Chapter 19
Nineteen
Victor
I slip into the pool and head to where Adrienne is standing about waist-deep. She’s on the tall side for a woman, but still shorter than me, so the water barely hits my hips.
“So,” she starts. “Kelsey knows about you and Jason.”
The pool is heated but I go cold anyway. “Uh…” I don’t even know what the hell to say. “What does she think she knows?”
I’m stalling and Adrienne levels me with a look. She does not suffer fools, and while I’ve always thought she’s a great foil to Kelsey’s sunny cheerfulness, I still find her a little intimidating.
“She knows what two people having sex—really loudly, apparently—sounds like, and unless the two of you are renting your cabin out for other resort guests to fuck in, she knows that it was you and Jason.”
“Okay?” I’m scrambling for composure. “Even if we were, it’s not really any of her business, is it?”
Adrienne snorts. “That’s what I said, but she’s pretty pissed about it anyway.”
I take a deep breath and duck under the water. I let myself sink until I’m sitting on the floor of the pool, wondering what the ever-loving fuck to say to Adrienne about Jason and me.
Because Jason and me are not a thing. Not officially. I don’t even know if we’ll sleep together tonight. Or ever again.
Especially if he finds out that Kelsey knows.
The water presses against my ears, a physical echo of the pressure I feel from Adrienne, her feet braced wide apart, toes painted a vivid red.
I’m caught between the secret Jason wanted so desperately to keep from Kelsey, which is out of the bag now, it seems, and revealing what I feel about him to Adrienne. To my daughter.
I’m running out of air. Tiny bubbles escape my lips and float upwards, but Adrienne’s not going to just stand here while I attempt to drown myself. I push up from the bottom of the pool, exhaling the rest of my air on the way, and suck in a deep breath when my head breaks the surface.
“Okay,” I start. “Even if Jason and I have…well, whatever we’ve done—”
Adrienne lifts an eyebrow at me. “Shouted each other’s names and grunted like porn stars producing the money shot for the cameras?”
I drag a wet hand down my face. “Seriously?”
“That’s what Kelsey said.”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” I mutter.
“Yeah,” Adrienne says. She sounds a little sympathetic. “Sorry, Vic. Gotta say, I’m glad I wasn’t there to hear anything myself.”
Me too. My daughter hearing her fathers having sex—at all, much less together—is bad enough. Okay, there’s really no worse here.
“How did she hear anything, anyway?” I ask. “What was she doing sneaking around outside our casita?”
“Jason wasn’t at dinner, remember? Kelsey wanted to see how he was feeling and if he needed anything.”
“She couldn’t have texted him? Or me, for that matter? I told her he was fine last night.”
Adrienne lifts that same eyebrow at me again. “I believe she did text you both.”
Shit. I’d forgotten about the text I saw on my phone display when I got up this morning. I didn’t reply because I knew Kelsey was going on the hike this morning with Jason and they left the resort before dawn. I figured he’d tell her that everything was fine.
Except that Jason must have walked into Kelsey’s anger this morning and has now had the entire day to stew in it.
“Why is Kelsey pissed about what she heard?” I still can’t bring myself to admit to Adrienne that Jason and I had sex.
“It’s been fifteen years since her mom died and neither of us are seeing anyone else right now.
In fact, she just told me last night that she thinks Jason should start dating again. ”
Adrienne snorts. “Oh, is that what you’re doing? You two are dating?”
Daughter-in-law or no, I’ve had about enough of this interrogation. “Well, it isn’t actually any of your business, or hers, for that matter, what her father and I do. We’re adults; so is she. We’re all entitled to some privacy here.”
Adrienne sighs and reaches out to put a hand on my arm.
“Victor, try and see it from her perspective, okay? Yes, you’re grown men and you’re entitled to fuck whomever you want.
But it’s her wedding week and her dads are here to see her get married.
You guys have barely talked to each other since she left home for college.
All of a sudden, you pick this week to start having wild monkey sex together? ”
She stops and tilts her head, pinning me with a gaze I privately think of as her lawyer face.
