Chapter Four
FOUR
Of course.
Everything was out to get him, all at once.
Why not throw his ex-wife and his daughter into the mix right now?
Why not throw the ex-best friend who had knocked up his wife into the group?
Why not throw in the son that wasn’t Shepherd’s—and thank God for that, because that boy was Strange with a capital S—into the drink? Mix it around. Toss it all about.
“Hey, Lex!” Noah shouted from the bar. “I didn’t know you were gonna be here! Karaoke night, all right! Shepherd!”
Shepherd closed his eyes. His right eyebrow twitched.
“Shepherd! Shepherd! Shepherd!”
“What, Noah?”
Noah flashed him a sheepish smile. “Your daughter is here.”
“I see that, Noah. Thank you so much.”
“You have children?” Deandra asked.
Shepherd nodded. “A daughter. Let me go see what’s up. I’m not supposed to get her until Saturday.”
“Hurry back, um, dear,” Ginny said, totally naturally.
He nodded again. He was nodding a lot. His neck was starting to hurt.
Deandra whispered, “What’s with the snake?” And Shepherd shuddered.
The boy child had a snake around his neck.
“Hey, buddy!” Oscar, the locksmith, held out his hand. He was Shepherd’s age, Shepherd’s height, but with a belly that hung over his belt just a bit more than Shepherd’s did. “Good to see you!”
Shepherd did not shake his hand. It looked damp, and anyway, Oscar always smelled vaguely of cheese and cheap cigars. “We are not buddies,” he said, “and it is not good to see you.”
Oscar shook out his hand and made an over-exaggerated noise of pain.
Hayley, Shepherd’s ex, rolled her eyes but didn’t look up from her phone.
Even after two kids, Hayley was still physically fit.
She ran every day, often multiple times a day, the way some people drank coffee.
He’d only seen her in a dress once, and that was on their wedding day; otherwise, she was in jeans or leggings or sometimes, like today, shorts and t-shirts with athletic company branding somewhere on them.
Her dark hair was pulled back into a loose ponytail, and her phone case was covered in pictures of Lex and her brother.
“Hey, Dad,” Lex greeted, wrapping his flatter-than-Oscar’s stomach in a one-armed hug.
“Hey.” He ruffled her dark hair. She was his twin in many ways, the hair being one of them. Her personality, however? That came from who knows where. The devil, probably. “What’s going on? You here for dinner? A bit early, but it’s a school night, so.”
“No.” Hayley finally tucked her phone in her jeans pocket. “Our babysitter canceled.”
Shepherd frowned. “What’s that got to do with me?”
“We bought tickets for this movie a week ago,” Oscar said. “We’re meeting some of our friends. Couple friends, sorry.” He patted Shepherd on the shoulder. “You’re still my best friend. It’s just that you’re single.”
“Please don’t touch me,” Shepherd said.
Oscar let go immediately. “Sorry, sorry. I forget. You’re not a toucher. Not a hugger. Physical touch is my love language, is all.”
Hayley pulled her phone out again. “It’s for two and half hours, Shepherd. They can play in here. You’ll be fine.”
“What do you mean they?”
She waved at her son. The boy child with the snake around his neck. He grinned up at Shepherd, and four of his front teeth were missing. How did he eat?
“The weird one’s not mine,” he said. “You can spring Lex on me as often as you want. But the weird one’s not mine.”
“He has a name, Dad,” Lex said. “It’s a dumb name, but it’s his.”
“Hey!” The boy stuck out his tongue. The snake’s forked tongue also slithered out of its yellow mouth, near the boy’s ear.
Shepherd shuddered. The boy child sucked his tongue back in his open mouth and licked his gums.
“Oh, Ginny’s here! Sweet. Bye, Mom. Bye, Oscar!” Lex flounced off to the table of doom.
“No, wait!” Shepherd swept out a hand, but it was too late. Lex hauled herself into the chair next to Ginny and started shoving pizza in her mouth.
“What’s going on?” Oscar nodded his chin at the table. “Who are those people?”
“That’s Ginny—she works here. Her mom is visiting. And that’s Mr. Martin—he’s the landlord. He owns basically all of Perfection Avenue.”
Oscar nudged Hayley with his elbow. “Hey, that’d be a good friend to have, huh? Do some movie nights with him? All of Perfection Avenue?”
Shepherd shrugged. “Basically.”
Hayley shoved her phone in her back pocket. “We have to go. We’ll be back in two and a half hours. No sugar, no caffeinated drinks.”
Oscar dropped a kiss on his son’s shaggy head. The snake’s tail gave a noiseless rattle.
“See you later!” Oscar called. “Ya’ll have fun now, ya hear!”
Shepherd groaned. The bell above the door jingled as the man who stole Shepherd’s wife finally left the premises. “I hate your dad,” he said.
