“If you two are done staring at each other, I’m going upstairs to grab a jacket so we can get going, Lenny,” Peter said in the same grown-up voice I heard him use most often with the guys at the gym.
He was still tense after the encounter with Rafaela.
I poked at my small bowl of nice cream—blended frozen bananas, maple syrup, vanilla extract, and cocoa powder—and kept on staring at the older man who hadn’t said a word since I had gotten home over an hour ago.
I knew what he was doing. Like he knew what I was doing. And Peter, of course, was well aware of what we were both doing.
Being assholes.
Because neither one of us thought we were wrong.
Except in this case, I wasn’t being stubborn, and Grandpa Gus really had been wrong for what he’d done earlier.
Peter just sighed when neither one of us responded, sneaking through the swinging door with a shake of his head.
Mo, who was sitting in her high chair, did her own thing as she shoved tiny handfuls of mushy cereal into her mouth… and over her cheeks… and the rolls of her neck… and all over the front of her shirt. She’d already eaten more than enough and still needed another bottle before going to bed. She could have fun. I was too busy not breaking eye contact with my seventy-five-year-old grandfather to watch her finish painting her food masterpiece. I wasn’t going to look away first, not this time.
This really was on him, and he knew it.
It was him who finally broke the silence that Peter left us in. And the way he broke the silence was the exact way I would have expected. “Surprise?” he offered, even throwing a hand, palm up, at his side.
I glared at him.
He sighed all exaggerated and had the nerve to roll his eyes, like he hadn’t gotten on my case when I’d been a teenager the three times I had done the same to him. “Fine, but you could have handled it better.”
I flipped the spoon upside down in my mouth and left it there as I raised an eyebrow at him. “Yeah? You think so?”
The truth was… he was right. I could have handled it better. The entire thing, I could have handled better.
If I’d been a totally different person.
The expression Grandpa Gus gave me in return in that moment said he knew I was right. But he could have handled it better too. I hadn’t told him to choke after I’d called the woman I’d met Grandma.
Grandma had stood there afterward, her eyes slowly narrowing, either at me calling her that or at the fact I was laughing. Probably both though. “Is there something funny that I’m missing?” she had asked in a tone that was bordering on chilly, as Grandpa tried to hide his choke by clearing his throat.
“Oh, no,” I had responded to her, feeling my body shake as I kept on laughing, somewhere in between this-is-fucking-hilarious and this-is-fucking-bullshit.
She had narrowed her eyes even more, and for one tiny moment, I wondered if maybe that’s why I had thought she looked familiar. Because we looked alike. I guessed. A little. If you closed an eye and imagined me with better fashion sense and a slimmer bone structure.
I had slipped my hand out of hers, shook my head as I blinked back tears that had popped up out of nowhere, and then taken a step back. “It was nice to meet you. This is your great-granddaughter, Mo, and her dad.” I had dipped my head toward the muscular bicep by my cheek on my left. “I will try my best to pencil you in for another visit thirty years from now if that works for you.” I had turned to the other direction then. “Grandpa, Pete, I’m going to get some lunch, and I’ll be back later.” I pivoted on my heel, flashed the Still an Asshole the biggest smile I might have ever given him because come the fuck on, this situation? Stupid. “Are you ready to go eat?”
His eyes had been wide in surprise, but he answered anyway. “Yes.”
And we had left. The entire thing had taken… what? Two minutes? Less? It wasn’t like I had given her a chance to talk. Mostly because I didn’t think there was anything she could have said to make me stay.
The grandmother I had never known had finally and randomly shown up, and I couldn’t have given a single fuck. Was that harsh? Maybe. But it was harsher, I thought, to not exist for thirty years and then finally make an appearance without a warning—except I guess that had been her who had left a message that morning, but that didn’t count for shit—and in the process stress out two of the people I loved the most in the entire world. Two people who had clearly not wanted me to meet her. For a reason.
So, yeah, could I have handled it better? Sure. If I were my best friend, I would have been gracious and understanding. But I wasn’t Luna.
I had no interest in this woman I had never met before. A woman who Grandpa Gus had maybe mentioned three times in my entire life. The things I knew about her could be counted on one hand.
She and Grandpa had been married for exactly six years before she filed for divorce. But I shouldn’t have married her in the first place, he had told me in his way so that I wouldn’t hate her, I guessed now.
After being separated, she moved to San Francisco and had been living there as far as I knew.
She had remarried some real estate guy or something and had three children with him.
I hadn’t even known her name until today. Grandpa Gus had always just been… Grandpa Gus. This other lady who had given birth to Grandpa Gus’s one and only son had left them together. Eventually, when my dad would have been twenty-five, I had been born, and the rest was the story of Lenny and Grandpa Gus. The greatest story of all time.
He had always been such a big figure in my life, this all-consuming force that was my friend, my brother, my cousin, my dad, grandfather, and very sun. He had been all I had ever needed. And then Peter had showed up, and even more than before, I hadn’t wanted for anything. There had never been a void in my life, and if my mind had sometimes wandered over to thinking about people who hadn’t been around, it had solely been my biological mom and my biological dad.
A grandma? Never.
“What was she doing here?” I asked.
His features lost some of their sourness, but I didn’t exactly like what replaced them. “She wanted some advice about a chain of gyms her husband is considering buying.”
Gyms? Oh.
“She showed up, asked Bianca to give me a call—”
“And she called you?”
“Only after Rafi said she was my ex-wife,” he defended the sweet receptionist that I did like, but I wouldn’t have liked her any longer if she’d called Grandpa G for no reason like that. It should have been me she called under any other circumstance.
“And then?”
“I got to Maio House and she was asking me about the chain when you showed up,” he stated, crossing his arms over his chest. Watching me too carefully, like he was expecting me to do something.
Something that wasn’t hurt snuck under my ribs, but that was as far as I let it go as I asked, “Is this the first time she’d reached out to you?”
He shot me a look like what do you think, eyes steady and solemn. “The last time I spoke to her was before you were born. I never told her if you were a girl or a boy or what your name was. All I said was that Marcus’s girlfriend was having his child.”
Grandpa Gus didn’t actually say the words he was hinting at, but he didn’t have to. I knew him well enough to understand what he was implying.