He laughed. “Yeah, that’s not my deal. That’s other guys’ deal.”
“So what is your deal?”
He shrugged. “I just get along with everybody.”
“Why is that?” she asked, realizing something important was here.
“I don’t know,” he said. “I just figure, if I get along with everybody, then I won’t have to worry about not getting along with anybody.”
She frowned at that. “Meaning?”
“Meaning nothing,” he said. “When’s dinner?”
She groaned. “Every time we get to a meaningful conversation, I feel like you avoid it.”
“It’s only meaningful to you,” he said with the same flippancy that she’d come to recognize whenever he got close to an issue.
“Does it bother you that you don’t have a father?”
“Only sometimes,” he said. “It’d be kind of cool if I did, but I don’t know what I would do with one after all this time. I mean, it’s not like he’s come looking for me.”
“I told you that he didn’t know about you,” she said, “so don’t go changing that story.”
“I know, but still, if you have a relationship with a girl, you come back and check on her, don’t you?”
“No,” she said in surprise, “most of the time not. You move on. You have another relationship, and old relationships just seem to fade away.”
“Is that what happened when you met this guy from today?”
She looked at him, shocked. “What do you mean?”
“Well, it’s obvious you two were close, and I’ve never met him before, so I don’t know where he came from or what type of relationship you had.”
“He was a really good friend in school,” she said.
He nodded and stared at her with that odd look in his eyes. “What are you saying? Is he my dad?”
And her chest collapsed. This was so a day of unwelcomed and unintentional emotional overload.
When she didn’t answer, he continued, “It’s just … you haven’t had a relationship really, that I know of, since I was born—at least not in the last many years. You don’t date,” he said with a wave of his hand. “And you’re really attractive and all that, so there’s really no reason why. And, if this guy was a friend in high school, and you had me just after high school, and I saw the way the two of you looked at each other …”
“I see,” she said in a faint voice.
“And then there’s the look of him.”
“Meaning?” She tore her gaze away from her hands to face her son.
“I look like him,” he said bluntly.
“Yes, you do,” she said, taking a deep breath, “and, yes, he’s your father.”
He stared at her, and something she didn’t know—but maybe anger—was in that gaze. He no longer looked like a young teenager. Something very painful and very adult was in that gaze.
“He just found out about you too,” she said quietly.
“Right now? Today?”
She nodded. “Yes, right now, today.”
“Wow. Damn, that’s heavy.”
She stared at him, hating the language, but realizing it wasn’t the time to bring that up. “I think he feels that is pretty heavy right now too. He’s alternating between angry, betrayed, and overjoyed.”
“Angry at what?” Jeremy asked belligerently. “That I’m a boy, not a girl?”
“Angry at himself that he didn’t check up on me. Betrayed by me that I didn’t tell him and betrayed by the world maybe in some ways too because this is how life panned out. It’s not what he intended. It’s not what I intended either,” she said quietly, feeling part of her shrink inside. This conversation was not how she intended it to go. It wasn’t in any way, shape, or form the way she wanted it to be. Anger emanated from her son, and she wasn’t sure who it was directed at. “Because he didn’t know anything about you, it’s been a bit of a shock.”
“But he left today, didn’t he?” And he turned and flung open the fridge with a snap.
“Yes, he left,” she said. “He was also shot at today.”
At that, Jeremy spun so fast to focus on her. “What?”
“Those five guys, who you know, attacked Kurt at the gas station. He beat one up earlier, and then they came back with a gun and shot him as he was driving.”
“Well, how bad is he hurt?” he asked, as if his thoughts were suddenly realigning.
“Not too bad. He wouldn’t go to the hospital. So I stitched him up here before you got home,” she said, staring down at her hands. “He didn’t want to go to the cops.”
“Why?” he asked, suspicion immediately flaring in his voice.
She smiled, looked up at him. “Because he has a very rough history here with the local police, and they already have a long file on him. He was a troubled teen after his mother died, and he was taken away from his drunk father when Kurt was young. About your age actually. He was the epitome of a bad boy and always in trouble,” she said. “He hated authority, and the cops hated him because he was forever getting into trouble.”
“So maybe that explains why no police, but why no hospital?”
“I understand why he did that too,” she said. “He was badly injured in the navy and spent months, almost a year, in a military hospital. He’d do just about anything to avoid them. So I stitched him up. It wasn’t bad.”
“But still …”
She could sense the doubt and the judgment in her son’s voice. “You don’t understand what he’s been through either,” she said.
“Is he still a badass?”
“Yes, but in a good way he is, was,” she corrected herself, “a Navy SEAL.”
His eyes lit up, and she could see hero worship about to start.
“He joined the navy from high school. That was always his plan. So, when I found out I was pregnant, I didn’t tell him because he was leaving in two weeks,” she said. “I knew that his life here was so bad and that he needed to get out of town to straighten up.”
“Did he?”
She watched as Jeremy’s fingers slowly clenched and unclenched on the counter behind him, and she nodded. “He did, and he did a beautiful job of it,” she said with a smile. “He always was a good person, even in his teens, but now everybody can see that he’s a good man too.”
“Are you still interested?”
She stopped and stared. “What?”
“Are you still interested in him?” he said. “It’s obvious that you guys were close before. I just wondered if that’s still there.”
“I don’t know,” she said. “I literally saw him for the first time today.”
“But you should know,” he said, “because, like I said, it was very obvious to me that you already had a thing.”
“We had a thing,” she said, “yes, but we don’t still have a thing.”
“But you could,” he said, staring at her with that same intensity that she’d come to recognize when he needed an answer.