The Best Thing

by Zapata, Mariana

  I stared at the hand in the circle between us and asked very slowly, my ears starting to ring as I asked, like I had heard wrong, “Who?”

  Peter blew out a breath, but it was Grandpa Gus who replied. “Your dad’s mom.”

  That had me looking up at the beloved face to my right, raising my eyebrows, my ears buzzing louder, and still ignoring the hand that was holding steady in the middle of the air. “Your ex-wife?”

  He grimaced but nodded. Not even bothering to say the words out loud. The simple yes being too much.

  I glanced at Peter who was busy looking up at the rafters, peeked at Jonah, who looked really confused, and then at the woman herself. At Rafaela. My dad’s mom. My grandmother.

  Grandpa Gus was already watching me when my eyes met his, and I couldn’t help but smile. And then I kept right on smiling because I couldn’t help it. Grandpa closed his eyes just as I started laughing and sliding my hand through the woman’s.

  Fucking shit.

  “It’s nice to meet you, Grandma.”

  Chapter 10

  11:55 p.m

  I’m getting real sick of your shit now.

  Can you please,

  PLEASE, call me back?

  11:57 p.m.

  You know what?

  Fuck it. I take back my please:

  Just call me back.

  It’s the least you could do.

  11:58 p.m.

  It’s Lenny.

  “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.

  She hadn’t called back to check thirty-one years ago. She hadn’t known about me. She hadn’t cared to know about me. She hadn’t come here to get to know me. He hadn’t wanted me to go to the gym because he’d wanted to spare me from meeting someone who should have cared I’d existed… and hadn’t.

  It didn’t hurt my feelings. Or surprise me.

  “Lenny, you had nothing to do with her not being around. It’s me she couldn’t stand to see again, do you understand?”

  I nodded and clamped those words somewhere else. “There was a voice mail at the Maio House this morning.” I made a face as I finally stood up, making my way toward the sink so I could rinse out my bowl and set it in the dishwasher. “Well, hopefully me telling her I’ll see her again in thirty years got across to her because I have about 0 percent interest in ever seeing her again.”

  “You’re not the only one,” he muttered, still sounding strained. “It’s been thirty-eight years for me, and I could go another thirty-eight again.”

  I turned around as I wiped my hands on a towel. “You haven’t seen her since Marcus”—that had been my biological dad’s name—“was eighteen?”

  Grandpa nodded, eyeing Mo for a moment before blowing a bunch of kisses at her. The little nut cooed, calling him “Baba.” He didn’t bother looking at me as he answered, “Not since his high school graduation.”

  “She didn’t go to his funeral?”

  He made a sharp, bitter noise in his throat. “No.”

  What a bitch.

  “She said she couldn’t get away, but that he was in her heart,” he whimpered sarcastically, even bringing up his hands over his heart. Grandpa rolled his eyes. “Marcus wouldn’t have cared, kiddo. I didn’t raise him to be anti his mom. He never liked her in the first place, and I’m not putting that blame on myself. I never said a bad word about her. I didn’t give him a reason to think that I didn’t like her. It was my fault she left, and I made sure he knew that. We shouldn’t have gotten married in the first place, but I thought I could be someone else,” he said carefully, shifting his gaze toward me. “I took years of her life away by not being upfront. I can’t hold too many grudges. I ended up with him, and then you, and now I’ve got my new best friend right here. Life is good.”

  Life was good.

  Even if I didn’t know or trust this person who had reappeared. This person who had still, after so long, not given enough of a fuck to see me, but had only come around for business purposes. The kind of woman who wouldn’t go to her own son’s funeral because he was in her fucking heart like that meant anything. It was one thing if she didn’t have money to travel or had been too sick to or something, but that bullshit wasn’t an excuse or an equivalent.

  Bitch.

  Just as I opened my mouth to ask him another question about her, the doorbell rang.

  “I’ll get it. You wipe her off. I’ll change her shirt in a minute,” Grandpa said, already up on his feet before I could get the door myself.

  By the time I had dampened the towel I’d used to wipe my hands off on and scrubbed it over my girl’s face as she tried to get away and fight me with her fists—showing she was her great-grandfather’s granddaughter, the door to the kitchen swung open again. Except this time, it wasn’t just Grandpa Gus. There was someone behind him. That someone being eight inches taller, a whole hell of a lot broader, and nicer. But still an asshole.

  It was Jonah.

  “I wanted to call,” he stated like Grandpa wasn’t scowling at the world in general in front of him. “But I can’t reach your mobile number, and Peter’s went straight to voice mail.”

  He—

  Jonah kept going as he stood there in the kitchen, one long arm loose at his side, the other… was holding a children’s book? I was pretty sure it had an illustrated cover. “I was hoping to spend some time with Mo. Start some of my lessons if that’s all right with you.”

