Chapter 25 Marsh #2
“Oh, I’ll show you our pictures. We went on the ATV!” Selena sits in between Lucy and me and opens the photo app on her phone.
I intently listen to Selena sharing her entire experience all the while showing me twenty different versions of the same photo. Lucy looks at me and mouths I’m sorry. There’s no reason for her to apologize because truthfully, this is nice.
Whatever is happening here this morning is nice.
Around six p.m. I’m back at Lucy’s place.
It’s been less than seven hours since breakfast with her parents and I already miss her company.
She’s waiting outside her building and looking just as effortlessly stunning as she always does.
She has these dark blue jeans that hug her in all the right places, a black belt, and a tight long sleeve black top.
It’s moments like this when she’s just literally standing there that I wonder how the hell I got so lucky to be alive at the same time as her.
“Hey, sailor.” She winks as she opens the door to my car. “Look how handsome you are.”
I trimmed my facial hair and opted for one of my better denim shirts, but hearing Lucy call me handsome makes me want to forget dinner and go inside her apartment instead.
She leans over the middle console, giving me a kiss.
Placing a palm on my cheek, she deepens the somewhat harmless gesture and opens my mouth wider with her tongue.
We do this for a few more seconds, tasting and exploring each other like a couple of teenagers, and then she pulls away, smiling.
“Hello to you too,” I say.
“Thank you for this morning,” she says, and now I know the kiss was a thank-you.
I push the button to start the ignition and start driving. “You have nothing to thank me for.”
“Uh, yes, I do.” She lets out a laugh. “I swear I had no idea my parents were going to be there. Thank you for being such a trouper.”
“Luce, just admit this was your way of making me meet your parents.”
She rolls her eyes. “You caught me.”
“They’re great,” I tell her. Lucy’s parents are the opposite of my mom.
Not that one set of parents is better than the other, but they’re different.
It’s interesting how two people can come from contrasting upbringings and environments and still somehow manage to connect with each other in their adult lives.
“Are they?” She makes a face. “Because if I recall, my mom force-fed breakfast down your throat while my dad didn’t say a single thing.”
“If I recall,” I counter, “my mom spent the entire day talking to my ex instead of my current girlfriend.”
“No,” Lucy retorts. “Your mom was nice. And she has history with your ex. I get it.”
“And your parents were just being parents,” I say. “I liked getting to know them.”
“Mhm.” Lucy looks out the window. “I used to be a lot closer to them.”
I look at her but am met with the back of her head. I’m starting to notice that whenever Lucy reveals something personal, she keeps herself physically guarded.
“Do you miss being close to them?” I ask.
“Not really.” She shrugs. “They’re still in my life and it’s okay to have your parents just be your parents, right?”
“Of course,” I say. “My mom and I have a much different relationship than her and Oliver. There’s no right way to do anything.”
“Yeah.” She continues to stare out the window.
She doesn’t know where we’re going. This is all my plan to show her a nice date night and hopefully she can write something about it on Monday. I continue to tell myself that’s the real reason, instead of the fact that I want to treat her the way she deserves to be treated.
“What’s your relationship like with your dad?” I ask her.
“Complicated,” she says, and nothing else.
I don’t ask any further questions because if Lucy wanted to tell me she would.
Just when I think it’s best if I change the subject, she takes a breath like she’s about to say something that she doesn’t say often.
“When I was sixteen, I went to the woman’s house… ”
I briefly break my gaze from the road and look at Lucy. “The woman your dad had an affair with?”
“Yeah,” she says. Her eyes are still looking out the window.
“I found her name, address, took the car, and drove all the way to Riverside to confront her. I didn’t care.
I was just so mad. Not even at my dad, but at her.
Because what kind of woman breaks up a family?
Or at least tries to? So, I went over there, knocked on her door, and she didn’t answer. ”
“She wasn’t home?” I ask.
“A child answered,” she says softly, almost like she’s been transported back to that moment. “The kid was, I don’t know, five or six…He looked exactly like my dad.”
“Fuck,” I breathe out.
“It knocked the wind out of me, but I didn’t forget what I came there to do.
So, I asked to see Natalie.” She says her name like she’s not used to hearing it out loud.
“When she came down the stairs, I remember thinking she wasn’t anything special.
She was a middle-aged woman who was clearly worn down by having kids.
