been feeling pretty gracious and could only imagine what was going through her head as she tried to piece things together, I decided to just wrap up the whole story so she would know.
We were family, after all. Maybe I didn’t like her yet and maybe she didn’t like me yet, and maybe we would never really and truly like each other, but that didn’t change shit. She was here, and she seemed to truly love Jonah in her own way I wasn’t totally feeling, and she was being all about Mo, so….
“My grandpa divorced that lady when Marcus, my dad, was five, and she wasn’t really in their lives after that. She moved somewhere else, and after he turned eighteen, they never saw her again until she showed up at my family’s gym a few weeks ago.”
Jonah was for sure watching me as I drove, but I didn’t dare glance at him.
But in the back seat Sarah made a noise that sounded somewhere in between shock and outrage, and that surprised the fucking shit out of me. “I don’t mean to be intrusive—”
Sure she didn’t.
“—or be rude and make assumptions, but you’re at least in your late twenties, and you have never met your own grandmother until recently?”
“Correct,” I confirmed, trying to figure out where she was going with this. “Today is the second time I’ve ever seen her.”
“I’m sorry for asking about such an upstanding family member. I don’t see how any person could leave their child, or grandchild, their own flesh and blood, like that. I would never be able to do that.”
“Me neither,” I agreed with her, glancing in the rearview mirror again and catching her eyes.
Luckily I hadn’t expected that little moment to change anything, because it hadn’t. Thirty minutes later, Sarah had criticized the bottles we were giving Mo and then tried to grill me on what we were feeding her. I started zoning her out ten seconds in.
But I wasn’t bothering with that. I knew we were doing our best and had done a lot of research on everything we used on her and for her. Sarah meant well, and I wasn’t going to get pissed off for her giving a shit about my daughter.
Apparently Jonah was well aware of that because he gave me a playfully exasperated face at me playing dumb by answering my previous question. “The conversation with your granddad’s ex-wife, Len. I want to know you’re okay with it.”
I eyed my stress ball but kept my hand on my lap.
“Not that all right then, I’ll take it,” the man who probably saw and understood too much—obviously since he was bringing it up—claimed easily and carefully.
Opening up my mouth to say that I was all right, I shut it right back. Because I’d be lying if I said I was. He didn’t need to know that I hadn’t even been able to tell Peter or Grandpa about that conversation because I didn’t trust myself to explain it in a reasonable voice. I could tell them anything and everything. Every cell in my body knew that.
But, that… that I hadn’t been able to share. That I had let settle in my chest to pick up and look at while I had stood under the shower that night once everyone had left. Jonah and his mom had bounced after spending all day with me and Mo at the house. Natia had showed up in the afternoon, and I found that I really fucking liked Jonah’s sister. She was cool as shit. Even Luna had showed up with Ava and her husband, and we’d all had dinner together.
It had been the first time that my best friend met Jonah, and the second she’d gotten a chance, she’d elbowed me in the ribs and given me an enormous grin. She’d texted me from home that night and said he was great and even Rip had mentioned liking Jonah. But my favorite message had been:
Luna: And he’s better looking in person, Lenny. WOO.
It had been a nice day that had made me forget all about Rafaela and her bullshit. So it wasn’t until the shower that I’d let myself think about her. Then I’d thrown that moment in the park with my grandmother into the imaginary trash after thinking it over while I’d washed and conditioned my hair.
Until now.
“I just….” My voice came out a little high. “I’m fine.”
The look he gave me was enough for him to not have to verbally call me out