Chapter 10
Drew
Great job, sweetheart.
But don’t ask about lunch.
Or water.
It’s progress, not perfection, but lunch and water are both important.
…
It’s hard to force myself, and I haven’t figured out how to do it.
I have thoughts but maybe best not to offer them via text message. It feels like something to talk about in person.
If you don’t have plans already, pick you up at noon on Saturday?
I’d like that.
Good. Me too.
Do you remember telling me you don’t know what you like anymore?
Yeah, why?
Because I’m a man with a plan.
But in the meantime, please make sure you at least get lunch today. Even a salad counts.
Okay, I’ll try.
By the way, I got my results back, and I’ll bring them with me.
I don’t need to see them. You can just tell me.
Clean bill of health.
Same.
Work going okay?
No, but only because it’s taking forever to iron out details. I don’t like that I haven’t been able to see you.
…
I don’t like it either.
TTYL
“I originally thought we’d go out for lunch, but I think this is a better plan. Fingers crossed that you agree,” Henry said as he ushered me inside his house.
He directed me toward the kitchen and sat me at the table before hurrying over to the counter, where there were at least ten different takeout bags.
“Is this why you sent the Uber for me?”
“Yeah, I needed to be here for the delivery.” He said it like that made perfect sense.
“Are you expecting more people?” I asked.
He kept pulling containers out of the bags, and there had to be enough food to feed twenty people. I mean, I skipped lunch sometimes, but this seemed a little excessive.
Okay.
A lot excessive.
“Nope. It’s just going to be us,” Henry said, looking up with a smile from whatever he was doing at the island.
Since it didn’t appear that he was going to give me a straight answer, I flopped back in my chair and watched him work. When I first came in, I’d offered to help, but he’d shooed me away and told me to sit at the table so I could be ready for lunch.
I had no idea why I needed to be ready for lunch. It was a plate, not a marathon, but I wasn’t going to argue with the man in his own house, so I followed instructions.
“Okay, let’s get started,” Henry announced with a flourish.
He carried two plates in his hands and balanced a third on his forearm. Then he made two more trips back to the kitchen with more overflowing plates, followed by one last trip for silverware and a glass of water for each of us.
“Henry, how much food do you think we’re going to eat?”
“Probably a couple of bites of each. You said you didn’t know what you liked anymore, so I thought I’d order from different places I like. Then you could try everything and see what you like too.”
Henry said it matter-of-factly, like it was the most logical thing in the world to have dozens of dishes delivered for two people just so we could sample a bite or two.
It was the sweetest thing anyone had ever done for me.
“Henry…are you serious right now?”
“I am. Do you want to start with African and Mediterranean? Or South and Central American fusion? Mostly Italian but also a French place? Or American?”
“You are insane.” I laughed.
Of course I was delighted, but I didn’t have the words to tell him just how much, so I settled for disbelief.
“I should warn you, this date is going to take a while.”
“Why is that?”
“Because after we have lunch, we need to figure out what kind of movies you like, and we have to let our lunch settle before we get to the part after that.”
“And what’s that part?”
“I bought a freezer so we could do it properly.”
“Do what properly?”
“I bought one of every mini container of ice cream I could find at the store so we could figure out which ones you liked best.”
“Daddy!”
If I’d ever been happier or more content, then I couldn’t remember it. Henry had refused my offer to help in the kitchen, so I had a little time to myself to process what the afternoon, well, now evening, had meant.
After lunch, we’d moved to the living room and watched a few different genres of movies, and I’d forgotten how much I liked watching John Hughes movies when I was a kid.
Yeah, some things would never, ever be put into movies now, but I liked them.
I came away firmly convinced that my favorite type of movie was romantic comedies from the eighties, and there were worse places to land.
The ice cream was a monumental task. I hadn’t even gotten through a quarter of tasting the flavors before I admitted defeat and agreed I’d have to come back to finish that part of the experiment.
Henry insisted it needed to be soon or the ice cream would go bad.
It didn’t make a whole lot of sense to me, but I wasn’t going to argue with a lawyer about logic. That was a no-win situation.
