Chapter Two
Holly
“Surprise!” he says, setting down the princess cake with its two candles—a three and a three; if I’d actually put in thirty-three candles, it would have made the princess’s dress a bonfire. That might have been amusing, but it would have ruined the cake.
Auggie looks infinitely pleased with himself, as if he’d made the cake and painstakingly decorated it, not the new little Cakes and Crafts bakery on Main Street. Admittedly, this is the first time he’s correctly remembered our birthday, which is impressive, but someone should have told him that it’s probably best not to drop in on your daughters without warning after abandoning them in childhood.
Bryn gives him a weird look. “Did our other waiter clock out?”
She obviously doesn’t recognize him, not that I’m shocked. Unlike me, she never felt the desire or need to seek him out. Although she knows I have intermittent contact with him, she’s never once asked me about him…let alone looked up his picture.
“It’s me,” he says expectantly, his chest puffed out.
I nudge Bryn’s leg under the table. “It’s Auggie,” I hiss in an undertone.
“Who?” she asks, still dumbfounded. The candles are starting to drip onto the lovely skirt of the terrifying cake-bodied princess. I suck in a breath and blow them out, wishing like hell this won’t end in disaster. Well, you know what they say, if I don’t tell anyone, there’s a slight chance it’ll come true.
Or at least no one will need to know why I’m disappointed.
Auggie’s chest wilts like a dough that never properly rose. “Your father,” he says. “I’m yourfather.” Then, more optimistically, he adds, “I’m here on your birthday. I got it right this year.”
“Dude,” I say, rising and clapping him on the back. “You’re not doing yourself any favors. Most parents know their kids’ birthdays.” Even our fair-weather mother sent us a text this morning. Admittedly, it was a selfie of her and Husband Number Four going on a boat ride, accompanied by a message saying,I saw it was a low of 48 today in Highland Hills. Don’t you wish you were out here in Florida? Come visit!
Then:We don’t have enough room in the house to put you up, but there are a couple of hotels nearby that are very reasonable.
Is it any wonder that I used to fantasize about finding out my parents had kidnapped me from cool people?
“You knew about this?” Bryn says furiously, getting to her feet too. Her gaze is fixed on me, her eyes hot with betrayal. “You said you had a surprise.”
“I meant the cake,” I say wildly, pointing to it. “It was a small surprise. Not a horrible surprise. I know better.”
“You think this is a horrible surprise?” Auggie asks forlornly. Someone gave him a waiter’s apron, so he really looks the part. It’s weird, seeing him in person. He’s shorter than I thought he’d be. His eyes are the same green as mine, and his hair is a dark brown that I’m certain came from a bottle. He’s handsome, but in a slightly greasy way.
I’m guessing he saw this going down differently.
Well, at least this explains the waiter’s shiftiness earlier. When he asked if I “knew,” he wasn’t referring to the cake—but to the father who’d requested to bring it out.
“Yes,” Bryn hisses, shifting her attention to him. “Obviously. Who do you think you are, showing up out of the blue?”
“She asks a good question,” I say. I become aware that everyone in the dining room is staring at us, which makes sense. We’re all standing up, talking at each other in furious tones.
The waiter from earlier is watching us from a position near the bar, his expression a mixture of terror and fascination.
Cole’s watching us too. No, he’s watchingme, and I feel a shiver of something. To my surprise, he makes a gesture, as if to say,Do you need me to intervene?
I give a small shake of my head, then tear my gaze from him as Bryn fumes to Auggie, “How’d you even know we’d be here?”
Shit.
“Thatismy fault,” I admit. “We were playing a game on Discord the other night, and I told him what we were doing for our birthday.”
“I only know what that last part means,” she says, “but I’ve asked you not to tell him anything about me.”
All I can do is shrug. “I figured he’d send a card on the right day this year.” I shift my gaze to him. “That’s what you should have done, Auggie. Jesus Christ. This isn’t the kind of thing you spring on someone.”
He looks sulky, like a kid who’s been sent to bed without any ice cream. “I saw a video where a dad popped out of his daughters’ birthday cake. They looked so happy—”
“That’s where you should have known something was wrong,” I interrupt. “No one is happy about lost cake. They had to be hamming it up for the cameras.”