She wasn’t someone who looked like she worked out or wore makeup, and I felt sick, Marsh.
” She finally looks at me. “I was sick to my stomach because my dad cheated on my mom for someone like that…someone who was just normal.”
While she’s telling a story that she’s maybe ever told only once or twice in her life, there’s a taste of disdain to Lucy’s words.
Like she’s battled with these thoughts for years, and while she knows exactly how she felt about Natalie at sixteen, she’s still trying to gauge how she feels about her at twenty-nine.
“What did she say?”
“She knew my name,” Lucy says. “The minute she saw me she knew who I was. She told me that my dad would come to visit a few times a year to celebrate the kid’s birthday or drop off a Christmas gift.
Apparently, he would always show her photos of me.
He would show her videos from my dance recitals and let her read my short stories I wrote,” Lucy tells me, her voice cracking. “Isn’t that messed up?”
I think of the man I met this morning and find it hard to believe that someone so stoic and calm was capable of what Lucy is sharing.
“I think he’s proud of you, Lucy,” I say, hoping that’s what she takes from her memory.
“Yeah, well, I ripped her a new asshole, that’s for sure.
I called her things I would never say to anyone now…
I told her she was a homewrecker, a slut, a whore, every name in the book that I could think of at sixteen.
All she did was let me yell at her. She didn’t say a thing, and I remember thinking she was such a coward.
Letting a teenager say all of this to her and not even fighting back. ”
“Does your dad know?”
“By the time I came back home, my dad was waiting in our driveway. She called him and told him everything. He didn’t know that I knew about her, and he was defensive and furious…
We both were,” Lucy says. “I was crying, asking him how he could do this to my mom. That’s when he told me she already knew. ”
“What part?” My eyes snap to hers.
“All of it,” Lucy says incredulously. “She knew about the affair, that he was supporting a whole other fucking family…and it didn’t matter to her! All that mattered was that I never found out.”
I grip the wheel tighter, trying to put myself in Lucy’s shoes. As each little detail comes to the surface, I understand more and more why Lucy is the way she is. “Lucy, I’m so sorry,” I say. “What happened to your brother?”
Lucy looks at me, a disdainful look all over her face.
“That kid is not my brother,” she spits out.
“I know but—”
“That kid is as much my brother as that woman is my mother.”
I ease up, knowing that the thought is upsetting Lucy. “So, you never saw them again?”
“No,” she says confused. “Why would I?”
“It’s not his fault what happened, Lucy,” I say as gently as I can.
She looks back out the window and doesn’t say anything for a moment.
“Look, I know I sound stubborn, and yeah, I know that kid has nothing to do with anything. But it was hard enough for me to accept everything that happened, I wasn’t going to start being a big sister to anyone. And maybe that makes me selfish or—”
“No,” I say. “It doesn’t.”
“My whole world broke,” she says. “He begged me to not tell my mom that I went to Natalie’s house. If she knew I met her that would absolutely break her heart. He kept saying he loves my mom and he loves me…What even is love? How can you lie and keep secrets from someone you love?”
I think of Julia and how she continued to tell me she still loved me.
“I don’t think love is supposed to be easy,” I say. “It’s not as simple as saying you love someone and that’s it. I think if you really love someone it becomes messy and complicated.”
“But it shouldn’t be,” Lucy says almost desperately. “And every time I see my dad I have to actively push aside the fact that he might rather be with his other family than me and my mom—”
“Lucy, you don’t know that,” I insist.
“When I look at him he just has this guilt in his eyes,” she explains. “Like he’s only with us because he feels bad for what he did.”
“I think your dad made a mistake,” I say, gathering what I know. “And the choices he made after that are because he loves you and your mom.”
She lets out a doubtful puff of air through her nose. “I think things would have made more sense if they just got a divorce.”
“Is that what you’d rather have?” I ask. “To have your dad go be with Natalie and that kid and leave you and your mom?”
Lucy starts to play with the rings on her fingers. I don’t think she even knows the answer to that. “I just look at my mom and my heart breaks for her,” she says.
“Your mom doesn’t deserve any of that.”
“You didn’t deserve what happened to you either and here you are,” Lucy says. “Shit happens to good people, doesn’t it? Hearts get broken and that’s inevitable.”
“So, have things just not been the same between you and your dad since that day?”