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“Nope. She was actually okay. I was slightly shocked at first, and it usually takes a lot to shock me, but I got over it. She got over her frigid granny-ness, too, and then it was all good. I think we get where we’re coming from now.”
“Still, I’m sorry.”
“Oh, don’t worry. It would be nothing compared to the interrogation my dad would give you, which is why I have to pave the way.”
For quite obvious reasons, I’m no longer hungry, but I still make an effort. I can eat with the best of them, the best of them being my brothers, so I shovel pasta into my mouth and chew on autopilot. “Are you…are you going to be doing that soon, do you think?” I mumble. “I just want to know how much longer I have left to live.”
Ayana snorts. “The rest of your natural life. My dad might not like you or any other man, especially in relation to me, but he loves me, and I’ll make him understand.” She shovels pasta into her mouth, chewing and swallowing at a rate to match my own. Just another thing I very much like about her. She looks like she could outpace me on pasta night, which is quite something to marvel at.
“I’m not going to be able to stop worrying.”
“My dad isn’t a villain. I’ve said that before. He’s no hero, but that’s okay. There should be more shows and books written about people who aren’t perfect. Normal, everyday people who beat the odds and still aren’t heroes in the traditional sense but in every other way—all the ways that actually mean something to people. Those people are incredible.” Ayana is getting misty-eyed, and I know I need to do something because even though those would be happy tears, seeing her cry would gut me.
“Uh, yes. I would write and entitle it, The Dad Who Cuts Off Baby Daddy’s Balls. It would go like this: Once upon a time, there was a dad who looked like an ogre. He was very scary, and he loved his daughter more than anything in the world. The aforementioned daughter loved him too. They were the perfect team, but then the daughter grew up and had really mind-blowing sex with a tattooed stranger from a bar. Lovely hero dad went on a big rampage, and now the sexy stranger is known as Dickless Dicky Doodle Dumbass for daring to touch said daughter. He now has no junk. The end.”
Ayana has turned red, and for a second, I’m scared that I just offended her, but then she pounds the table and lets out the loudest peal of laughter I’ve heard in a long time. “Holy chicken nuggets from Nantucket. You’ve very talented. You should write kids’ books.”
“That story was kind of R-rated.”
“Oh, well then, you should be a novelist of the world’s shortest novels.”
“Maybe I could contemplate a career change. I doubt that I’ll be serving drinks for much longer.” It reminds me that serving drinks was only a charade. Granny and my brothers weren’t fully convinced that we should pull the plug on our mission, but it’s on a mega pause right now. However, I still have a cover to maintain. Granny was against telling Ayana the truth until we knew we could trust her, and my brothers voted alongside her.
I shovel a huge amount of pasta into my mouth so that my asshole deception doesn’t show on my face. Or at least so Ayana won’t notice it.
“Everything’s going to be fine, I promise. I’m going to talk to Dad tomorrow. We’re having lunch at his favorite spot. I’m bringing Chane and Mail along with me.”
“Their names are Chane and Mail?”
“No, it’s just one person. He’s a crazy good welder, and he’s always making body armor stuff for people and selling it online. He makes a fortune doing it too. We call it chainmail, but he hates that term for some reason, and there’s no way he would take it for his biker name, so he took Chane and Mail. As in not chainmail because it’s two words and not spelled the same. Anyway, he’s very level-headed. The fact that we’re in a public place will keep Dad from losing his shit, but having a backup doesn’t hurt.”
“That’s the strangest thing I’ve ever heard. The chainmail story.”
Ayana shrugs. “Yeah, well, what can I say?” She turns her head to the side and looks through the opening into the living room. “Hey! Is that a record player?”
I lean forward, and yup, I can see my turntable and the ancient speakers and receiver from here. It’s a grand setup, one thing I couldn’t part with. Granny has tried to convince me to leave it behind before, but that would be like giving up my own baby. Okayyy, bad choice of words here. But what does that say about me? Here I am, a thirty-one-year-old guy, and the only babies I was contemplating ever having were the record player, some other fantastic vintage items yet to be found, and possibly a puppy. What? I like puppies. Who doesn’t like puppies?
