Holley’s eyes bug out as she looks back at me, but I ignore it and head for Chloe. She has her head down, looking at her phone, but as soon as she spots us, she sets it on the table and forgets it.
I lean down to give her a kiss on the cheek while Holley slides into the seat across from her.
“Hi, Daddy,” Chloe greets sweetly, scooting over to make room for me.
I smile in response and take my seat next to my daughter, stretching an arm across the booth behind her.
“So, Chlo, how was your wild day of shopping?”
Instantly, her shoulders sag, and a heavy sigh doubles the air around us.
“That bad?” I ask, and she offers a lazy shrug of her shoulders.
“I mean, for the most part, it was good. I even managed to get Sarah a few things she really wanted.” She rests her elbows on the table and blows out a breath. “But you know how Miss Bethanny can be.”
I definitely know how Garrett’s she-witch of a wife can be. As a responsible adult, however, I don’t put a voice to any of the nasty comments that come to mind.
“Anyway, she was really hard on her,” Chloe explains. “Hayden is easy, you know? He doesn’t care what he wears, so he’s kind of like her little puppet. But that just makes it worse on Sarah when she wants to have an opinion of her own.”
Holley looks on as we talk, her eyebrows squished together as she tries to crack the code on our conversation.
I smile and clarify a little for her benefit. “My good friend Garrett is a San Diego firefighter, so his schedule is pretty wacky. Lots of twenty-four-hour shifts and sometimes longer stints when we’re having wildfires like we are now.”
“Oh, okay,” she responds, but I know for a fact that I’ve just confused her even more.
My smile deepens as I continue. “He’s married to Bethanny, and they have eleven-year-old twins, Sarah and Hayden.”
Light starts to dawn, and Holley nods in actual understanding.
“Anyway, Bethanny is…” I pause, trying to come up with an appropriate word, and Chloe fills in the gap.
“Satan’s mistress.”
“Chlo.” I try not to laugh as I shake my daughter’s shoulder in warning.
“What?” she questions. “She is. She’s really rotten to Sarah mostly, but she’s not exactly great to Hayden and Uncle Garrett either. Still, she’s an adult, so I won’t say anything else.”
Chloe flashes a knowing look in my direction, and I relent a little, elucidating, “Bethanny is, well, very…self-centered. Garrett and the kids are not.” I shrug. “But he’s tried really hard to make it work for a whole number of reasons.”
“He’s tried to make it work because no doubt her tantrums will be worse if he divorces her,” Chloe expands.
I shake my head, but not in denial. She’s right. I imagine that’s exactly why Garrett has put up with Bethanny for so long. Hell, it’s bad now—nearly intolerable, to be honest—and if he would divorce her, he’d still have to deal with all of her ungrateful bullshit, but undoubtedly worse.
For me, though, I wouldn’t even be able to stand putting my dick inside her at this point. I don’t know how he does it.
“Anyway, enough about her,” Chloe says, punctuating the last word with certified teenage attitude, and I shake her shoulder again. She ignores me. “I went shopping with them today for back-to-school stuff. Sarah has the best style. Seriously, she is chic in girl form. I can’t even explain how snatched she is.”
“How what?” I ask, just as Holley bursts into a half laugh, half cough, spewing some of her water onto the table.
“Snatched,” Chloe repeats, and full-blown hilarity fills my lungs and blocks any ability to form words.
Thankfully, Holley gathers herself enough and asks for the both of us. “Snatched? What does that mean exactly?”
“Like, fashionable,” Chloe responds, glancing between Holley and me like we’ve grown three heads. “Stylish? On-trend?”
“Ohh,” Holley hums, widening her eyes at me comically, and I return the gesture.
“In my day, that is not what the word snatch meant,” I mutter.
Chloe shakes her head, correcting, “It’s snatched…with the e-d. It’s not snatch, Dad. Geez.”
“Dance Hall Days” by Wang Chung starts to play, and I don’t hesitate.
I reach over and grab Chloe’s hand to slide her out of the booth. She comes willingly, laughing and already bobbing her head back and forth to the music. We’ve danced to this song since she was a little girl, and I imagine, one day, we’ll dance to it at her wedding.
She swings wide to the side, shaking her head at Holley, and then crooking a finger at her.
Holley refuses—a routine occurrence, I’m starting to notice—but just like me, Chloe isn’t good at taking no for an answer. She grabs Holley by the hand and pulls her out of the booth and shoves her toward me. I catch her on a spin, swinging her around the floor and then tucking her in as we shuffle from one side to another.