The Best Thing

by Zapata, Mariana

  “Look, Lenny, I sent my assistant over, and she said she made the deposit.”

  What was this? 1990? We both knew he was full of shit. She could have mailed a check if he was being cheap, wired the money if he wanted to spend the fee, or used one of those apps to transfer money across banks. I used that shit all the time.

  “Let me ask her to check the deposit receipt, and I’ll call you back. You know I’m good for it, and tell fucking Pablo to call me if he’s got a problem,” the man tried to throw.

  I gripped the cord of my work phone in my free hand and shook my leg under my desk. “He did call you. I saw it. He called you five times last week.” Silence. “And I know that you’re good, but you’re good at paying two months late instead of two weeks later like you’re supposed to. If your assistant deposited money into wrong bank accounts, you would have fired her the day after you hired her. Don’t play the dumb game with me. Come on, I know I don’t look that stupid.”

  There was another beat of silence before a rough, short bark of laughter filled the line. “Jesus Christ, Lenny. If you ever want to come work for me, I’ll have a position open for you.”

  That got a snicker out of me.

  The promoter laughed some more. “Listen, the money will be in there by five, all right?”

  “Uh-huh. I hope so.”

  “It will,” he tried to assure me like I hadn’t known him for the last ten years. “Tell Gus to give me a call, would you?”

  That had me smiling at least. “Ooh, now I know you’re for sure going to make the deposit if you want me to bring you up in front of Grandpa.”

  He laughed again.

  “I hope I don’t talk to you later, Damon. Bye.”

  “Bye, Lenny,” the promoter on the other end muttered before hanging up.

  I dropped the phone into the cradle with a snicker.

  “I didn’t know you managed athletes.”

  Damn it!

  The back of the chair I was leaning in went back even further when my whole body jerked at the sound of the voice that had come out of fucking nowhere. I threw my arms out at my sides to grab onto the desk, or something, anything so that I wouldn’t tip the seat back and fall out of it.

  Out of the corner of my eye, while I flailed around since I’d basically just scared the shit out of myself, or Jonah had, I saw the dark-haired man start to sprint forward like he was going to catch me. Before he could get to me though, the second that my instincts realized that I wasn’t about to go feet-over-ass and break my chair in half, I sat up straight, slapped my hand over my chest because my heart hadn’t beat so hard in forever, and slid him the nastiest look I could conjure up.

  Stopping right in front of me, stopping right on the other side of the desk, Jonah looked at me and grinned.

  That smile grew with every second that passed. One after another and then another until he was basically beaming at me. All handsome, straight, white teeth, and looking like a million-dollar asshole.

  “I wish I could have filmed that,” he said way too brightly.

  I didn’t even think about it.

  I grabbed my stress ball and threw it at him, seeing his hands cover his balls like I would really try and hit him there, as he laughed. Laughed.

  “I can’t stand you,” I hissed, rubbing a circle over my heart because it hadn’t gotten the memo that we weren’t about to die from an intruder alert. “How do you move so quietly when you’re so damn big?”

  He was still laughing, but his hands were falling away from his crotch area when he replied, starting to bend over, “Practice. I move fast too.”

  “If I had another stress ball, I’d throw that one at you too,” I told him as he tossed the ball back at me.

  I caught it and dropped it on top of my desk.

  “You all right?” he asked, smiling wide and slowly dropping into the seat that still looked too small for him.

  “Besides that minor heart attack I just had, and the fact I probably pissed myself a little too, yeah, I’m fine,” I told him drily, earning me an even bigger smile that made it totally worth the fact that I wasn’t lying. I probably had peed a couple drops out. Mo’s fault.

  “As long as it was just a bit of urine, eh?” the cheeky bastard asked.

  “You know, I don’t remember you being this sarcastic two years ago.”

  He didn’t break eye contact with me for a second. “You’re a bad influence, love.”

  I smiled.

  “As I was asking before I caused your palpitations,” he started. “I didn’t know you managed anyone.”