“Wait, how long has this been going on? Because one of the things she’s pissed about is that you haven’t told her that you’re seeing each other.
So, if this has been going on for a while and you’ve kept it from her… ”
Well, fuck, now I’m really in a pickle. If I tell Adrienne about the night of Leah’s funeral, I can’t also demand she keep that from Kelsey.
But which is worse in Kelsey’s eyes? That her dads just started fucking this week?
That we’ve been carrying on for weeks or months while hiding it from her? Or the truth?
And what on earth has Jason told her today? Did he lie to her? About all of it? Did he keep the first night from her but admit to what she heard last night?
Jason hates lying. But he was adamant yesterday that she never know about the night of Leah’s funeral.
Now I see why Adrienne is confronting me now. Divide and conquer, I suppose. I wonder whether they’d planned it this way or Adrienne just took advantage of this opportunity she stumbled across today, with Jason and me separated?
I slide out from under Adrienne’s arm and away. “I can’t talk to you about this right now, Adrienne. I need to talk to Jason.”
“Victor—”
“Look, I know it’s your and Kelsey’s wedding week.
” Lord knows if I had a nickel for every time someone—mostly Jason—has directly said or obliquely referenced that, I could pay for the whole damn thing.
“And nothing has changed about that. Jason and I are both here, ready to stand up with you while you say your vows.” I tilt my head in Silas’s direction, still typing on his phone with his thumbs.
“Your friends are here for you, too. But not everything in the whole world is about you girls, even this week.”
Like the deal-making lawyer she is, Adrienne tries another tack. “Kelsey’s mostly worried about one or the other of you getting hurt.”
“I believe you.” And I do. Mostly. “I’m sorry Kelsey overheard something that made her uncomfortable, but whatever’s happening between Jason and me is our business. If there’s something you and Kelsey need to know, we’ll tell you when you need to know it.”
Adrienne gives me a half-smile. “I warned Kelsey that you’d probably react this way. I get it, Victor. I don’t know what’s going on between you guys, but I hope you figure things out without fucking shit up too much.”
I can’t tell if she’s on Team Dads or not. “Thanks, I think?”
Adrienne shakes her head and flicks a few drops of water at me with her fingers. “I’m going to lay out next to Silas and read for a while. Maybe order a fruity cocktail. You sticking around?”
“I’m going to swim a bit more first. Order me one of those cocktails when you do it.”
“Will do.” She hauls herself out of the pool and wraps a towel around herself, then settles down on the lounger where she’d dumped her stuff.
She leans over and peers at Silas’s phone when he tilts it toward her and he launches into an animated conversation with her.
About the vocal arranger that almost was, I suspect.
I hope she’s able to persuade him that his musical will be fine.
I swim a few dozen laps along the length of the pool.
It’s not very big and there’s a small waterfall flowing into the pool at one end, so when I push off from the wall, I only get a handful of strokes in before I reach the other end.
Still, this isn’t for exercise; it’s to calm and center myself after Adrienne’s interrogation.
I drink the fruity cocktail Adrienne orders for us, but lounging by the pool is no longer relaxing. I keep checking my watch. I should talk to Jason as soon as they arrive back from their hike. When I can’t take it anymore, I gather my things and head back to our casita.
Naturally, as soon as I round the path’s bend from the pool, I see Kelsey approaching. Her head is down, her shoulders hunched under her backpack straps. She looks like she did when she was a teenager, torn between despondence and rage, just waiting for a target to explode at.
I admit I have a brief instinct to step off the path and hide behind a vine-covered tree. It’s not very mature of me, but I’m already on edge from Adrienne’s interrogation and facing my daughter now, about what’s happening between me and her stepfather, is the last thing I want to do.
I pull my shit together, though, and stop as she approaches me. “Hi,” I say. Lame, I know.
“Hi.” Her voice is cold and clipped. She moves to step around me.
“Kels, wait.” I reach out for her but she steps back.
“What?”
“Adrienne told me you heard…” Jesus, when I think about what she must have heard—I was right earlier, there’s absolutely nothing worse than knowing your daughter heard you having sex. With anyone.
