Not a cocky, Yeah, I am.
Not a, Thanks, baby, which would still say in a less arrogant way that he knew he was.
But, Glad you think so.
Something was really not right about that.
I couldn’t roll it around in my head, since he’d rounded the car and was nonverbally sharing he wasn’t a fan that I exited the vehicle on my own steam. He did this by doing a mini-scowl at the closed door and then at me.
I burst out laughing.
“What’s funny?” he asked after he’d grabbed my hand and again started guiding me someplace, this time to Juno’s school.
“You,” I told him. “You’re like a throwback to the forties.”
“What?”
“Guys don’t open women’s car doors anymore, Aug.”
He stopped us both and looked down at me.
“Does it offend you?”
“No. It’s sweet.”
“Then why do you find it funny?”
I suddenly didn’t.
“Did I offend you?” I asked cautiously.
“No.”
Uhhhh…
“Okay, here we are,” he stated, words that were clearly preamble to a proclamation.
Oh man.
“I open doors for women,” he continued. “To cars. To buildings. If you don’t want me to, I won’t. But my dad taught me to do that. In whatever fucked-up neural pathway in his head that led him to this opinion, one of the few on which we agree, he said it was respect, to treat a woman like that. And a man should always do that. Even if, on another pathway, he’d find it in himself to think it was okay to fuck around on my mom and do other shit to screw with her and play games with their marriage and their lives.”
I stood staring at him, feeling each word like a puncture wound to the heart.
Because his dad did this to his mom.
At the same time he did it to Auggie.
“So I open doors,” he continued. “Not only because my father taught me to, but probably because my mom on more than one occasion told me, if he wasn’t a ‘gentleman,’ she would have left him for good a long time ago.”
I gave him the truth.
“It was very sweet, Auggie, and I loved that you did it for me. And I’d love it if you’d continue. I wasn’t laughing at you in a bad way. I was laughing because…well, I don’t know why. Maybe because I liked it but it’s old-fashioned and you’re not old-fashioned.”
“My father is. Because in his time, a man could treat a woman like dirt, but God forbid he didn’t help her into a car.”
I was suddenly thinking we could catch up on the school Thanksgiving show sitch.
For now, we had more important things to do.
“Maybe we should—”
“No,” he stated implacably before I could make my suggestion. “We’re doing this for Juno.”
Okay, I loved that he was all in to make sure he didn’t let Juno down.
However…
“I know I just laid a ton on you,” he said. “We can finish it later. Now, we’re doing this for Juno.”
He was right, of course.
He’d laid a ton on me.
But now we needed to do this for Juno.
I nodded.
He held my hand as we walked into the school.
And he didn’t let it go when we hit the assembly room and both of us immediately saw that our night was about to go further awry.
Because Corbin was there.
And to my knowledge, he wasn’t supposed to be.
Indeed, Corbin never did this kind of thing. Corbin was too busy making money to do this kind of thing. You couldn’t build proper elementary school show sets with a mobile phone glued to your ear while you made a deal.
Thus, Juno had quit asking him, and unofficially, this kind of thing was what I’d get roped into doing.
I could not claim master craftsperson with a hammer.
But I could take direction.
And I always wanted Juno to know I gave a shit about something she gave a shit about.
That said, considering the fact this show preparation was going to happen at night and last a couple of weeks, I wouldn’t have volunteered for it primarily because I worked nights, and right then, I was only there to hang with Auggie and make sure he was cool with what was going to be expected.
“Fantastic,” Auggie muttered, attention on Corbin.
He could say that again.
“Momma!” Juno shouted when she caught sight of me.
She ran from where she was standing with her dad, hurtling our way.
She hit me with a hug.
I hugged her back.
She arched away and whispered loudly, “Come here.”
I bent to her.
“I don’t know how he found out!” It was still a whisper, softer than her first, but even so, it had an exclamation point.
So there it was.
Corbin was pulling some Corbin crap.
“It’s okay, honey,” I whispered back.
“It’s gonna be weird because you’re with Auggie,” she said.
“It’s gonna be fine,” I lied.
“Hero.”
“Patrick.”
The men were greeting each other.
Tersely.
I gave my daughter a reassuring squeeze before I straightened and Juno cried, “Auggie!” and threw herself at him.