  Oh. That. “Not officially or anything, and not really, but I’m a good third party. Especially when they want to get paid more for fights, the amateurs I mean, I have the connections. And I don’t mind haggling for them.”

  “They pay you?”

  “A little bit. I don’t know how much you heard, but this last time, one of the guys hadn’t gotten paid, and he asked me if I could call the promoter because he wasn’t getting through. So I did. I’ve known him for a long time, and he knows better than to screw around with us.”

  “You mean you and your granddad?”

  “Exactly, but I’ve been told I’m worse than Grandpa Gus.” I smiled. “Deep down, I probably enjoy it too much. It’s my high now.” I thought about that for a second. “You okay? Need anything?”

  “Everything is good as gold,” he replied, leaning back into the too-small chair, his upper arms crowding over the armrests. “Just came to check on you.”

  “Me?”

  “Yes.” But that was all he said.

  “Why?”

  “Yesterday. We didn’t get a chance to talk about it.”

  I played dumb. “What happened yesterday? Your mom asking me all those questions?” Because she had asked me a lot of questions on the ride back from the park. She went right in and laid them out one right after the other.

  * * *

  “Elena,” the older woman said maybe two seconds after we’d gotten inside the car after I finished speaking to Grandpa Gus’s ex-wife. “Did I hear that correctly or did you refer to the woman at the park as your grandmother?”

  She’d heard that. I was still feeling pretty riled up after our conversation, but it wasn’t the time to think about it, so I’d do it later, in private. When I could really let it set in.

  Or maybe I would never think about it. Who knew? I still, and more than likely forever would, want nothing to do with her.

  “She is biologically my grandmother. She was my dad’s mom,” I replied, flexing my fingers around the steering wheel.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Jonah fidgeting in the seat beside me and knew without looking that he was watching me.

  “Your father, where is he?” Sarah went on to ask.

  I heard Jonah grunt, but I answered her. She wasn’t the first person to ever ask, and she wouldn’t be the last. “He died before I was born.”

  The silence in the car for a few moments after that honestly made me feel just a little bad. I bet she hadn’t been expecting that. And she wouldn’t be the first person either to feel bad for asking that specific question.

  So I decided to be the better person and not let her feel so shitty. Mostly because making someone feel guilty was kind of a cheap shot. Like Rafaela showing up out of the fucking blue just to make herself feel better.

  “He was in a drunk driving accident. He wasn’t the one drinking or driving. The woman who gave birth to me hadn’t even known she was pregnant when he died, so he didn’t know I was on the way either,” I explained, and for once, I realized just how similar in a way my story with Jonah and Mo was to this.

  I didn’t like it.

  And I was glad, obviously, that it wasn’t tragic too.

  Because maybe I hadn’t known Marcus, but Grandpa had always talked about how awesome he’d been. And if he was Grandpa Gus’s son, of course he had been that way. “I know he was my biological dad, but I’ve always thought of him as b
eing like a brother-figure I never got to meet.”

  “I’m so sorry to hear that,” Sarah said in a surprisingly gentle and honest voice that I was only partially expecting. “And your mum?”

  I had glanced in the rearview mirror to take in the back of Mo’s car seat. Poor little monster. We’d be at the house in five minutes, so I hoped she stayed awake so we wouldn’t have to wake her up all over again. “My biological mom gave her rights up and let my grandpa take me. Supposedly she was only twenty years old and wasn’t ready to have a baby, so she did the right thing. My grandpa and Peter raised me, and I couldn’t have had better parents. It’s always been the three of us. Grandpa Gus didn’t have brothers or sisters, and Peter’s only sister died a while back.”

  Memories of the thousands of times they had been there for me had made my heart clench up. The countless hours spent at judo, with one or both of them always there. The family vacations, the weekend trips they had snuck in as much as possible to give me a normal childhood. The infinite amount of unconditional love they had given me, even if sometimes it was tough love. I really couldn’t have had better parents. “They loved me enough for five whole families though, so I was the lucky one.”

  There was more silence, and I’d bet my ovary she regretted asking that question too.

  Awkward.

