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The look on John’s face when he spots us—I could recognize that with my eyes closed. It’s the look of a man who thinks he’s already won whatever game he’s playing.
“However much you don’t wanna do this,” I murmur to the sulking boy at my side as we approach his father’s table, “I promise I don’t wanna do it more.”
My son grunts.
“August, please. Can you just pretend not to hate me right now?”
Another grunt, but at least I get a, “Fine,” this time too.
Good enough, I guess.
“Finally.” John stands and hugs his nonreciprocal child before making a grab for me, a too-heavy-handed grip on my waist and a too-close-to-my-mouth kiss on the cheek. He scans the length of me, lingering too long on my bare legs. As much as I would’ve preferred to show up in a freaking snowsuit covering every inch of me, the warm spring weather and the slight problem of despising anything touching my skin right now foiled that dream. I figured covering my bump, fleshy kindle for argument that it is, was priority number one, and that shorts and a baggy t-shirt would be just fine.
I should’ve known better.
“What?” John drawls, brows high. “You only get dressed up for the cameras now?”
With a tight-lipped smile, I shrug.
Disappointment flashes across his face, and I revel in it. Somewhere between agreeing to this nightmare and now, I decided I wasn’t gonna indulge his sick penchant for getting a rise out of me. I’m not gonna fight fire with fire, quip with quip, petty with petty. I’m not gonna fight with him, period, because fighting will only prolong our time together, and that’s the last thing I want. So, I bite my tongue, I take the thinly-veiled insult, and I hope the next hour goes quickly.
“I ordered already,” John states the obvious as we take our seats. “Thought we could do breakfast for dinner.”
Praying August got the Do Not Provoke memo is futile. He takes one look at a stack of greasy bacon and turns up his nose. “I don’t eat meat.”
“You can order something else. The waffles are good.” I would know; I ate my weight in them when Cass brought us here a couple of week’s ago—an outing I’m praying August doesn’t mention.
“You don’t eat meat?” John asks, way too incredulous. “You’re from Texas.”
Which means he came out of the womb with a raging hunger for raw meat, of course.
Shaking his head like August just dropped an earth shattering bomb, John nudges the one food my astoundingly un-picky kid refuses to eat closer to him. “Why don’t you just try some? You’ll like it.”
“I don’t want it.”
“But—”
“John.” I plaster on my best placating smile. “It’s just bacon.”
It’s not. We both know it’s not. That it’s far pettier than that, another example of August being too soft, too sentimental. Another instance of John being embarrassed he doesn’t know anything about his son, and taking it out on him.
“When you come visit,” he says with a purposeful glance in my direction, “we’ll go to a steakhouse. That’ll change your mind.”
Out of my peripheral, I see August’s head whip my way, eyes narrowed and accusing. It takes everything in me not to gather my boy in my arms, reassure him that won’t be happening, whisk him far, far away from the weird man obsessed with meat. Instead, all I can do is set a hand on his shoulder, the knot in my chest loosening ever so slightly when he doesn’t shrug me off. “Maybe.”
I thank God for small miracles when John takes my vague, insincere appeasement as agreement. He nods briskly, making a satisfied noise before digging into his meal, leaving me and my son to breathe synchronous sighs of relief.
The reprieve is fleeting. August forsakes his waffles in favor of dry toast, I choke down a stomach-churning, peacekeeping forkful of eggs, but John barely makes it through a cup of coffee before picking up the precarious conversation.
“How’s baseball?” he asks between obnoxious bites of sausage. “Still forgetting your gear?”
August tenses beneath my fingertips, leaning into the comfort I offer. “His team won their last two tournaments.”
“And the ones before that?” John chuckles as he drains the rest of his coffee, the noise dying off when he realizes neither August or I join him. Sighing, his cutlery falls to the table with a clank. “Jesus, guys. I’m joking.”
“Jokes are supposed to be funny.”
John kisses his teeth. “He gets that from you, Sunday. The attitude.”
