I frowned. “What are you talking about?”
“I saw you two.”
Shit.I’d been just drunk enough to go along with Charlotte’s exhibitionist urge, despite feeling more than a little sick about it the next morning.
“You saw us? Was…” My nostrils flared. “Was Molly with you?”
Kaz rubbed the back of his neck, not meeting my gaze. “She saw it too.”
My stomach dropped. “I should have been more discreet.” I’d been giving Kaz shit about not letting his thing with Molly affect our work, but maybe I needed to focus on my own behavior. That party had been ripe with opportunities for us, something I was supposed to take care of, but instead of focusing on Last Rites, I’d escaped the party to let Charlotte blow me. All so I could get my mind off how good Molly looked that evening.
“Probably a good idea,” he said before taking another bite.
We ate in silence for a while, both of us consumed with our own thoughts.
“You ever get the urge to reach out to your dad?” Kaz asked.
I glanced at him. It was an unexpected question. “Yeah, sometimes. But it doesn’t take me long to talk myself out of it.” The last time I’d talked with my father was the week after I dropped out. He’d yelled at me so loudly over the phone, I wouldn’t have been surprised if he’d lost his voice the next day. “I know what he’d say, and none of it’s good.”
He scoffed. “Yeah, that’s probably true. Your mom never brings him up?”
“She used to, but she stopped after I’d asked her a few times not to. I didn’t want our conversations to become solely about him.” My mom hadn’t cut me out of her life like my father, but staying in contact with her hadn’t been easy. She wanted us all to reconcile, yet she refused to stand up to my father or admit he hadn’t been a good dad to me. We limited ourselves to pleasantries. Small talk about our lives. I didn’t know how she felt about my career or my music. It was a topic she avoided.
“That’s funny.” Kaz stood up to pour himself more coffee. “There was a time when I’d do anything for my mom to say a word about mine.”
I leaned back into my chair. “You still sitting on that DNA test? You should just take it.”
When he turned to me with a hesitant expression on his face, I frowned. “You’ve done it?”
“Yeah. A while back.”
“Why didn’t you say anything?”
“I don’t know. At first, I didn’t know what I wanted to do, so I thought I’d best keep it to myself while I tried to figure that out. But then I did the test, and I just…” He blew out a breath. “I found him.”
Surprise racked through me. “Holy shit. Dude, that’s huge.”
“I know.”
“Do you mean you got his name? Or you’ve met him in real life? Or what?”
Kaz ran a hand over his head. “I have his name. He lives in LA, believe it or not. I’ve seen him in real life, but we haven’t met. I’ve been kind of…following him around.”
“You’ve been following him around?”
“Yeah. On Wednesdays.”
“But he doesn’t know?”
“No.”
“Isn’t that kind of like stalking?”
He sat back down in his chair. “Yes. That’s exactly what it is. I can’t fucking do it, man. How am I supposed to just walk up to him and say, ‘Hey, I’m your long-lost son.’?”
I couldn’t believe he hadn’t told me about this until now. Something twinged inside my chest. I guess I wasn’t the only one who’d been keeping things secret.
“I don’t even know what I want from my dad,” he continued. “He’s a stranger to me. For all I know, our DNA is the only thing we have in common.”
