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I nodded. “You’ve got a deal. Just let me eat first. I’m starving.”
I stepped inside the restaurant and to the side so he could join me. Calling Oscar’s a restaurant was a bit of a stretch—it was more of a burger bar than anything, and it was a bit of an Americanised version of it, too. It reminded me a lot of one I’d been to when I’d gone to New York with Amber to celebrate our twenty-first birthdays.
But the food was good, and I was hungry, so I didn’t care what it was. I just cared that it served food.
We placed our order on one of the order machines, grabbed a placard with a number, and went in search of an empty table. We found a small table that was high enough to need stool-height seats instead of chairs and snaffled it before anyone else could.
It wasn’t crazily busy, but I was happy there was enough background noise that it wouldn’t feel like we were about to break any kind of uncomfortable silence.
“Right,” William said, hanging his coat over the back of his chair. “I’d love to catch up, but it’s been driving me bonkers that Tuesday was so bad you needed to talk about it in person, so can we do the small talk in a bit?”
I fought back a smile. “Yes. I don’t even know where to start with it really. Granny kind of sprung it on me, and the day ended with my dad promising me a weekend with just him this weekend, so it’s a bit of a whirlwind.”
“Absolutely none of that makes sense, so it must have been crazy.”
“Remember when I told you that I avoided… well, people like us? Because my dad cheated on my mum and got the boy he so desperately wanted?”
He raised one eyebrow. “Yes.”
“Turns out, I had it wrong.”
“He didn’t cheat on your mum?”
I frowned. “Yes and no.”
“You’re going to have to just word vomit this out, Grace, because I’m extremely confused right now.”
So I did.
I word vomited it all out.
Told him everything Granny had said, then followed it up by relaying the conversation I’d had with my father. At some point during my spiel, our food was brought out, and I just kept talking between bites until I’d unloaded it all off my shoulders.
William spoke only to clarify a point here and there, but he otherwise let me get it all out. Even when I finally stopped talking and sighed, he waited for a second before speaking.
“That’s a lot,” he said. “No wonder you had a shit day.”
I pressed my lips together. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to unload on you like that.”
“If I didn’t want you to unload, I wouldn’t have asked, would I?” His lips pulled to one side. “Does that change how you feel about a lot of things?”
I shook my head. “I was scared it would make me feel differently about Mum, but it doesn’t. It would be just like her to give up her own happiness so someone else could find theirs. In this case, it was my dad. I’m angry nobody told me the truth and I’ve held onto these feelings about Dad for so long when they were misplaced.”
“What about the whole boy thing?”
“What, the outdated and fucked up patriarchal society of the aristocracy?”
“Sounds like your new thesis topic.”
I laughed, dropping my head back for a moment. “No, I’m in too deep to change it, but it’ll slip into the whole relevancy part of it.”
“A good place to put it.”
“I wouldn’t say it changes how I feel about it. Ultimately, I had issues with my dad because I thought he’d left us for his new family with his beloved boy to inherit everything, and those feelings are just kind of elsewhere now. The point still stands, and it just reinforces my feelings about it in general, because it’s still problematic.”
“Nice light conversations for a first date,” William quipped.
I smiled. “It doesn’t change how I feel about it, and annoyingly, none of that changes how I feel aboutyou, either, so I’m kind of at an impasse.”