“Yeah,” said the boy child with a shrug.
“I don’t like you either.”
“Feeling is mutual,” he lisped, wetly.
“OK, as long as we’re clear. Keep hold of that snake. If it gets lost, it’s not my problem.”
“Fine.”
“You and your sister go get sodas from Noah. Tell him to load them up with sugar, too.”
The boy clapped his hands. “Hooray!” He skipped towards the bar, the snake bouncing on his shoulders. “Lex, soda time!”
Lex knocked the chair down she ran so fast to join her brother at the bar.
Ginny smiled at Shepherd and waved. He waved back, then ran his fingers through his hair.
Mr. Martin’s arm was around Deandra’s shoulders, and the two of them were whispering away in each other’s ears and giggling like children.
So he was babysitting two sets of children who should not be his problem.
How was this his life?
He picked up the chair off the floor and slid back into it. Ginny kissed his cheek. It sparked like static cling, fresh sheets out of the dryer rubbing each other. Shepherd sucked on his teeth to chase the feeling away. She took his hand in hers and ran the soft pad of her thumb over his knuckles.
“You’re so good with kids, honey.”
Shepherd smiled despite himself. “I thought you didn’t like pet names.”
“I don’t like to be called pet names. But I like calling you pet names, honey bunny.”
He opened his mouth to call her something disgustingly sweet, but his daughter materialized at her side.
“Ginny!” She said the name like a forbidden curse word, an overflowing cup of soda in her hands, the brown liquid sloshing over the sides and dripping on the floor.
Deandra scooted closer to Mr. Martin, not that the old man was complaining.
“Noah tells me that you’re dating,” Lex said, sliding her straw in and out of the cup so hard it squeaked almost musically. “Noah told me this, Ginny, and not you, my best friend. In the entire world.”
Ginny covered her heart with her hand and gasped. “Are we really best friends? Oh, Lex! I’m so happy to hear that because you still haven’t responded to my follow request on Instagram and—”
Lex’s right eye twitched. “You should kiss.”
Shepherd stood up so fast his chair fell backward, clanging hard on the only somewhat sticky floor.
The few remaining guests left between lunch and dinner stopped eating their meat lovers’ pizza and buffalo wings coated in ranch dressing to stare at him, including the arguing regulars at the bar who had stopped arguing to see why on earth chairs kept falling over in their direction.
He cleared his throat, but then a cough came, and he choked behind his fist.
Ginny stood up too, her hand pressing between his shoulder blades. “Lex, I don’t think—”
“It’s a wonderful idea,” said Deandra. “So romantic! I love that you’ve bonded with your future stepdaughter, Virginia.”
It was Ginny’s turn to cough so hard tears formed in the corner of her eyes. “Future? Future stepdaughter?” She combed her fingers through her glossy red hair. “Mother. Shepherd and I have only started dating recently and—”
“But when would you say? When exactly would you say?” Lex slurped up a huge bit of soda, her eyes narrowed and pointed directly at her father. “What day did you first kiss? Because I think you should kiss right now. Because I love you both so, so much. Now, kiss.”
Mr. Martin tapped his hand against the tabletop. “I concur! Kiss! Kiss! Kiss!”
Lex chanted along with the landlord, encouraging the entire—though nearly empty—restaurant to chant along.
A growing chorus of “Kiss! Kiss! Kiss!” echoed throughout the not-quite-empty restaurant, the remaining patrons clapping their hands or banging the tables in time with their demands.
Deandra giggled, behind her hand, her face flush, and Shepherd regretted ever making her that first coolada.
Ginny’s palm scorched him as it moved up the back of his neck. Every inch of his skin felt hot. Maybe spontaneous combustion was preferable to life at this moment.
“You don’t have to, Shepherd,” Ginny whispered. “Really. I understand. You know, if you’re scared, or whatever.”
“Scared!” Shepherd squawked. “Of what? One stupid, little kiss. With, with you? Of all people? Puh-lease. As if kissing you was scary.”
She shrugged and looked him square in the eye. The chants were getting louder, becoming nothing more than background noise as he watched the corners of her heart-shaped lips turn up. “Prove it, then.”
Shepherd only had to bend a few inches to press his mouth to hers. He meant to be quick about it, a little peck between friends, but then she tilted her head and slotted her lips over his and the meaning of the word “peck” left his mind.
Everything, actually, left his mind.
The tip of Ginny’s tongue touched his lips. His brain stopped controlling his muscles, his lungs, until he was a twitching, breathless idiot, standing in the middle of his restaurant, letting his fake girlfriend stick her warm tongue inside his useless mouth.
Of course she was a good kisser. She was good at everything.
She tasted sweet like her soda, like cinnamon from her gum, like something addicting and worth losing every last bit of dignity for.