Chapter 17
seventeen
nisha
This Will Be A Day Long Remembered
Five Weeks Later
“Remind me again why this mutant beast has a dildo in his mouth.” Cradling his dog, Sapphire, in his arms like he would a newborn, my dad flicks a bangled hand condescendingly at Bob, who’s currently parading through Dad’s living room with my talking Darth Vader vibrator clutched between his massive jaws like a stick.
“Give yourself to the Dark Side.”
My face flames. “He . . . found it.”
“Mom, what’s a dildo?” My eight-year-old nephew, Rome, squints in Bob’s direction.
He’s seated beside me at the dining table, where my sister is serving him Dad’s famous samosas. Usually, Troy and his daughter, Pearl, also join what has now become monthly get-togethers at Dad’s house, but she just recently started swimming lessons, so Troy took her there.
Sarina swivels a glare at me as if I’m responsible for the impromptu sex-ed talk. I mean, technically, we got the damn things for her bachelorette party. And technically, it was Piper’s idea. But sure, blame me for graciously accepting a gift.
Seated across from Rome, Piper snorts before breaking off a piece of naan to hand to her almost one-year-old daughter, Ariana, who happily accepts the offering from her highchair.
With her dark hair and eyes and fair skin, she is the perfect combination of Piper and Dev. He also couldn’t make it today because, apparently, even on Sundays, billion-dollar empires don’t run themselves. But the sass and the non-stop babbling? Those are all Piper.
“Want to expand on that story, Neesh?” Piper asks, taking a forkful of her samosa and dipping it into the tamarind chutney Dad made.
“How, pray tell, would Patton’s dog have found and claimed your dildo?
Oh, and while you’re at it, why don’t you also explain how that dildo replaced the previous item he used to walk around with . . . your bra.”
If looks could kill, my eyes would have shot her dead. But I’m not able to hold my aim long because Bob chooses that moment to shake his head, like he’s trying to strangle the damn vibrator to death, making Vader wheeze out his signature heavy breathing.
“Hhhhooo. Haaahhhaaa.”
And just like that, I wish I hadn’t accepted this lunch invitation or Patton’s request to help him take care of his lunatic dog while he left town for a day to tape The Tonight Show.
My dad, never one to let a moment to embarrass his daughters go to shame, pretends to clutch his pearls. “Is there something you haven’t told me yet, daughter? Are you keeping me in the dark?!”
“Dad—” I start, hoping to thwart the inevitable emotional blackmail.
“I had heard my ex-son-in-law was in town filming a new movie with the help of my to-be son-in-law, but that you would be bedding him and not tell me . . .” He wipes a fake tear from the corner of his eye.
“Well, that’s just hurtful.” He eyes Bob, who is now rolling the toy across the rug, with mock horror.
“And unhygienic, if I’m being perfectly honest. I just deep-cleaned that rug. ”
God, how is this my life?
“First of all, I wasn’t purposely keeping you in the dark.
” I point a forkful of samosa at him before placing it back on my plate.
The scent, which is usually mouthwatering, has me feeling queasy.
Lately, anything fried has been hitting me weird.
“You and Emanuel have been cruising the damn world for the past two months—”
“My phone worked perfectly fine on the cruise,” Dad argues, to which his boyfriend Emanuel nods in agreement.
Dad and Emanuel have been together for about two years.
It’s the longest relationship my dad has had since Mom died from a random aneurysm when Sarina and I were fifteen.
And though Emanuel looks like the human version of a freight train, he’s nothing but gentle and adoring with Dad.
It’s exactly what my beautiful soul of a father deserves, even if he can be a diva at times.
“Well, it’s not like this was an emergency.”
“It was absolutely an emergency! If one of my daughters is bedding a man—”
Piper and Sarina groan in unison, with Sarina cutting him off, thank God, “Dad, will you stop calling it ‘bedding’?” She flicks a glance at her son, who is thankfully distracted with a book about space. “This is not 1792.”
I take a calming breath. “And second, I honestly don’t know that there’s much to say. Yes, we’ve been . . . you know?” I purse my lips and swivel my eyes, indicating my meaning without words so that little ears don’t hear. “But we haven’t put any labels on it, nor do I want to.”
Not for lack of Patton’s trying, though.
We’ve been “seeing” each other—code for banging each other’s brains out—regularly for the past several weeks.
But every time he tries to look beyond the present or give whatever is happening between us a name, I redirect him.
Hell, I straight up change the subject and do the whole “Squirrel!” thing while pointing out a covered window.
Dad starts to speak when Bob, having finished rolling around on the rug, comes over to inspect—ahem, sniff—Sapphire’s butt. She yelps in disgust and scrambles onto Emanuel’s lap like a damsel in distress. She eyes Bob warily from her perch on Emanuel’s trunk-like thigh with a warning growl.
“Oh, absolutely not, sir!” Dad scolds, waving a flowery napkin at him like a finish-line flag.
“Get all thoughts of defiling my little princess out of your meaty head. She is a lady. A refined lady who eats pastured chicken and receives daily massages. She has no interest in boys from the other side of the tracks.”
Bob, completely unbothered and possibly having lost interest already, flops onto the floor and lets out a long sigh that makes his jowls flutter around the dildo between them.
“Obi-Wan has taught you well.”
I pinch the bridge of my nose. “Oh, for god’s sake.”
“Anyway,” Dad continues, turning toward me. “So, this not-labeled thing between you two has been going on for several weeks, then?”
“Five or so.”
“And you think, what? That not labeling it will protect you from future heartbreak? From getting attached again? Or from rekindling what you had?”
He reaches for the jug of mango lassi, pouring himself a glass before eyeing me for an answer. And it’s not just him. All pairs of eyes, aside from the kids at the table, are on me expectantly.