When it was all said and done, my having called Henry Daddy still hovered in the air around us.
Henry had been kind enough to ignore it because if he’d pointed it out, I would’ve fallen apart on the spot.
But a not-small part of me wanted it handled, though I didn’t know how.
I wished Henry could just declare himself that, and I’d say okay.
We’d both have it settled and done without any muss or fuss.
I knew he couldn’t because that wasn’t how it worked.
Consent was obviously important, but ugh, it made things weird. And awkward. And weird.
“All right, dishes are done,” Henry announced when he came back into the living room.
He immediately dropped onto the cushion next to me and laid his arm across the back of the couch.
It felt like the most natural thing in the world to cuddle up to him, which he rewarded by moving his arm around my shoulders and squeezing me close.
At the sound of my sigh, he laughed softly and squeezed again.
“Thank you for the best day,” I whispered to Henry. “I don’t even know what to think about someone putting that much effort into me.”
Henry didn’t respond right away. When I got the courage to look at him, his expression was hard to read. It was…affectionate?
“Glad you’ve enjoyed it. Too much ice cream? It’s hard to say I regret too much delicious, but I might need to do some extra time at the gym tomorrow.” Henry patted his belly like an old man. The only thing he was missing was some suspenders and a sign to get off his lawn.
“Oh, I love the gym,” I offered.
The second the words were out of my mouth, I regretted them.
I loathed the gym except for the sauna. Now the lie was out in the world, or at least Henry’s living room, and I’d be stuck dealing with reps and laps.
I snuck a sidelong look at Henry. In a perfect world, there was a chance he hadn’t heard me and my lie would go unnoticed.
My silent wish wasn’t fulfilled because Henry was staring at me intently. His expression had morphed into something I couldn’t read. For Pete’s sake, when was I going to learn? Likely never because I hadn’t figured it out in the last twenty years.
“Drew, I’m going to make a wild guess here and say that isn’t true at all. Maybe you don’t hate it, but I don’t think you love it.”
I wasn’t sure how to answer.
If I admitted it wasn’t true, then I was a liar.
If I kept it up, then I was still a liar.
Either way, I was a liar, and that fact was about to be exposed in the most pointless way possible for the dumbest reason possible.
“I don’t know how to answer that.” As a stall tactic, it wasn’t the greatest, but it would do in a pinch. If I could figure out how to rewind the last ninety seconds, I’d do it in a heartbeat.
“The truth is fine.”
“Ugh, I don’t hate every part.”
“That’s a start. What part don’t you hate?”
“The sauna?”
I fully expected Henry to yell at me, which was ridiculous because the man hadn’t raised his voice once. He even managed to navigate California traffic without uttering a single fuck, so my worry was utterly unfounded, but here it was anyway.
“So the non-gym part?”
“Okay, but when you say it like that…” I trailed off because I was about to make a point without a distinction, like my granddad used to say.
A smart person would have left well enough alone, but as it turns out, that wasn’t a description of me. Instead, I found every bit of courage I could to ask what I really wanted to know. “Are you mad?”
“That you don’t like the gym? I don’t care. It makes me sad that you think you have to turn yourself into something you’re not for any reason. If you like it, cool. If you don’t, still cool, and we’ll avoid it if we can. Either way, I still like you.”
“It’s just…habit?”
“Or maybe self-preservation?”
“Well, hell, this wasn’t how I wanted our evening to end,” I said grumpily.
Henry twirled his fingers in my hair. Over the last several weeks, it had grown out and was shaggy and curling at the ends.
Every time I thought about getting it cut, I told myself I wanted to see what it would look like grown out just a little more.
Henry being able to twist it around his fingers meant I wasn’t cutting it anytime soon.
“How did you want it to end?”
Oh, for Pete’s sake. I needed to figure out how to keep my thinking thoughts inside my head where they belonged. I knew it was pointless, but I shrugged anyway.
“You know…” I waved my hand in the air like that answered the question.
“Can I tell you how I wanted it to end?”
“Please.”
“Like this.”
And then he kissed me.