“Yeah, and I cannot even believe what I heard!”
Especially with her other father. I refuse to feel shame about it, though. Jason’s had a monopoly on shame these last fifteen years. I’m done.
“Look,” I say. “I’m going to say to you what I said to Adrienne. I’m sorry you heard something that made you uncomfortable, but this really isn’t any of your business.”
“No? I don’t get a say in who my dads have sex with?”
“No, Kels, you don’t. Also, you spent most of your adolescence talking about your two dads as if we were a couple, so why are you all of a sudden having a problem with it if we’re sleeping together?”
“Because I have no idea what’s going on with you two!
Are you sleeping together? What the hell, Daddy?
Why? Why now? How long has this been going on?
” She glares at me and, for fuck’s sake, her eyes are brimming with tears.
I’ve never been able to handle Kelsey crying.
Jason was always able to stay calm while Kelsey wailed and cried and threw tantrums, but I’ve always folded at the first sign of tears.
I’m determined not to succumb this time. I stay where I am, and cross my arms over my chest so that I’m not tempted to run to her and scoop her up like when she was a little girl. “I’m not answering questions about it. It’s our business, not yours.”
“It is my business when I can hear you through the walls. It's my business when you're messing with Dad's head during my wedding week.”
“Messing with his head? Kelsey, your stepfather is a grown man—”
“He’s not gay, Daddy. He can’t be gay and also be the music director at Saint Sebastian.”
“I’m aware of his job, Kels. So is he.”
“So, how is anything between you two supposed to work?”
That’s the thing, isn’t it? It doesn’t work.
It’s not supposed to work. It’s just this week, and while Kelsey is twenty-seven years old and surely familiar with the notion of casual sex, I really, really don’t want to recap my conversation with her stepfather about how we’re just scratching an itch during her wedding week.
“You literally told me last night that you wish Jason would start dating again. You said you thought he was lonely. So which is it, Kelsey? Do you want him to be happy, or do you just want him to be happy in ways that are convenient for you?”
She flushes. “Oh, you’re going to make him happy? When's the last time you had a relationship that lasted more than six months, Daddy? And now you're, what, going to be the one who destroys Dad's career? His faith?”
I don’t double over from the gut punch but it’s a near thing. Because she's not wrong, is she? I've never made anything last. Also, destroy his faith? This is a casual fling. Jason himself suggested it. It’s not going to destroy anything.
Kelsey, at least, has the decency to look a little ashamed of herself.
“I’m just saying,” she says, her voice a little less shrill. “The Church is really important to him. You know that, right?”
“Kelsey.”
“I just…I don’t want you to get hurt, Daddy.”
“I appreciate that, but again, who I choose to sleep with is none of your business. I’m a grown man. I can take care of myself.”
“And I don’t want you to hurt Dad, either,” she retorts.
I sigh. “I have no intention of hurting Jason. I think you’ve forgotten that your stepdad and I have known each other a long time.”
She gives me a sharp look and I curse my stupid mouth. “Not like—” I break off before I can actually lie to my daughter. “Look, I’m serious about this, Kelsey. Stay out of it. Jason and I are plenty capable of having a mature relationship and we don’t need you to look out for either of us here.”
“Oh, is that what this is? A mature relationship? The two of you, who haven’t spoken directly to each other since Mom’s funeral, who’ve spent the past fifteen years communicating with each other solely through me, are having ‘a mature relationship’?”
I swear to god, Kelsey’s finger quotes are killing me here. “Kels…”
“No.” Kelsey backs away, shaking her head. “I can’t believe you’re doing this. This week, of all weeks. I just—No.” She stalks off without looking behind her.
Fuck.
I stand on the path for a long moment, watching Kelsey's retreating back until she disappears around a bend. Then I continue on to our casita, my legs heavier than they should be.
Jason isn't back yet. Good. I need a drink before I face him.
I open one of the bottles of wine on the credenza and take it out to the balcony. The valley spreads out below me, green and gold in the late afternoon light. I pour myself a glass. Then another.