“Adele, come eat a burger,” Fox said behind me. His voice was strained as he tried to act natural. Adele took her helmet off and shrugged, her lips were stained red with popsicle dye and her green eyes were bright and curious.
“Thanks for the ride,” she said sweetly to Cal.
“Anytime you want, kid,” Calvin told her.
“Adele, I made you a burger just how you like it and Norman’s dog is going to eat it if you don’t get your butt up there right now,” Fox said.
Adele gave us all a look that said, adults are weird, and took off up the incline instead of using the stairs. Fox retreated after her and I was left alone staring at Calvin, his eyes so much like Adele’s, but his were tired and his handsome face was mangled from a fight.
It’d been ten fucking years and he still made me feel love sick and I hated myself for it.
“Stay the fuck away from her. You have no right,” I told him, pointing an accusatory finger at him.
“Is she Fox’s kid?” he asked me.
“How dare you, Calvin.”
“It’s been a long time, El.”
“It sure has. Ten years of raising her alone. Ten years of trying to deal with a completely fractured family. Ten years of you turning us away.”
“I had no idea.”
“You wouldn’t even let me get close enough to tell you. I wrote you in letters. I sent you pictures. I had her alone in the hospital, Calvin. No husband, no partner, no boyfriend. It was humiliating.” I surprised even myself with how quickly I could become hysterical.
Calvin got off of his bike. He approached me slowly.
“Are you married?” he asked me.
“Pardon,” I said, not sure of who he even was anymore or why he thought he could come here and ask any damn thing he wanted.
“Who’s Adele’s father?”
“Who the fuck do you think you are? I haven’t seen you in ten years and you think you can just come back here and ask me personal questions that aren’t any of your damn business. Let me tell you something Calvin Montgomery, you’re the one that walked out of my life. I wasn’t the one that cut you off.”
“I was in fucking jail,” Calvin screamed. A few of the people at the party looked our way but then turned back around. Most of them were probably used to the Montgomery’s and knew the family had a propensity to be loud.
“I had Adele on my own. Her dad isn’t in the picture; he doesn't even know about her.”
“Why would you keep a man from his own child. What’s happened to you Ellie? The girl I knew would never do that,”
I felt my blood boil. I hated him so much at that moment.
“I’m not the girl you left behind anymore, Cal. I’m a grown woman with responsibilities. I’m perfectly capable of making my own decisions, because I’ve had to take care of Adele and myself for the last decade.”
After everything he’d done, he actually thought he could just talk to me like that—treat me like I was at fault for not telling him when he’d abandoned us. Well, he had another thing coming. “I tried telling you about her, but you rejected all my visits and returned all my letters unopened. So, I gave up on you, Calvin. Just like you wanted me to”
Calvin dropped Monty’s helmet to the ground. His head was in his hands and he looked defeated. In all the years I had known Calvin, with everything he’d gone through, I’d never seen him as vulnerable as he was in that moment. Calvin scrubbed his hands through his hair, maybe out of frustration, or regret, I wasn’t sure.
“She’s mine,” he finally whispered so low that I was barely able to hear him.
“Yeah, she is.”
“Why the fuck didn’t you tell me?”
“Did you hear me? How many times did you refuse to see me that first year, ten, twenty times? I tried, I tried more than anyone else should, but I wanted you to know your daughter and I wanted her to know you, too. But I wasn’t going to keep begging you, Cal. I was done begging for you to care about me. So I finally woke up and moved on. Now you’re back and you act like I own you something? I don’t owe you a goddamned thing.”
“Hey, hey let’s stop the yelling out here,” Fox said as he came over the incline. He walked down beside us and put his arm around me.
“Let’s take this inside, okay? Not in front of Adele and the whole neighborhood.”
“Get your hands off her,” Calvin growled at his brother.
“Calvin, shut the fuck up and get inside. Ellie is a sister to me, nothing more. You should have checked your over inflated macho man act at the prison door.”