4. Zoey
CHAPTER 4
ZOEY
It was guilt that made me agree to my dad’s invitation to dinner tonight. Classes begin tomorrow and I’d much rather be in bed with a coloring book and markers trying to calm my nerves over starting my junior year at a different college. But when he asked if I’d be willing to come over for dinner, I felt like it’d be rude to say no.
That’s how I’ve found myself parked outside on the street of a massive house—no, mansion—tapping my fingers nervously against my steering wheel while Taylor Swift hypes me up in the background.
The house is beautiful, with a circular driveway and beautiful stone front. The front door is one of the largest I’ve ever seen, with intricate ironwork around the glass.
It’s definitely out of the budget for your typical college basketball coach—but my dad isn’t typical. He spent nearly five years in the NBA before a career-ending injury took him out.
If I’m honest with myself, he’s part of the reason I want to be a physical therapist. To help athletes and others who’ve been hurt and need help, and maybe prevent someone from walking away from their family like he did.
All because he didn’t want to face the reality that he couldn’t play anymore and apparently my mom and I weren’t a good enough reason to move on.
They met when they were in high school, and dated through college, where my mom got pregnant with me their sophomore year and they decided to get married and make it work.
It’s too bad ‘making it work’ was only temporary.
The worst part is the divorce came years after the injury, but he was never the same after it happened. It was like nothing meant the same if he didn’t have the NBA anymore.
I inhale a deep breath, and shut my car off, Taylor’s voice cutting off in the middle of Shake it Off .
Slipping from the car, I sling my purse over my shoulder and lock the car behind me. Though, in a neighborhood this nice—one where I had to enter through a gate—locking it is probably unnecessary. I doubt any of these rich pricks want anything to do with my ten-year-old Honda.
I trudge up the driveway, my arms wrapped around my body.
I don’t know why, but the memory of my high school graduation floods my mind. I gave my dad the cold shoulder after the event. My heart pangs in remembrance of his warm smile, the pride in his eyes when he told me congratulations and opened his arms for a hug, and I just dodged him. Like he was nothing. Before then I’d spend the occasional holiday with him, not because he didn’t want me to but because I loved my mom and felt like I had to be loyal to her, even though she never said or did anything to make me feel ill toward my father. That wasn’t my mom. She was a good, kind soul. Better than me, better than anyone I’ve known. What he didn’t know at my graduation, is the day before my mother confessed she’d been diagnosed with ovarian cancer. She told me to be optimistic, that she’d be fine, but I knew my mom better than anyone and always knew when she was lying.
She was dead a year later, gone almost to the day of when she was diagnosed.
Perhaps her loss is why I latched on so strongly to Todd, even when I knew he was all wrong for me.
Reaching the door, I take a deep, fortifying breath and smooth my hands down the front of my simple flowered dress. Cole had jokingly asked if I was going on a date when he saw me leaving. I reluctantly grumbled out that I was going to my dad’s house for dinner.
I would’ve much rather met on neutral ground at a restaurant, but he was insistent that his wife, Allison, wanted to make me a home-cooked meal.
I know it’s unfair to Allison that I don’t like her. It’s not like she’s done anything to me. But I guess seeing her, and the kids they’ve had together, reminds me of what I should’ve had.
But now that I’m here in Tennessee and going to Aldridge, it’s time I made more of an effort. At least when it comes to my younger half-siblings.
After stalling long enough, I raise my hand and push the doorbell. It rings through the house.
Allison hurries to the door, her blonde hair cut off at her shoulders. She smiles at me behind the door. Opening it, she lets me in. “Zoey, I’m so glad you could come.” She opens her arms to hug me. I’ve always denied her embraces in the past, but this time I accept it and there’s no missing the happiness in her bright blue eyes. It makes me feel like a bitch for things I’ve said and done in the past.
“Thanks for having me.” I release her. She’s dressed in a nice pair of jeans and wraparound top. I wish I would’ve worn jeans now, but it’s too late to change.
“Everyone’s this way.” She nods for me to follow her.
We enter a massive kitchen with state-of-the-art appliances, shiny granite countertops, and cabinets I’ve only ever seen in homes well over a million dollars—which I’m sure this place is.
“Dinner’s almost ready.” She gives my shoulder a squeeze as my dad stands up from the large table in the kitchen. I’m glad we won’t be eating in some fancy dining room. Even though the kitchen is luxurious it definitely feels more relaxed.
“Hey, Zo-bug.” My dad’s voice booms as he stands to his full six-foot-nine height. His hands are massive, the size of dinner plates. I remember when I was little, I was always putting things in his hands to compare the size.
“Hi, Dad.” Like with Allison, I make myself hug him. He squeezes me tight, holding on like he doesn’t want to let go, and I swear the guilt is going to smother me just like his massive arms. Craning my neck back to fully take him in, I ask, “How are you?”
You’d think with such a giant for a dad I would’ve been taller than my five-seven stature, but my mom was a barely five-foot Latina powerhouse, and I inherited a lot of her genes. It definitely wasn’t always easy growing up as an Afro-Latina, but I love my heritage, both sides, even if I’ve harbored anger toward my dad over the years.
You know, I guess I should be thankful he realized that my mom wasn’t the love of his life and didn’t stay in a loveless marriage, but as a teenager growing up without my dad in those vital years, not looking like the other kids, it was hard.
“I’m good, I’m good.” His eyes flit over me, taking in every detail like he’s trying to memorize me. “How are you? You’ve gotten all the furniture set up okay? I told you I’d come help.”
“My roommate helped me.”
