“You know, King’s the poet in this family, but he got his enormous heart from you,” I told him. “Never known two men kinder or lovelier than you.”
“Don’t get spreadin’ that ’round; we got reputations to uphold,” he teased.
I rolled my eyes. “All anyone’s got to do is take one look at your behemoth self, and they’ll run terrified, don’t you worry. Anyway, I’m happy to keep the secret. It makes me feel even luckier to be one of the only souls who knows the truth.”
We looked at each other for a long minute, but the silence felt like velvet between us. This man had looked out for me since the moment his son took an interest. He’d been my fake boyfriend, my best friend, my mentor, and now, he would be my father-in-law. It was difficult to give words to the kind of relationship I had with him because we were a modern family of jumbled ages and roles to play, but when it came down to it, Zeus meant more to me than I could ever say.
I tried to convey that through my eyes as they glazed with tears, tried to write all those emotions in words on the screens of my irises so that he might read them and understand.
“Yeah,” he muttered, seeing them there, getting it as he seemed to have gotten me from the very start, even when I didn’t get me. “Yeah, Cress, I know it. I gotta love for you that’s pure as your good heart, and I gotta say, for my boy? No one less than you would fuckin’ do.”
A sob ripped like torn Velcro from the lining of my throat.
“Gonna mess your face up,” he warned me, but he was smiling because I was too.
“I can fix it. Honestly, I’m barely wearing any makeup because we all knew I’d cry.” I sucked in a deep breath like a drowning man given one last chance at life, trying to settle the chaos of emotions in my belly. “I just wanted to say one thing, and then I’ll go. Lou’s outside waiting for a minute to talk before we head home, but this, right now, is what I really wanted to say to you.”
I breathed deep through the crush of feelings threatening to cave in my throat, and when I could find my voice again, I said, “I thought about asking my parents to the wedding. It was…hard not to even though I hadn’t spoken to them in years. I even reached out, you know, just to see how they were and what they thought about me getting married again.” I laughed wetly. “They weren’t thrilled, to say the least. But it was good, in a way, because I got closure. I realized that even if I had them in my life, they would be a pale imitation of the real family I’ve found with The Fallen. It’s not my dad that I wish could walk me down the aisle to the man of my dreams that I’m going to spend the rest of my life with. It’s you.”
Zeus’s head dropped between his shoulders, his gaze trained on the linoleum counter as if it was infinitely interesting. But I heard the hiccough in his breathing, the wetness at the back of his throat as he tried to swallow his tears.
“I asked Hannah to make me this.” I moved my hair off my breasts to reveal the small badge I had sewn into the right top side of my dress. “God of Thunder,” I read. “So that even though you’ll be there in our hearts like you said, I can still bring carry a piece of you down the aisle with me just as I would if you were free to walk with me.”
His hand went up to prop up his head as he shook it, shoulders hunched as he let the emotion work through him. It was such a vulnerable moment for the great and terrible Zeus Garro, and I was humbled that my words meant so much to him.
When he looked up at me finally, his cheeks were dry, but his eyes were wet and red. His voice, when he spoke, was like wet gravel under tires. “Outside’a Lou and all her gifts to me, gotta say, this is the best present I’ve ever got.”
“Me too,” I agreed.
Then we smiled at each other again because we were hurt, yes, enraged even at the injustice of this day and the fact they wouldn’t grant him a pass to the wedding, but we had learned through all our trials and tribulations as a family that you took happiness when it came, and you clung hard and fast to it.
So, we smiled, and when I finally left, that was the sight of Zeus I took with me, beaming proudly like a father, warmly like a friend, and full-on loving me like only a Garro could do.