but it was Grandpa Gus who replied. “Your dad’s mom.”
That had me looking up at the beloved face to my right, raising my eyebrows, my ears buzzing louder, and still ignoring the hand that was holding steady in the middle of the air. “Your ex-wife?”
He grimaced but nodded. Not even bothering to say the words out loud. The simple yes being too much.
I glanced at Peter who was busy looking up at the rafters, peeked at Jonah, who looked really confused, and then at the woman herself. At Rafaela. My dad’s mom. My grandmother.
Grandpa Gus was already watching me when my eyes met his, and I couldn’t help but smile. And then I kept right on smiling because I couldn’t help it. Grandpa closed his eyes just as I started laughing and sliding my hand through the woman’s.
Fucking shit.
“It’s nice to meet you, Grandma.”
Chapter 10
11:55 p.m
I’m getting real sick of your shit now.
Can you please,
PLEASE, call me back?
11:57 p.m.
You know what?
Fuck it. I take back my please:
Just call me back.
It’s the least you could do.
11:58 p.m.
It’s Lenny.
“If you two are done staring at each other, I’m going upstairs to grab a jacket so we can get going, Lenny,” Peter said in the same grown-up voice I heard him use most often with the guys at the gym.
He was still tense after the encounter with Rafaela.
I poked at my small bowl of nice cream—blended frozen bananas, maple syrup, vanilla extract, and cocoa powder—and kept on staring at the older man who hadn’t said a word since I had gotten home over an hour ago.
I knew what he was doing. Like he knew what I was doing. And Peter, of course, was well aware of what we were both doing.
Being assholes.
Because neither one of us thought we were wrong.
Except in this case, I wasn’t being stubborn, and Grandpa Gus really had been wrong for what he’d done earlier.
Peter just sighed when neither one of us responded, sneaking through the swinging door with a shake of his head.
Mo, who was sitting in her high chair, did her own thing as she shoved tiny handfuls of mushy cereal into her mouth… and over her cheeks… and the rolls of her neck… and all over the front of her shirt. She’d already eaten more than enough and still needed another bottle before going to bed. She could have fun. I was too busy not breaking eye contact with my seventy-five-year-old grandfather to watch her finish painting her food masterpiece. I wasn’t going to look away first, not this time.
This really was on him, and he knew it.
It was him who finally broke the silence that Peter left us in. And the way he broke the silence was the exact way I would have expected. “Surprise?” he offered, even throwing a hand, palm up, at his side.
I glared at him.
He sighed all exaggerated and had the nerve to roll his eyes, like he hadn’t gotten on my case when I’d been a teenager the three times I had done the same to him. “Fine, but you could have handled it better.”
I flipped the spoon upside down in my mouth and left it there as I raised an eyebrow at him. “Yeah? You think so?”
The truth was… he was right. I could have handled it better. The entire thing, I could have handled better.
If I’d been a totally different person.
The expression Grandpa Gus gave me in return in that moment said he knew I was right. But he could have handled it better too. I hadn’t told him to choke after I’d called the woman I’d met Grandma.
Grandma had stood there afterward, her eyes slowly narrowing, either at me calling her that or at the fact I was laughing. Probably both though. “Is there something funny that I’m missing?” she had asked in a tone that was bordering on chilly, as Grandpa tried to hide his choke by clearing his throat.
“Oh, no,” I had responded to her, feeling my body shake as I kept on laughing, somewhere in between this-is-fucking-hilarious and this-is-fucking-bullshit.
She had narrowed her eyes even more, and for one tiny moment, I wondered if maybe that’s why I had thought she looked familiar. Because we looked alike. I guessed. A little. If you closed an eye and imagined me with better fashion sense and a slimmer bone structure.
I had slipped my hand out of hers, shook my head as I blinked back tears that had popped up out of nowhere, and then taken a step