on my bullshit. He wanted me to tell him the truth on my own. Fine.
“I am,” I insisted, trying to think about it. “Realistically, I am. If I don’t see her again, I don’t think I would regret it. I don’t think I would even think about it much. Really.”
His face was so patient. “But?”
Was this my second Peter? Another person about to see a loose end sticking up and decide to pull at it gently to see how much came free? “But,” I continued on, not totally wanting to, “I am a little mad about it.” I thought about it. “Maybe more than a little.”
Jonah didn’t make any kind of physical gesture to get me to keep talking, but the way he just looked, straight, his facial expression totally blank, made me keep going.
“It’s been thirty-one years. Longer than that if you want to be technical. The last time she saw my dad was when he was eighteen, seven whole years before I was born. So that’s a whole lot of time.”
He still didn’t say a word, and I could feel my eyelid get twitchy.
But I didn’t touch it. What I did do instead was keep talking. “She didn’t miss out on anything. She gave it up. She didn’t want it, and that’s the difference.” Fuck it, I reached up and gave my neck a scratch with my index finger, just one quick scratch, and I dropped my hand again. “Who the hell cuts their kid off because of something someone else did? How do you just… leave them behind? I’ve been mad over things. I’ve been hurt. But I would never do some shit like that. She didn’t come talk to me because she wanted to. She only did it to make herself feel better for getting caught.”
Jonah still didn’t say a word, but it made me think about what had just come out of my own mouth.
I scratched at my neck again. “It bothers me more than it should, and I know that. I didn’t even tell Grandpa or Peter what she said. I just said I’d tell them later, but it’s not that easy to talk about someone not wanting you.” I swallowed. “I should be used to it by now though, you’d figure. I shouldn’t let this—her—piss me off. She doesn’t even deserve that.”
Then, then, he decided to finally open his mouth, and when he did, it wasn’t to say the words I might have expected. “There’s nothing wrong with being mad, love. And you shouldn’t be used to… that. None of it is your fault.”
I tried to swallow, I really did, but there was a rock in my throat. Suddenly, a rock the size of a fucking Rhode Island-sized meteor sitting in my throat, blocking anything from going in and everything from leaving.
“She has no idea what she missed out on,” he said in that quiet voice. “Leaves more for us who do know what we have, eh?” Those eyes sparkled. “A good friend. An incredible family member. A loyal, practical, brave woman. One of the most amazing women I’ve ever met.”
My entire life, I had never known how to be anything other than how I was. Even if it made other people uncomfortable or mad. That I was too mouthy, too bossy, too determined, too blunt, too much.
Despite all of that, I was and had been loved by a lot of people. People who knew the best and the worst parts of me. Some knew more, some knew less.
Yet, no one had ever said something like what had just come out of Jonah’s mouth. Not a single one of those people who loved me, and who I loved right back.
And wasn’t that fucking something?
But my big fucking mouth went crazy on me as my brain struggled and I found myself asking, “One of?”
Jonah’s smile was tender. “Yeah. My nan is pretty amazing too.”
It made my chest go tight, it made my nose sting, and it forced me up to my feet and around my desk, ignoring the curious expression on his face. It made me bend over in front of this man who I’d had a child with and hug him. My forehead went into the warm side of his neck, slightly damp with the sweat of the workout he had probably just finished, my arms loose around his neck and shoulders.
And I responded the only way I could manage. “Thanks, Jonah.”
Words weren’t what replied to me. It was a forearm around the