happy marriage. And they divorced a few years later. But the flagrance of my father’s actions had stunned me.

“What was I supposed to say? I was a college kid, too, paying his way through school on tips. You don’t critique the company the boss keeps. I didn’t even have proof.”

He’s right, of course. “You understood him before I did. And I lived with the man for two decades. Maybe that’s the biggest difference between you and me—wits and cynicism. Your job acknowledges the underbelly of humanity. Mine assumes that everything is fixable with a slice of very expensive pie. I guess it’s no shock that you’re more successful.” I kick the edge of the coffee table in frustration, and all I get is a pain in