My Life After Now - By Jessica Verdi Page 0,12

cheeks.

“So, Lucy, you’re single now, right?” Evan asked casually.

“Um, yeah.”

He nodded. “Would you go out with me this weekend?”

“Go out?” I’d never been asked out on an actual date before. Ty and I had just sort of fallen together, growing closer as we spent time together at rehearsals and cast parties. There hadn’t been much of an official courtship period.

“Yeah, you know, like I pick you up at your house and we go eat food together and maybe see a movie or something?”

I’d never really thought about Evan that way, but maybe this could be good. “Sure,” I said. “Why not?”

• • •

Saturday night, he showed up at my doorstep at exactly seven o’clock. He looked different somehow. Maybe it was the absence of his baseball cap or the fact that he was wearing a gray button-down shirt that I’d never seen before. Or maybe it was that I was looking at him differently now. He was no longer just Evan, the new guy who had an encyclopedic knowledge about sword fighting. Now he was Evan, the guy who liked me, with whom I was about to spend the evening alone.

“You look really nice,” he said.

“Thank you,” I said, glad Max had convinced me to wear a dress. “Want to meet my parents?” He didn’t have much of a choice, since my dads were standing right behind me, dorky grins on their faces. Luckily, Lisa seemed to be lying low tonight—I wondered if my dads had asked her to stay in her room or if she did it on her own.

Evan’s smile melted to surprise for the smallest fragment of a second as he added up the me + father + father equation, but he pulled it together a lot quicker than most people did, and the friendly smile returned to his face.

I introduced him to Dad and Papa, they all shook hands, my dads made the generic “treat our daughter well” remarks, and we were on our way.

“You have two dads,” Evan said as we drove down the street.

“Indeed I do,” I agreed.

“What’s that like?” he asked.

I had to admire his brazenness. My town was pretty liberal as suburbs go, and my family had always been welcomed and accepted in Eleanor Falls, but people rarely asked direct gay-parent-related questions. They either overcompensated and acted like two men raising a teenage daughter was as commonplace as blue jeans and whitening toothpaste, though we always knew it was all they were thinking about, or they waited until they got to know us well before building up the courage to ask about it. But Evan had learned of my unconventional family all of two minutes ago and already he was asking questions. It was refreshing.

“It’s all I’ve ever known,” I said, shrugging. “It’s normal to me.”

“Are you adopted?” he asked.

I shook my head. “Not totally. I was half-adopted.”

By the time I finished explaining the whole bio-dad/adopted-dad thing, we were at the restaurant.

After we ordered, Evan picked the conversation right back up and asked the question that no one had ever asked me outright before. “Have you ever met your biological mother?” It caught me off guard.

I took a sip of my soda, to give myself an extra moment to think. Could I justify telling Evan about Lisa being back, when I hadn’t even told Courtney and Max? Maybe not, but I knew I was going to tell him anyway. There was something open about him.

“I have,” I said. “Actually, she’s staying with us right now.”

“Oh, so you have a relationship with her then.”

“Not exactly,” I said, and dove into the whole sordid Lisa history. “She’s been back a week now, and I still don’t know why she’s here. We’ve been doing a pretty good job of steering clear of each other.”

He looked confused. “Why don’t you just ask her?”

I let out a little laugh. “You make it sound so simple.”

“Well, isn’t it? You talk to her for two minutes, get her side of the story, and then decide whether she’s worth your time or not. But by spending all your energy avoiding her and wondering why she’s here, you’re not being fair to yourself.” He shrugged and took a bite of his mashed potatoes.

I stared at him in awe. “Who are you?”

“You mean, ‘who is this random guy who thinks he knows anything about my life?’”

“I mean, ‘who is this person who sees things so clearly?’ I wish I could do that. I’m always overanalyzing everything—it’s why I can’t ever sleep. My