AllFreeNovel
Share Us
She starts to turn away, but I press my hand to her forearm before she leaves. “Just one more question, daughter of mine. If you ever do find out I’m dying, do you think you could maybe save your concerns about the will until after you give your old man a hug?”
Unexpectedly, her chin quivers. I’m totally thrown; Perhaps it’s my fault, but I have never seen Ridley’s face crumple out of pure, selfless emotion since she was a little girl. She throws her arms around me and my heart squeezes inside my chest. For the first time in I don’t know how long, I give my little girl a proper bear hug.
Before she lets go, she repeats, “OK, but are you sure you’re not dying?”
I laugh again and give her another fatherly squeeze. “No, Ridley.”
She lets go and says, “Just checking. And if you tell anyone you saw me cry, you’ll wish you were dying.” She shoots me with playful daggers in her eyes before swirling around t
o leave my office.
It doesn’t fix everything, but it’s a start.
When she leaves, I pace the house while I’m on the phone with an understandably appalled Bianca. She’s so outraged at my news, she could spit nails, and I don’t blame her. But, in the end, as I suspected, she’s going to keep it quiet out of respect for Hunter.
“Besides,” she muses, “You and I had our basically-arranged marriage when we were eighteen. And believe it or not, your daughter knows a thing or two about dating an older man.”
I stop in my tracks in my office and stare up at the portrait of my parents that hangs over the fireplace. The fact that my parents’ marriage, like my first one, was more or less a business arrangement is almost obvious in the painting. They do not look happy, and in real life, they truly were not.
What are you saying, Bianca?”
When my ex-wife explains what’s really going on with Ridley, I’m shocked, pleased, worried, but of course, given my own situation, I can’t be angry.
25
Hunter
“Well, this is unexpected.”
Ridley Rushmore, the meanest princess who ever cat-walked the halls of Greenbridge Academy, has just apologized to me. And here I am — the school’s queen of melodrama and dramatic monologues — and I’ve got nothing to offer except to point out the surprise of the situation.
Standing inside the heated tent surrounded by happy wedding guests, Ridley rolls her eyes and sips her pretty pink mocktail. “I know, I know. Just, like, accept my apology so I can move on with my life. My dad is having some kind of mid-life crisis or something and wanting everyone around him to have ‘feelings’ or whatever.” With her free hand, she puts air quotes around the word “feelings.”
I squint at her skeptically, but my heart also melts. Clearly, Rushmore has been trying to talk some sense into his daughter. “All right. I accept your apology. But, Ridley, your dad is 39, that’s not quite mid-life, I don’t think.”
Ridley’s face fights the urge to revert back into bitch mode. Finally, she blinks at me, smiles sweetly and giggles. “No, of course you wouldn’t want to think that.”
Judging from her comment, I realize she must know the truth about her dad and me. I swallow down the panic as she saunters away.
I watch her go and wonder whether she’s going to make the rest of my high school career a total misery because of my relationship with Rushmore.
But then, I take a deep breath and let it out. Even if she does choose to do that to me, I’m almost done with school. I’ll move to New York with or without Rushmore’s help, and nobody will know or care about my private life.
26
Rushmore
“You look different,” Hunter says as I approach her from the stairs leading down to the pool.
“I need to talk to you,” I say. “Will you come inside with me?”
Hunter, looking angelic in a flowing wintergreen formal dress and a white shoulder wrap, pops her eyes at me. “Wow. That’s the first time you’ve summoned me so politely. Yes.”
Hunter takes my hand, and the thing I’ve been missing since I brought her home from New York feels restored. We’ve only been apart for a few days, but it feels like years. Now it feels like it should have felt from the beginning, before I fucked it all up.
I guide her upstairs to my room, where we sit on the end of the bed.
“I need to tell you everything that I didn’t want to talk about before,” I say.