  Did he have to give me that small, shy smile as he asked that fucking question?

  I curled my fingers into a fist and had to fight the urge to flare my nostrils. “I’m sorry, but I’m leaving in a minute.”

  Jonah straight-up frowned, but I ignored it as this terrible idea settled into my brain—revenge, it was revenge because I was a petty shit—and it took everything inside of me not to smile at it.

  “But,” I continued on, “Grandpa is staying. You can stay with him if you don’t mind him shooting ugly faces at you and being sarcastic and a little rude.”

  The look the old man sent me would have me rolling in private later on when he couldn’t see me losing it.

  I wasn’t sure what it said about Jonah when he thought about it for all of a second and then ducked his stubble-covered chin. “If he’ll have me, sure.”

  “He will not—” Grandpa Gus started to say before I cut him off.

  “It would be his pleasure,” I finished, shooting Grandpa a smug smile before eyeing the book in Jonah’s hand again for a second.

  He knew firsthand payback was a bitch. Just as well as I knew that he was going to scare the living shit out of me in revenge when I was least expecting it. But whatever. Then I’d scare him back, and our vicious cycle would continue.

  “Lenny, are you ready to—” Peter started to call out as he ducked his head into the kitchen before blinking. “Oh. Hello, Jonah.”

  “Peter,” the biggest man greeted him.

  Peter’s eyes slid to me. “Change of plans?”

  “Nope. Jonah is staying with Lestat here.”

  Peter pressed his lips together, and his eyebrows arched up a little too.

  “You’re going with Peter?” Jonah asked.

  I lifted a shoulder.

  His shoulders dropped maybe a quarter of an inch and his mouth made a little O for a moment before he said, “If you made plans, you should go.”

  I agreed. You shouldn’t go back on your word. Plus, I hadn’t thought about canceling on Peter period.

  “If you’re sure...” Peter trailed off, warning me it was a bad idea that we were leaving these three alone, but it amused him anyway, and he was trying to not show it. “Ready?”

  Grandpa puffed out his cheeks, confirming yet again that Peter had said something to get him to calm down on the comments.

  “I’m ready,” I told him, before dipping down to give Mo a kiss on each cheek and one on her forehead. “I love you. I’ll be right back, booger. Be good.”

  Her answering babble probably claimed she was always good. That, or she was telling me to fuck off because she knew what she was doing.

  I made a face I wouldn’t call a smile at Jonah, even though he gave me a real one, and gave my grumpy grandfather a kiss on the cheek. “Good luck and behave. Mo and I won’t go visit you in jail.”

  I didn’t miss Grandpa Gus’s snicker as I followed Peter out the side door and around his car. We had barely gotten buckled in when he burst out laughing, tossing his head against the headrest. “That was cold, Lenny.”

  “That’s what he gets.”

  He snorted as he held his palm out to me, and I smacked it.

  * * *

  “He’s not comfortable enough standing,” I told Peter on our w
ay back home two and a half hours later.

  My father/uncle/friend figure nodded as he steered us down the street that would spit us out closer to our neighborhood. “I know. I’ve talked to him about it over and over again. I’ve talked to his striking coach too, but they aren’t working on it enough. He’s relying too much on takedowns when he isn’t consistent enough with them either. His submissions are weak. He relies too much on brute strength and doesn’t think enough. I might ask Gus to come see what he thinks.”

  It sucked when fighters from our gym lost. I felt like I lost when they did, and I hated losing. It happened. It was a part of life, but it still sucked.

  Yet, I could safely say that we knew a minute into the amateur MMA fight that Carlos, who I was fairly certain had ratted me out to Noah, was going to lose. All the yelling Peter and I had both done—so much that my throat felt raw and his sounded hoarse—had been ignored. Every “Elbow!”, “Watch the arm!”, “Grab the leg!”, and “Level changes!” had been ignored. Every. Single. One.

  I almost felt bad for the kid. Peter was going to rip him a new one tomorrow for not listening. I knew some fighters totally zoned out everything going on around them, but in MMA especially, you had to keep an ear out. At least it was the smartest thing you could do if you were in a pickle. Someone might give you some advice you could actually use. They could also piss you off, but you had to let things slide off your back sometimes.

  “Maybe he needs a new striking coach,” I suggested as the car turned onto a familiar street. Grandpa wouldn’t be interested in doing more than giving Peter advice on what to do. Carlos didn’t have the personality that my grandfather would want to work with.

  “He needs something, but I don’t know if a new coach will be enough. He’s too cocky.”

  I couldn’t argue with that. He was right. “Speaking of needing things….” I trailed off. “Grandpa didn’t finish telling me what happened with that lady after I left.” I called her that lady on purpose. She wasn’t really my grandma.