I rub my forehead, feeling my hangover reassert itself. “Is this really the time for us to have this discussion? Our parents are getting married in an hour.”
“Forty-five minutes,” he says, unironically.
“Exactly.” My hand drops from my forehead. “Can’t we argue later?”
“I’d prefer it if we don’t argue at all. I might think my dad’s making a mistake, but?—”
Fury blasts through me, and I poke a finger into his chest. “Do youseriouslythink your dad is too good for my mom?” I hiss. “Choose your next words very carefully.”
He frowns and pushes my finger away. “No, of course not. Your mom’s not the problem. I like your mom well enough. I just don’t see any reason for them to make their relationship legally binding.”
“That makes a surprising amount of sense,” I concede. “But it’s a little too late for either of us to try to talk them out of it.” Since this conversation shows no signs of ending anytime soon, I walk over and shut the office door before striding back to him. He has edged away from the bathroom and is standing behind the visitor chairs pushed up to my desk.
He nods. “Yeah, I tried to have a conversation with him about it last night, and he didn’t take it well.”
“What the fuck? You tried to talk him into leaving herat the altar?”
Cormac laughs. He actually laughs!
I take a step toward the door, done with his nonsense, but he captures my forearm, his grip light but firm. “Nora, I’m sorry. I just…” More laughter. “Sometimes I laugh at inappropriate times.”
No shit, but I stop in my tracks.
Like it or not, the man has a point. Wewillhave to deal with each other for the next who-knows-how-long. I have enough difficult relationships to navigate in my life—ours doesn’t need to continue being one of them.
“I wasn’t telling Dad he should leave her,” he says earnestly. “I tried to convince him they don’t need to file paperwork for it to feel real. My mother worked him over in the divorce. He had to give her half of everything, even his dog.”
“How’d he give her half a dog?”
“They had a custody schedule.” His lips curl upward, nearly a smile but not quite. I’d give it a C-plus if I were a teacher like my mom is. “Color-coded. Shared holidays.”
“Holy shit. Did they have one for you too, or only the dog?”
His smile stretches wider. “It was generally agreed upon that while Daisy required a custody agreement, their twenty-one-year-old son could decide for himself. But it would have made things easier if they’d gone for it. Then I wouldn’t have todeal with the back-and-forth texts every Thanksgiving and Christmas.”
“Sounds like a passive-aggressive nightmare. I’m glad it’s not like that with my parents.”
Because my father is a cheating hypocrite. As far as I’m concerned, he can fuck right off and spend the holidays by himself or with whatever age-inappropriate woman he’s “dating.” Odds are, she’ll be one of his former students at UNC Asheville.
Sure, I used to understand my mother’s obsession with my father, when I was a teeny-tiny kid and he was launching a charm offensive. But I realized he was full of shit a long time before his chronic infidelity finally became impossible for my mother to explain away.
Cormac makes a humming sound deep in his throat. “The great thing about passive aggression is that it can largely be ignored, especially if you’re not good at identifying it in the first place.”
I actually laugh, which comes as a surprise to both of us. Then we seem to simultaneously realize that he is still, for some ungodly reason, touching my arm. He drops his hand instantly, as if I’m the hot potato who lost him the game.
I purse my lips, remembering how horrified he had looked when that spinning bottle stopped onme.
“Sooo, should we arrange a custody schedule for our parents?” I ask.
He laughs again, and I’m charitable enough to acknowledge that it’s a pleasant laugh. Deep and rich, the way laughter should be. “I hope it doesn’t come to that. If I have to watch them make out, I’d prefer not to do it alone.”
He has a point about this too. Our parents, both of whom are card-carrying members of AARP, act like they’re teenagers who just discovered mouths can do something other than talkand eat. It would be kind of sweet if it weren’t entirely too much. “What about Daisy the dog? Can’t she keep you company?”
“Only her memory, and I can’t bring my dog to their house.”
“You have a different dog?”
“Yeah. She’s on two different anxiety medications.”