“Good, good.” Awkwardness sets in like usual. I’ve cut him down so many times over the years the poor man doesn’t know what to say to me. “Want to say hi to the kids?”
I give a tiny nod, eyeing the small children at the table.
Gabriel is six, Isaac four, and then there’s the baby, Rose, who isn’t quite one yet. I remember the jealousy I felt when I found out my dad and Allison were having a girl. It was so dumb, I’m an adult and being jealous of a baby is preposterous, but all I could think about was how I was well and truly replaced. I’m not my dad’s only little girl anymore.
I take small, measured steps to the table and find the boys scribbling in coloring books, well Isaac is scribbling, but Gabriel is doing a good job of staying in the lines.
“You guys like coloring?” I ask my brothers.
Gabriel looks up. “Yeah, do you? We have more coloring books if you want to color with us?”
Isaac looks up, only just realizing I’m there. “Zo-Zo!” He grins from ear to ear and slips out of his seat, barreling toward me and tackling me into a hug. My heart clenches at his obvious excitement over being there. “I missed you! You didn’t come for Christmas!”
No, I was too busy spending it with Cheater-Cheater-Licking-Someone-Else’s-Pussy-Eater Todd. But I did spend Thanksgiving with my dad’s family last year. It was just as awkward as you’d expect but for some strange reason the boys seem to like me.
“I’m sorry,” I say automatically, but I actually mean it when I take in his saddened expression.
“The boys ask about you a lot,” my dad says with a smile that is both somehow happy and sad as he observes Isaac’s chokehold on me.
“They do?” I don’t mean to say it out loud, but the question slips out.
He jerks his head in a nod. “They love you.”
Letting Isaac go, he smiles at me holding my face between his small hands. “I’ll get you a coloring book. We have an Avengers one you can use.”
“Whoa! Whoa!” Allison calls after him when he tries to flee the kitchen. “Zoey can color with you after we eat if she wants to stay, but dinner is ready so park your tush back in your seat.”
Isaac goes back to the table, head hanging.
Walking over to Allison, I say, “Let me help you with that.”
She gives a smile, appreciating that I’m trying. “Thanks.”
Together we plate the chicken fettucine she made. It smells incredible and my stomach rumbles. She tries to hide her amusement at the sound.
“I might be a little hungry,” I admit sheepishly.
She smiles. “That’s what we want.”
Sitting down at the table with Allison, my dad, the two boys, and babbling baby isn’t as awkward or as horrible as I expected. It’s been my own fault all these years that things weren’t great. Now that I’m here, living nearby and going to school, I need to put in more effort.
“This is delicious, Allison,” I say to the pretty blonde. She’s only thirty-three, almost twelve years older than me, which if I’m honest with myself is another reason I resented her. Even though my dad was single for a few years after my parents’ divorce, it still felt like a betrayal to my mother when he married Allison. Like he upgraded to a new, younger, shinier model. “I really appreciate you doing this.”
“Of course, Zoey.” She smiles at me. “You’re our family.”
Looking around at my dad, brothers, baby sister, and Allison, I return her smile.
We finish dinner and even have dessert—a homemade tiramisu that Allison prepared earlier. I help clean up and then stay to color with the boys for a little while, saying goodbye just before it’s time for them to settle for bed.
I arrive back at the apartment and trudge up the steps. Despite actually enjoying my evening I’m exhausted from the stress and anxiety of it all.
Opening the door, I find Cole relaxing on the couch with a root beer in hand.
“How’d it go?” he asks as I lock up behind me.
“Pretty good.” I decide that’s a pretty basic answer, so I elaborate with, “Better than I thought it would. My brothers were happy to see me.”
“Brothers? I didn’t know you had siblings.”
“Yeah, Gabriel and Isaac. They’re young—six and four. There’s a baby too, Rose, she’s only nine months.”
“Wow.”
I give a small laugh, filching one of his root beers from the fridge. When I first opened the refrigerator and saw all the bottles lined up, for a split second I thought I was dealing with an alcoholic college boy and what a nightmare it would be, but I had quite the laugh once I read the label and saw that it was root beer.
Cole gives me an amused smile when I sit down beside him, kicking my shoes off on the carpeted floor and tucking my feet under me and drink in hand. “Are we sharing drinks now?”
“I needed something stronger than water.”
He throws his head back and laughs, caramel brown eyes sparkling when they meet mine. “Sorry I only have root beer then.”
“It’s okay. We can go shopping for actual beer sometime this week.”
“We, huh?”
I roll my eyes. “At least if we grocery shop together, I won’t have to carry everything up the stairs by myself.”
He tsks. “Using me as a pack mule to carry your shit, Zoey? I see how it is. And here I thought you wanted to spend more time with me.”
For some reason my heart trips over itself. I better as hell not be developing a crush on my roommate. The last thing I need is to be lusting after a guy, even one as hot as Cole, after the disaster that was my last relationship.
“You wish, Anderson.” I bump his shoulder with mine, definitely not affected at all by how muscular his bicep feels against my arm.
He grins, eyes glimmering with amusement and holds his bottle out to mine. “Cheers, Zoey.”
“Cheers to what?”
“I don’t know. To school starting, to you surviving dinner with your family … to ‘grocery’ shopping.”
My heart skips a beat again, something about the way he says ‘grocery shopping’ feels illicit. Like limbs touching between sheets, nails scraping against skin, tongues dueling.
Somehow, I find my voice and tap my bottle against his. “Cheers.”
I down a swallow, disappointed there’s not a twinge of alcohol, because right now I think I need it.