I swallow. “I don’t know. I just . . . I just don’t want to go down the same path we were on again.”
“Then don’t.” Dad’s eyes soften. “Choose a different path, a new path. But don’t be in denial, sweetheart. You have always loved him, and deep down, you know you always will.”
I don’t argue. There’s no point doing so when the people who know you to your core are all sitting around one table.
Dad takes Emanuel’s hand in his, squeezing it before looking at me. “I lost your mom almost seventeen years ago. Like Patton was for you, she was my best friend, too. I still remember the day, about a year before she died, when I came out to her.”
His eyes gloss over, and his throat bobs with emotion. And though we were all laughing and joking just minutes ago, the shift in the room is clear now, the void left by the most important woman in many of our lives still lingers between us cavernously.
My chest aches, and in my peripheral vision, I see Sarina dab at the corner of her eye with a napkin.
“She was so gracious, so kind and understanding,” Dad continues.
“We didn’t know what that meant for our future, but we knew one thing—that no matter what, we would love each other.
No matter what, that love would never die.
And it didn’t, even when she did.” Reaching across the table, he places his hand over mine.
“Love like that doesn’t just disappear, sweetheart. ”
I shift in my seat uncomfortably.
The truth is, the past five weeks have been . . . unexpected.
As reluctant as I was to sleep with him after the night of Sarina’s bachelorette party, the man, with his lethal charm and persistence, wore me down.
He showed up at my door with breakfast every morning for a week.
And not just any breakfast, but my kryptonite—French toast. I have no idea if he made food runs himself or sent an assistant, but each meal was from a different restaurant.
Each better than the last. Each a love letter sprinkled with powdered sugar and cinnamon.
So, after another week of fighting it, I found myself inviting him in and letting him do all the filthy things I’d pretended for seven years that I didn’t still dream about.
Between his film schedule and PR events and my hours at the salon and dojang, we’ve both been busy. There have been days we’ve only had a handful of minutes together, but we’ve made them count.
An hour curled up on his couch, talking and staring into each other’s eyes, while Bob slept at our feet, Darth Vader providing the background noise in our conversation.
A quick dinner he’d picked up on his way back home.
Or a kiss that lingered until we were both breathless and ready to rip each other’s clothes off when he visited me at the salon.
And there have been other days—lazy Sundays and late August nights—where whispered pillow talk and ravenous lovemaking made me feel like we spoke a language we created ourselves. One no one else could understand.
So, yeah, I haven’t labeled it, but I can’t deny it’s something. And that terrifies me more than I can put into words.
Piper’s voice pulls me out of my thoughts, and I realize I’d been moving the same piece of samosa around in the chutney with my fork.
“It’s what we’ve been saying in our group chat.
We’re not encouraging you to dive back into the deep end, but maybe just stop worrying that you’re going to drown if you get close. ”
I’m just thinking about their words when Dad asks, “Why haven’t you eaten anything? It’s been twenty minutes, and you’ve been rolling the same bite around your plate.”
My stomach does that turning thing it’s been doing lately. “I don’t think I’m very hungry. Sorry, Dad. I’m sure it’s delicious, but—”
The back of Dad’s fingers brushing my forehead cuts off the rest of my words. His bangles jingle as he moves the backs of his fingers to my neck. “Sweetie, are you sick?”
I shake my head. “No, just haven’t felt like eating deep-fried food lately—”
A gasp across the table has me looking at my sister, her saucer eyes taking me in as if they’re seeing me after years.
I look from her to Piper and then Dad. Even Emanuel seems to be clued in on something I’m not. “What?”
Sarina’s mouth opens and closes, her eyes flicking between my plate to my face. “Neesh, when was your last period?”
The question makes my heart thud against my chest. “What? No . . . it’s not what you think—”
“Babe.” Piper leans over the table like she’s about to whisper a national secret. “Are you sure? Remember how you hated kiwis the last—”
I shake my head assertively as a pang hits me square between the ribs. “No, it’s not that. It’s not even possible. I’ve always had irregular periods with my polycystic ovaries.”
“Still, sweetie.” Dad squeezes my hand again. “It could be. The doctor didn’t say never; she just said the chances were naturally low.”
“This will be a day long remembered. Hhhhooo. Haaahhhaaa.”
Fucking Vader and his impeccable timing.
I shoot up from my chair, the scrape of wood on wood making both Bob and Sapphire jump. Even Ariana pauses, mid-eating, and Rome finally looks up from his book, their eyes wide in question, wondering what the hell got into their aunt.
No. This can’t be.
It simply can’t.
Yes, the doctor said the chances were naturally low, extremely low.
Which is why Patton and I had gone through several rounds of in vitro fertilization to get pregnant all those years ago when treatments to induce regular ovulation didn’t work for me.
So, how could it be possible now? We’ve been so careful, having used protection every time after that first time . . .
But we didn’t use it that very first time . . .
God. Please tell me this isn’t happening.
“I’m . . . I need to—” I mumble what I think is a sentence but couldn’t repeat it if I tried.
“Call it a coincidence or intuition,” Piper says, reaching into her cavernous Hermes purse, “but I have two pregnancy tests in here.”
“What?” The question is echoed by multiple people around the table, including me.
Piper flicks a nonchalant wrist in our direction, pulling out a pink and white box. “Dev and I aren’t trying, trying”—she brushes her hand over Ariana’s short hair, smiling when she coos—“but it’s not like we aren’t trying, either, you know what I mean?”
At her wink, I eye the box in her hand like it’s about to detonate. “But—”
She shoves it in my direction and tips her chin toward the bathroom. “You’ll know for sure in less than five minutes.”
And I do.
Because five minutes later, everything changes.