I sat on the couch beside Danny and grabbed a handful of chips. “It go okay picking her up?”
“Yeah, no problem,” Danny said, and then he grinned. “You never said her teacher was a hottie.”
My face must have given me away.
“What?” Danny asked. “You’re always saying guys are hot, even though you say you’re straight.” He got that wrinkle over his nose he always did when he was thinking too hard. “Which, okay, no, let’s leave that conversation for another day. He’s hot, is all, and I’m surprised you didn’t mention it.”
“I am straight,” I said, “but I have eyes. But it’s a pretty fu—flippingawkward thing to say about a guy you gave a lap dance to.”
Danny’s jaw dropped and his eyebrows tried to climb his forehead and escape into his hair. “You what now?”
“I’m not talking about it.” I jammed some chips in my mouth.
“Oh, you absolutely are talking about it!” Danny’s eyes were bright. “Like, I need all the details, immediately!”
“Nope,” I said and was saved by Gracie hurrying back with some pages of coloring for me to admire.
Danny gave me a crazy stare that silently screamed we weren’t done with this conversation, and I knew I’d cave and tell him everything later. Meanwhile, it was fun to make him squirm.
Also, for the record, I wasn’t gay. But Danny had been my best friend since high school, and what sort of asshole would I have been back then to make him listen to me going crazy about how hot Cassidy was if I couldn’t listen to him talking about the massive crush he had on the quarterback? The quarterback had been an asshole, also for the record, and I might have slashed his tires when he called Danny a slur. And back then, when I was the town golden boy, nobody had even suspected a thing.
The point was, I was secure enough in my sexuality that I didn’t get the heebie-jeebies over gay cooties or whatever the fuck that was all about. Danny was gay, and Chase was gay, and Cash was… well, who knew with Cash? And these guys were my brothers, end of story. Who cared who they wanted to date?
And yeah, sure. I sometimes looked at guys and found them attractive, but that was normal. Like, I was pretty sure every guy had thought about trying stuff with another guy at least once—although from the way Danny looked at me sometimes when I said things like that, I was starting to suspect that maybe they didn’t.
I wondered if Mr. Smith was gay. He hadn’t exactly shied away from that lap dance the other night, had he? He’d been kind of awkward over it, but lots of people reacted that way when they got dragged on stage, and he’d been pretty generous with those dollar bills right up until he saw my face. And he did wear that rainbow thing around his neck—but then, that might have been because he was working with little kids. There was no way to tell without asking.
Then I wondered why I even cared when my main concern was that he didn’t spread it all over town that I had a side gig involving a fireman’s helmet, body glitter, and a bright red thong. But maybe this was one of those mutually assured destruction scenarios. He wouldn’t tell people I was a stripper, and I wouldn’t tell people he was the kind of guy who bought lap dances from strippers.
Which was kind of dumb when I thought about it, because another word for the kind of people who bought lap dances from strippers was “paying customers.” And you couldn’t have one without the other.
I’d barely made it through high school, but I knew all about supply and demand. I knew all about hypocrisy too, thanks to people like my father and Cassidy’s parents. This being a mutually assured destruction scenario was stupid as hell, but that didn’t mean it also couldn’t be true. Lots of stupid things were true.
“And this is a horse,” Gracie said, pointing to a brown blob with about six legs.
“It’s amazing,” I told her. Was she turning into one of those horse girls? Had Steve known something I didn’t when he’d brought up the pony? If a horse obsession was about to happen, I needed to redirect it. “What’s he called?”
She gave me a look. “It’s called Horse.”
Danny snorted.
“Very imaginative,” I said. “Shall we stick this on the refrigerator?”
Gracie beamed at me like I’d offered to hang her picture in the Louvre, and we went and stuck it on the refrigerator door with a handful of magnets that advertised Uncle Steve’s roofing company. I was tempted to grab a beer, but I knew if I did that, I’d end up glued to the couch and nothing would get done.
And there wassomuch I had to do
I’d thought I was prepared for parenting. But nobody had told me about the unending grind of making healthy meals and laundry and endless snacks and more laundry—unlike me, apparently kids couldn’t wear the same T-shirt three times and call it good—and story time and bath time and bedtime routines, and stuff like checking Gracie’s backpack for leftovers so her lunchbox didn’t get nasty, and making sure she had matching socks, and keeping track of all her hair clips and scrunchies, and all the other shit that it was exhausting to even think about.
Turned out I hadn’t been prepared at all, even with the guys pitching in to help and watching Gracie when I had to work nights. I wouldn’t change it and I didn’t regret it, don’t get me wrong. I loved having Gracie live with me.
But I was just so fuckingtiredall the time.
And I was scared too. What if I was fucking this whole thing up on a fundamental level and I didn’t even know? It was all too easy to imagine a day in the distant future when Gracie would end up on whatever the fuck their version ofDr. Philwas, telling the world what a colossal fuckup her father had been. And Cassidy’s parents would be right there sitting in the front row, nodding their heads in agreement when Dr. Future-Phil proclaimed it would have been better for everyone if Gracie had stayed living with her grandparents.
Except on a gut-deep level, I knew that wasn’t true. Cassidy had come to me and asked if I’d be prepared to care for Gracie precisely because shedidn’twant her daughter having the samesort of upbringing she and I had both had, one where all that mattered was fitting into the mold your parents had prepared for you. One where if you dared to not slot into place, they did their best to slice off the bits of your personality that didn’t fit until they could shove you into that box.
Fuck that.
