“When you reach a certain level you don’t need the same promotional blitz for every release. The books sell themselves for an author like Turner.” Ro smiled unpleasantly at him. “You haven’t learned anything about the industry your son’s been so successful in? I wonder why.”
The ‘I wonder why’ was said in such a way that I thought she was accusing him of something, like perhaps that he was jealous of his only son.
I thought it was interesting and perceptive how quickly she’d picked that up.
My dad was on his second bottle of expensive Napa cab when he said, “At least your taste in wine is better than your taste in women. We have that in common.”
“You can taste it when you drink it that fast?” Ro asked him. Again with her it was the delivery, the perfectly flat tone that made it such a solid hit, as though it wasn’t even worth it to her to get worked up into something so petty as an emotion when dealing with him.
It was his breaking point. He leaned forward, giving her a very nasty look. “You’ve got a mouth.” He sneered. “Someone needs to show you what that smart mouth is really for,” he told her softly. “I’m surprised my hot-blooded son hasn’t already done that. Disappointed even. Let me know if you need me to do it, Turner.”
I tossed down my napkin, standing up in a temper, ready to fight, but Ro had this. She fucking had it.
“I can see why you’d want quiet women around with that fragile ego of yours on display,” she said in an almost singsong way that made it all the more mocking. “Those of us that like to talk probably only tell you one thing: Your son is much better than you. Richer, stronger, more talented, more compassionate, kinder, funnier, and certainly better-looking than you are or will ever be. That’s why you resent him, why you try to take every petty dig you can, try to steal every silly thing from him you’re able to manage, but you know better than anyone that that doesn’t change the reality: You’re a washed up old loser, and even before you were old and washed up, you were never as good as him.”
“I don’t have to listen to this,” my father exclaimed dramatically, stood up, and stormed from the room.
I looked at Ro. She had her chin raised, and I don’t even think she meant to sass me in particular, but she was staring insolently back at me, daring anyone to disagree with her tirade.
I don’t know what Ro saw in my eyes then, but it made her squirm in her chair.
I’d never had someone stand up to him for me before. No one had ever assumed I’d needed them to. The fact that she had was almost too much for me. “You complete me, cupcake,” I told her fondly as I sat back down, and was a little frightened at how much I meant the words.
“Like lightning and thunder,” she said saucily, raising a brow at me. It may as well have been a red flag. I almost jumped across the table.
“Well, that was awkward,” Ida said.
We both looked at her. I’d forgotten she was even there.
“How could you leave Turner for that?” Ro asked her, then blushed. If I could read Ro now, which I could, she hadn’t been able to keep the question in.
“Yes,” I drawled, “do tell us your reasons for such a lapse in judgment, stepmother dearest.”
I didn’t actually care at this point, but I was enjoying the way this was riling Ro beyond all sense or reason.
“Oh, please,” Ida said with an eye roll. “We were falling apart before I ever hooked up with Carson. We weren’t going to last. You’d checked out emotionally. Did you think it wasn’t obvious?
I thought about it. She wasn’t totally wrong. There wasn’t a universe where we would have lasted, her and me. I hadn’t understood at all what I was getting into when I’d married her. I’d been infatuated with an idea I’d created in my head that had little to do with the woman herself, a fiction I’d weaved on my own.
Nowadays I just wrote novels.
“And I didn’t leave Turner for that,” Ida added. “I cheated on him for that, he dumped me, and I moved on with that.”
“That’s despicable,” Ro said with no expression and absolute conviction.
Ida shrugged.
“Why him?” I asked her. I’d always been genuinely curious. A lot of men had been after her. He should not have been her first pick.
“I did love you, but I thought you were too young and immature to go the long haul. I wanted stability. I thought he’d be a more grown up version of you.”
We both laughed pretty hard about that one.
“I’m sure it didn’t hurt that he was far better off financially than I was at the time,” I mused when I caught my breath.
She shrugged, not denying it. That was the thing about Ida—she was utterly incapable of embarrassment. Shameless to an extreme. Under the right context, I’d once found it charming. In the bedroom, mostly. Now it just made her seem a little soulless.
“Now what’s for dessert?” she asked with a smile as though we hadn’t just been discussing her mile wide character faults.
“Bananas Foster,” I answered in just the same way.
“Oh! I should find Carson and bring him back. That’s his favorite!”
Ro was studying the other woman like she was a particularly deranged mental patient. I was getting a real kick out of it.
“Don’t bring him back,” I said pleasantly. “You can deliver some to him in his room when you’re done, or hell take both of yours to go.”
“No, no, I’ll take mine with you two and bring him his later,” Ida said cheerfully, “Bananas Foster is always better fresh. He’s the one that threw a fit. No reason I should be punished for it.”
When she finally left to deliver my father’s dessert to him Ro said, “It’s amazing how many character flaws that level of beauty lets you get away with.” She sounded as riled as I’d ever heard her.
I smiled at her, a very personal, we’re the only two people in the world smile, and said, “So true. Now let’s go to bed together, cupcake.”
“Do not say it like that.”
Ro sleeping in my room had been all my idea, but that didn’t make it any easier for me specifically to get through.
It was a long night, but in spite of that, a very pleasant one, one I would repeat as much and as often as I could.
She came to my room soon after dinner. She’d already readied herself for sleep, was in her PJs (a loose T-shirt and boxers), and she climbed right into my bed, no hesitation.
Where was her sense of self-preservation?
“I can’t wait for you to meet my parents,” she told me as she pulled the covers, my covers, up to her neck.
I wouldn’t be washing my bedding again for quite some time.
“Why?” I asked, instantly distracted by her getting into my bed and saying something so interesting at the same time. She knew how to catch my attention. “Are they crazy too?”
“They’re the two cutest people on the planet.” Deadpan. “Where do you think I got it?”
I was standing over her in my bed before I even realized what I was doing. She was flat on her back, our eyes locked when I said, “I can’t wait. You should invite them to visit soon.”