"I was in the car while you were driving."
"You were in the car!" I didn't remember that part, but as I went through the memory again, she was right. She was sitting in the backseat with me when I asked John if I could drive. He had said yes as long as I didn't tell my father, and told me to get into the driver's seat.
"My mom was angry with him that day. They had a fight, and he ended up saying he had his foot on the peddle the entire time, even though I know that wasn't true."
Her father was fun to be around. As we sat down to play the game, I realized I never asked her about him. "How did he die? I know he was no longer working for my father when he passed away."
"Prostate cancer."
"Thalia." It was hard enough to lose one parent to cancer, let alone two. The toll that must take on a person. Thalia shook her head as though she was willing tears away. When she spoke, her voice was heavy with…sorrow?
"It's fine." It didn't seem like it."I've gotten over it."
I picked up the dice, not knowing what else to do with myself. "The loss of a parent is not something one gets over."
"Oh right. Your mom."
I nodded and gave her the dice. "You first." She took them, shook them, and threw them in the middle of the board.
"You've never spoken about her," she said as she picked her car token and moved it on the board.
"She died when I was young. My father likes to tell me she was the love of his life, but evidence proves otherwise."
"How do you know? Maybe he is being truthful."
I took the dice from the board and shook them. "He cheated on Jacqueline with my mother. Married my mother. Cheated on her while she was pregnant. And when my mother died, he married the woman he cheated on my mother with." I couldn'ttake out the bitterness out my voice as much as I tried to. Sometimes, I hated my father.
"Seb and Ty's mom?"
I nodded. "Then divorced her and married Jaqueline again. If anything, his true love is Jaqueline. Those two deserve each other."
"You don't like her, do you?"
"My stepmom? Of course not. But who can blame her? My father has a knack of snaring people into his web and entrapping them.
Thalia sighed. "Don't I know it?"
I wondered what she was alluding to. My father had ensnared her too, I guess. He had promised her riches if she only marry me and in a way he had given her what she wanted. She was a rich woman now. I waited for the familiar bitterness to fill my mouth every time this thought came to mind, but the bitterness did not come. It was as though the betrayal didn't matter to me anymore. I was simply glad that she was with me like in the old days. When her father, or my father, or any of our parents didn't matter. When they were not a wedge between us.
"Remember when I'd come to my room to clean your room, and you'd be there the entire time? Your brother told me you messed with the maid's roaster deliberately." Her voice was casual. As though she was asking about the weather, meanwhile she was exposing me.
"I wouldn't listen to anything any of my brothers say. Who told you that?"
She chuckled. "Why would it matter who told me if I shouldn't listen to it? It's Nolan if must know."
"That weasel."
Her eyes brightened. "So it is true!"
I was about to refute it, but what was the point? Might as well come clean. "I was into hot girls, back then. And you were ahot girl working in our house part time. I did what any teenager would do." I said in as bland a tone I could master.
"I would never have guessed you liked me. Didn't you tell one of your friends not to date me because I had the clap?"
Fuck. I was a little shithead back in the day. I remember what she's referring to as though it happened yesterday. Chester, one of my buddies, had seen her around our place and was into her. He would track her with his eyes whenever she was in the room and it would make my blood boil. But because I was a little shithead who didn't want everyone to know how down bad I was for Thalia, I never just said she was off limits. I instead spread a nasty rumor about her.
"That's because I wanted you to myself," I said.
Thalia went silent. She paused shaking the dice, and simply stared at me.
