steps?”
I thought we were going to talk about him. How did we get down in this Dumpster so quick? It was one of the few situations where I followed my mom’s advice. “Avoid revealing the details,” she always said, “until they’re hopelessly in love and less likely to bolt.”
But it was getting embarrassing avoiding his questions. I opted for a quick, emotionless inventory. Be honest, be light, get it over with. “Yeah, I’ve got a few. Let’s see—one current stepfather, one current stepmother, four ex-stepmothers who each had a kid, so three ex-stepsisters and one exstepbrother, three ex-stepfathers, so add one more exstepbrother, one half sister—no make that one real sister who had a different dad—and one real brother who has a really different dad. Is that right? No, sorry. Only three step-fathers, total. She didn’t marry Asia’s dad.”
I’d caught him midbite. He didn’t react or say anything, just sat there slowly chewing the little cocoa-dipped toes, watching me. His eyes scanned mine, then my mouth, my forehead, down again to my mouth. He swallowed, took a sip of coffee, swallowed that, eyes studying me the whole time.
What? That was supposed to be light. What would he have done if I’d gone into some of the nauseating details? Bolt?
I’d sure been wrong about one thing: Silence was back, filling the space. Boats floated by, people at the other tables talked and laughed and no one at this table made a sound.
Then a picture of Dr. Matt Sears, erstwhile wedding date, popped into my head. I saw him like one of those white mannequins in the window of some posh store, wearing nice shoes.
“Hi,” a voice said before he appeared. “I thought I’d find you here.” And his Cole Haan loafers stepped into our silent little world under the gas lamp.
“Hey, Matt,” I said, looking up at him and smiling, and willed myself physically out of the equation. Whatever happened next, I wasn’t going to be one of the parameters.
Matt put out his you-could-have-been-a-surgeon hand and said, “Hi. Matt Sears. And you must be the White Knight.”
Brad beamed his smile in Matt’s direction, stood and introduced himself. We were all just so happy to be there.
I was left looking at trouser flies. We don’t like to do that nearly as much as guys think. Eyes, I liked gazing at eyes. I moved over on my bench to make room for Prudence. “All right,” I said. “Everybody sit. I’m getting a crick in my neck.”
Brad said, “Yes, ma’am,” and sat.
Matt watched Brad sit and then looked back at me, amused. “No, thanks, Dyl. I was just dropping this by your house. Your Jeep was there and you weren’t so I figured you’d be here.” He handed me a white napkin. “I’ll see you guys later. Nice meeting you, Brad.” Prudence was always nice. Super nice.
Brad raised that eyebrow of his. “Dill? Like pickle?” I shrugged, thinking about the napkin and what was inside.
We stared at each other a minute and then I unwrapped it. A champagne glass. I set it on the table between us.
“Oh,” I said. That was a loaded “oh,” meaning, “What in hell?”
“A souvenir,” Brad answered.
“Oh.” This time I meant “Souvenir of what? Me leaving with another guy?”
“Or,” Brad suggested, “it was an excuse to come see you tonight.”
No comment. I was visualizing Matt walking back to his car alone, head down, shoulders slumped. One of those sad country songs playing in the background. This was Austin, so the singer would be Willie Nelson. I didn’t exactly know any of the words to his songs, but probably he’d be singing something about hell is having a heart in this heartless old world.
“Who is Matt?”
“A friend.”
He looked at my eyes a minute. One at a time, back and forth. “And who is Asia?”
I laughed. Because it was good to not be talking about Prudence. I’d been holding the guilt off, but just barely, and my wrists were getting tired. “Asia is my sister. My beautiful, mysterious, little sister. Asia Cézanne McKay.”
“Man, I love these names. What’s your little brother’s name?” Jeez, he’d heard that part, too.
“Greyson. Greyson Carter McKay. We call him Grey.” His lips worked their way over to the right into his sexy, crooked grin. The one that showed all of his pretty white teeth. I may have mentioned it…
“Their last names are both McKay? I thought you said they had different dads.”
“Yeah, that’s right, but remember? We were talking about you and your family.”
“We were?”
We weren’t but I nodded my head.
“I got a mom who didn’t remarry, a dad who did, a stepmother a couple years younger than me and a real sister, Emily.”
I tried to keep my face impassive, the whole time thinking, Whoa! Younger than you? Out loud I asked, “What’s that like?” Seemed like the Magnet Man and I had some family tree mutations in common.
“Oh, you know, strange at first. But she’s a good mom to Emily and a nice tasty treat for the old man. She and I get along okay. Not too friendly, though.” He chuckled to himself, popping his eyebrows up and down. “She’s pretty hot.”
Trophy wife. Arm candy. I named her Candy Love. Man, oh, man. You just knew Candy Love was a card-carrying Diamond Girl.
“Big diamond?” I asked.
“Huge,” he answered, deadpan.
I knew it! Older = bigger. At least when it came to men and diamonds.
We sat at our little table, pleased with ourselves, as though we shared some secret or maybe an inside joke. I didn’t need my grandma’s antennae to read the vibes. He wasn’t into the whole carat thing. You could just tell. And I was grinning, letting him think we were on the same page. But I wasn’t really opposed to carats. In fact, getting some would be nice, before I was too old and wrinkly to wear them. I knew they didn’t measure love. But if love went with it, a little, itty-bitty carat—or three or five—would have been fine with me. I got squirmy then, knowing I was deceiving him by allowing him to think I was above it all. And then the air changed, the moment was gone.
Acting on some parallel cosmic impulse, we both reached for the champagne glass at the exact same time and knocked it on its side. It didn’t break. Of course not. If it could withstand Groom Daddy’s affections it could withstand anything. Brad reached for my hand with one of his and used his other one to hand me the glass. I took it but he didn’t let go and we became a completed electrical circuit. Switched on.
“You gonna keep it?” he asked, lightly rubbing my palm with his thumb, increasing the voltage.
I barely nodded.
“Good,” he whispered.
Another nod from me. What that thumb was
