Dex turned to me and whispered, “Older men even back then, huh?”
I rolled my eyes. My father continued, “Of course, Tommy was more interested in girls his own age than seven-year-olds, but that didn’t stop my little princess from crushing on him. A few times we found some of Tommy’s things at our house, and Bianca would just play it off as she must have brought it home by accident. There was a pair of his gloves, some aftershave once, a baseball hat. It wasn’t until Bianca’s mother cleaned her room one day that we caught on that she was starry-eyed for the boy.”
“What did she find?” Dex asked.
I closed my eyes, knowing what was coming next. Lord knows my older sister tortured me about it for years.
“Bianca was apparently going into the bathroom after Tommy shaved and collecting all the little hair shavings from the sink. She had a baggy under her mattress with a year’s worth of stubble.” My father chuckled and took a swig from his beer. After that, Dex said he would stay for a bit. One beer turned into four, and by the time we were finished eating dinner, Dex had enough embarrassing stories about me to last a lifetime. I might have wanted to kill my father if I hadn’t found it oddly sweet how many crazy little things he remembered.
As I packed away the leftovers in the kitchen, I watched my father and Dex bonding in the living room together. The two were really enjoying each other’s company. Over the last two hours, they found out they had quite a few things in common, other than their mutual enjoyment of embarrassing Bianca stories. Both men liked to fish, something I couldn’t picture Dex doing so easily. And they were both into old Chevy cars. Looking at them sitting together and laughing in the living room, it warmed my heart.
“I should get going.” My father looked at his watch. “I have to stop at the pharmacy and pick up medicine before it closes,” Dad said.
“Medicine? Are you sick?”
Dad walked to me. “No, princess. Blood pressure is just a little high so they put me on some medicine. Pretty common at my age.”
“Okay.”
Bandit was scratching at the front door. “Why don’t I walk out with you. Looks like Bandit needs a walk,” Dex said.
“Let me grab a sweater, and I’ll go with you.”
I walked to my bedroom and went into the closet. Before I could pull a sweater from the pile on the top shelf, Dex was shutting the bedroom door behind him.
“Your dad’s a really nice guy.”
I wished I didn’t feel the need to constantly put him down. Why did a compliment to him always feel like it was an insult to my mother? “He can be at times, yes.”
Dex came up behind me as I was putting on the sweater and squeezed my shoulders. “I’d like to walk your father out alone, if you don’t mind.”
I turned around. “Oh. Okay. I guess?”
He kissed the top of my head. “Thank you. Perhaps you can just mention you just remembered a work call you needed to make or something?”
“Okay. But you’re coming back after you walk Bandit, right?”
Dex pulled his head back, the relaxed face he’d been wearing the last two hours was suddenly gone again. “Yes. We need to talk.”
Just like Dex had requested, I feigned an important work call and excused myself from taking the dog for a walk. After saying goodbye to my dad, the two men left together. The last thing Dex said was. “I’ll be back in ten minutes.”
I waited the ten minutes. But ten turned into twenty, and twenty turned into forty. Before I knew it, Dex had been gone more than an hour. Finally, feeling anxious, I sent him a text.Bianca: Are you coming back?“What’s on your mind, son?”
I’d been lost in my head the last ten minutes, not knowing how to start the conversation I wanted to have. I had asked Bianca’s dad to join me for Bandit’s walk, then was nearly silent the entire five-block walk to the park. “Sorry. There is something that’s bothering me.”
“Would you like to talk about it?”
“I don’t know where to begin.”
“How about at the beginning? I’m in no rush. The pharmacy can hold until the morning, if need be.”
I took a deep breath. “Okay.” There was a park bench to the left of the walkway we were on. I motioned to it. “Would you like to sit?”
“I’m fine. We can keep walking if you’d like.”
Not knowing any other way to break the news, I blurted out, “You know my father. My name is Dexter Truitt.”
Bianca’s father, Taso, stopped short in place. He looked me in the eyes. Finding I was dead serious, he said, “Maybe we should have a seat after all.”