Wow. Emotional maturity really was just the worst. She had to fill the silence. She couldn’t sit in that anymore.
“Are we stopping in Tahoe?” she asked.
“Yes,” he said.
“Cool. I haven’t been there for a while. You’re taking me to a casino, right?”
“No. You’ll have to make those kinds of bad decisions on your own.”
“You seem to be leaving me to make all the bad decisions on my own. It’s not really fair. You were advertised as being kind of a good time. Turns out that was a lie.”
“Right.”
“Right. Okay, so you’re just going to talk to me in as few words as possible then?”
He was being a dick, because he was mad at her. But she recognized the truth to that. It was adjacent to parental guilt. It didn’t have to make sense. You could even know that it wasn’t true, but it didn’t just take it away. She couldn’t imagine how often he must’ve felt not just lost in his own grief, but what his daughter was missing. By not having her mother.
Constantly not feeling enough, because he was only one person.
“Do you need more words?”
“How was your visit with Chloe?” she asked. “Didn’t you drive down to Santa Clara for a minute?”
“Yes. It was good. She was busy, but the time I got with her was…worth it.”
“I really meant what I said about you and Chloe. I have always admired the way that you were with her. I have always thought that you were an amazing father. My issues with you were about me.”
“Yeah. Well, thank you.”
“It’s just true. I’m sorry that you have to deal with that. I’m sorry that it haunts you like that.”
“How long?” He didn’t look at her when he asked the question.
“How long what?”
“You said you had difficult feelings about me. How long did you have them?”
She felt stunned by the question. Like she was being pinned to the passenger seat of the car. It was a difficult question, and one she wasn’t sure she wanted to answer.
“Come on. We’re in a pretty morally shaky situation as it is,” he said. “Why not dig in?”
She wondered if he was punishing her. Maybe he was. Maybe she deserved it. She hadn’t decided. She was mad at him, but that didn’t mean that she was entirely in the right. It might just mean that she was defensive.
“I don’t really know,” she said. She swallowed hard. “I… I want to say the time we nearly kissed. But I think that’s a lie. Sometimes I wonder if it’s just been there. The whole time. But I didn’t look at it because I couldn’t. When my defenses were down, I couldn’t not be drawn to you. I didn’t sit there and envy your wife. Not consciously. But I noticed the way that you were with her. Maybe thought about it more than I did with anyone else.”
“Good.”
That anger was like acid now, eating away at her.Good.That was all she got. His satisfaction over her admitting something that difficult. That she been kind of in lust with him for a long time. But she hadn’t done anything. She would never have done something to compromise his marriage, or hers. She had proven that. So he didn’t really win anything.
“You’re mad at me,” he said.
“I don’t understand why you want to embarrass me.”
“I don’t want to embarrass you. I just want you to be honest.”
“You be honest, then. How long have you wanted me?”
“I wanted you in high school. I couldn’t have you. Because he always had you. When I found out you were having his baby, I was sick to my stomach. Does that make you happy?”
