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He took one look at my face when I arrived and understood this wasn’t a night I wanted to be photographed.
Two paparazzi have been on the sidewalk out front since noon. There’s a valet whose entire job tonight, discreetly, is keeping them off the porte-cochere. Staff at this level don’t gossip. I’ve bought a lot of stupid things with my rockstar money over the years.
Having a private family dinner is a price I’m always willing to pay when needed.
My band plays the last show of the year tomorrow. A glorious ninety-minute nostalgia set out at Exposition Park. We’re headlining a nineties rock festival aimed at the Gen Xers who used to own the mosh pit. The bill is filled with bands we came up with thirty years ago, so it’s bound to be a fun time.
The gig marks the end of a run, which started as the worst summer of my life and turned into one of the best. Elodie’s upstairs getting ready. My kids are on their way. I came down early to have a bit of solitude. Truthfully, I’m more scared tonight than when I face any crowd.
Tonight I’m hopefully bringing the two halves of my life at one table and praying we make it out intact.
Incorporating Elodie into my family is tricky. I’m not with her because I’m lonely or any of the sad, old-man reasons the internet has settled on. Trying to convince Billie otherwise is a losing battle.
She doesn’t want to hear how I’ve fallen in love with a woman who knows all of me and wants me anyway. The dejected widower and the confident rockstar. The grief and the joy. The dutiful and the wicked.
Eighteen months, I embodied being a widower. I was good. Careful. Half-dead.
Elodie turned me back on. When she walks into a room, my whole life lights up. She makes me laugh in a way I forgot I could. I’d rather have one honest year with her than another thirty of making everyone around me comfortable.
It might be selfish, but it’s my truth, and I need to come clean with my children.
Theo gets here first, which is shocking. He’s late to everything, including his own birth. He crosses the restaurant, easy in his own skin again. A new girl in the picture now, Maya. Somebody from his program he can’t utter three sentences without mentioning.
Grief did its own number on my son. For a year he was a ghost in the shape of a young man. This spring he came back one degree at a time. Had a bad breakup, which I helped him through. Now he’s got a girlfriend, a thesis, and a year of grad school left.
He hugs me hard. Drops into the chair across from me. “Heads up. Billie’s on the warpath. She almost bailed. Fair warning, don’t take the bait and don’t let her scare off your girlfriend before I get to chat with her.”
The news isn’t anything I’m not expecting. Billie stopped speaking to me when Elodie and I were outed. The fact she’ll be here is good enough for me.
“So.” Theo taps his menu. “You’re out of control. Every day there’s a new TikTok. What the hell?”
I shake my head. “Don’t start.”
“I’m not startin’ nothin’, I think it’s hilarious.” The little bastard’s enjoying himself. “My dad. On the cover of the Daily Mail. Again. Making out at a football game. You know better.”
“I’m aware, thanks.” I scrub my chin with my fingers.
Out of the corner of my eye, I see Billie come through the front door. She dressed for war and looks so much like her mother, it takes my breath away. She kisses her brother’s cheek and lets me hug her the way you let a stranger hug you at a funeral.
She sits, lays her napkin in her lap, folds her hands, and looks at me like I’m opposing counsel. “Where is she. Upstairs? Timing her entrance?”
“We need a few minutes first. Her idea.” I clear my throat. “She thought you and Theo might want me to yourselves before she—”
“How thoughtful.” Billie snaps a breadstick and eats none of it. “She’s surprisingly well-trained for twenty-two. Or is she twenty-three now?”
“Billie,” I hiss.
“Stop. I mean it as a compliment. Girls her age panic. She’s got a whole strategy. Lay low, starve the story, ride it out. Theo gave me the low-down. The two of you are so on-message it’s almost cute.” She’s got her mother’s gift for finding a tender place and leaning on it.
“That’s enough.” I’m beyond annoyed.
“It’s nowhere close to enough.” Her voice fractures. Under all the bravado, she’s always going to be my little girl. “How could you do this to our family? You’re on a magazine cover with a girl who could be my younger sister. I’m supposed to sit here, pass the bread, and act like my chest isn’t caving in?”
“You’re supposed to be here because I asked you.” I reach across the table and take her hand. “I love you, and I love her. We’re squashing this once and for all because I’m not spending whatever years I’ve got left hiding my relationship to make strangers on the internet like me.”
Theo, gently, toes into the fray. “For what it’s worth, I’m up to speed on her whole story. She’s not who the trolls say she is. I don’t think she’s into you for the wrong reasons.”
My boy’s trying to bleed the tension out of the room. It doesn’t work, but I love him for it anyway.
