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CHAPTER 17
“What’s wrong with your food?” my dad asks, watching me hold the cheeseburger he’d grilled begin to fall apart in my hands, I’ve held it for so long. “Even Mia’s almost done with hers.”
“Yeah, sorry, Daddy. It’s fine, I’m just not very hungry. It’s this heartburn that’s flaring up,” I say, pulling out the little bottle of anti-acids I’ve started carrying around with me, and pop two of the chalky pale tablets into my mouth.
“I bet it’s an ulcer,” he diagnoses.
“Could be. And these watery eyes,” I say, annoyingly wiping my eyes and sniffling. “So sick of it!”
“Have you been to the doctor?”
“Nah, I just started taking an antihistamine yesterday, I hope that helps. But my stomach, I do need to schedule something because it doesn’t look like it’s going away.”
My father watches me for a minute, with concern on his face. “Why don’t you go somewhere for a little bit, get your mind off things?”
“I don’t really feel like going anywhere,” I tell my him. My dad had come to spend this lovely Sunday evening with us. He’d been wanting to see Mia, but Owen had taken her most of the day yesterday and had a daddy/daughter day, then this morning he came and made pancakes with her.
I’m not going to complain; it is so good for Mia to see him on an almost daily basis. As far as she’s concerned, and it will remain until everything is officially settled down, Owen is simply going away a lot for work. He and I do well while we are with her. At first it was a little strange, it was like two mutes walking around each other in circles. Now things are flowing a little better. I even helped make breakfast.
My dad knows everything now. He doesn’t like any of it, I can see that written all over his face any time we’ve talked about it. For one he doesn’t like that we had affairs. Two, he definitely doesn’t think we should separate. Well, I’ve told him I feel the same way, but I don’t know if he believes me. Maybe he thinks I am going down the same road my mom did. Who knows.
“What about the grocery store? You need milk.”
I frown. “I just got milk yesterday.”
“Well, you have less than half a gallon.”
“Oh.” I guess that would make sense, with the pancake making and all.
“Go on. Give an Abuelito some time with his baby.”
Setting my burger down on the paper plate, I get up from our patio table, nodding in agreement. “Maybe you’re right, I could use some time to clear my head.”
“Can I come with you?” Mia asks.
“You are staying with Abuelito and helping me pick out a good movie for us to watch,” he tells her and she claps.
“All right, Daddy, you’ll be okay with her?”
“Yup. Go. But do me a favor and shower and brush your teeth at least before you go.”
I playfully scrunch my nose at him, then kiss him on the head and Mia on the cheek, leaving them chatting animatedly about school.
Showering the grime off me, and brushing my teeth for the first time today already begins to lift my spirits some. Feeling a thousand times fresher, I leave the house with no real destination in mind.
It is a lovely day, the sky is a deep blue overhead, fading to a lighter shade in the distance. It’s just the right amount of warm, where I could wear shorts with sneakers, and a short sleeve.
The drive is quiet, no one in the backseat, no press for time. Sometimes I feel like I’m always in a rush, always somewhere to be. My mind has no time to process anything that’s happened to me, or even just shut down for a while and process nothing at all.
That’s what I decide to do now. Shut it down. Not in the sense that I’ll fall asleep at the wheel, but in the sense that I don’t want to think about Owen, or our situation. There’s nothing I can do about it anyway, being that the ball is in his court.
For about an hour I drive around aimlessly. I am paying attention to where I’m going, obviously. Stopping at red lights and stop signs, yielding. But at some point, I go into auto pilot, driving without paying attention to the names of streets or landmarks.
So, it was quite a surprise to me when the car stops and I look around to find I’m parked in front of a familiar house. I blink in confusion of where I ended up. How did I get here?
Maybe it was that I wandered for so long that the odds that I would end up in Huntersville were that great. Or maybe it was that at some point, the needs of the body overrule the rational mind, and it doesn’t give a shit about good judgement. All it knows is that primal instinct to mate with someone who is so positively matched, nothing else matters.
Yes, we will say that’s what happened, because all my rational mind knows is that one minute I am walking out of my house, and the next the tires of my Civic are crunching over the gravel drive of his house.