  And because I had still been feeling pretty gracious and could only imagine what was going through her head as she tried to piece things together, I decided to just wrap up the whole story so she would know.

  We were family, after all. Maybe I didn’t like her yet and maybe she didn’t like me yet, and maybe we would never really and truly like each other, but that didn’t change shit. She was here, and she seemed to truly love Jonah in her own way I wasn’t totally feeling, and she was being all about Mo, so….

  “My grandpa divorced that lady when Marcus, my dad, was five, and she wasn’t really in their lives after that. She moved somewhere else, and after he turned eighteen, they never saw her again until she showed up at my family’s gym a few weeks ago.”

  Jonah was for sure watching me as I drove, but I didn’t dare glance at him.

  But in the back seat Sarah made a noise that sounded somewhere in between shock and outrage, and that surprised the fucking shit out of me. “I don’t mean to be intrusive—”

  Sure she didn’t.

  “—or be rude and make assumptions, but you’re at least in your late twenties, and you have never met your own grandmother until recently?”

  “Correct,” I confirmed, trying to figure out where she was going with this. “Today is the second time I’ve ever seen her.”

  “I’m sorry for asking about such an upstanding family member. I don’t see how any person could leave their child, or grandchild, their own flesh and blood, like that. I would never be able to do that.”

  “Me neither,” I agreed with her, glancing in the rearview mirror again and catching her eyes.

  * * *

  Luckily I hadn’t expected that little moment to change anything, because it hadn’t. Thirty minutes later, Sarah had criticized the bottles we were giving Mo and then tried to grill me on what we were feeding her. I started zoning her out ten seconds in.

  But I wasn’t bothering with that. I knew we were doing our best and had done a lot of research on everything we used on her and for her. Sarah meant well, and I wasn’t going to get pissed off for her giving a shit about my daughter.

  Apparently Jonah was well aware of that because he gave me a playfully exasperated face at me playing dumb by answering my previous question. “The conversation with your granddad’s ex-wife, Len. I want to know you’re okay with it.”

  I eyed my stress ball but kept my hand on my lap.

  “Not that all right then, I’ll take it,” the man who probably saw and understood too much—obviously since he was bringing it up—claimed easily and carefully.

  Opening up my mouth to say that I was all right, I shut it right back. Because I’d be lying if I said I was. He didn’t need to know that I hadn’t even been able to tell Peter or Grandpa about that conversation because I didn’t trust myself to explain it in a reasonable voice. I could tell them anything and everything. Every cell in my body knew that.

  But, that… that I hadn’t been able to share. That I had let settle in my chest to pick up and look at while I had stood under the shower that night once everyone had left. Jonah and his mom had bounced after spending all day with me and Mo at the house. Natia had showed up in the afternoon, and I found that I really fucking liked Jonah’s sister. She was cool as shit. Even Luna had showed up with Ava and her husband, and we’d all had dinner together.

  It had been the first time that my best friend met Jonah, and the second she’d gotten a chance, she’d elbowed me in the ribs and given me an enormous grin. She’d texted me from home that night and said he was great and even Rip had mentioned liking Jonah. But my favorite message had been:

  Luna: And he’s better looking in person, Lenny. WOO.

  It had been a nice day that had made me forget all about Rafaela and her bullshit. So it wasn’t until the shower that I’d let myself think about her. Then I’d thrown that moment in the park with my grandmother into the imaginary trash after thinking it over while I’d washed and conditioned my hair.

  Until now.

  “I just….” My voice came out a little high. “I’m fine.”

  The look he gave me was enough for him to not have to verbally call me out on my bullshit. He wanted me to tell him the truth on my own. Fine.

  “I am,” I insisted, trying to think about it. “Realistically, I am. If I don’t see her again, I don’t think I would regret it. I don’t think I would even think about it much. Really.”

  His face was so patient. “But?”

  Was this my second Peter? Another person about to see a loose end sticking up and decide to pull at it gently to see how much came free? “But,” I continued on, not totally wanting to, “I am a little mad about it.” I thought about it. “Maybe more than a little.”

  Jonah didn’t make any kind of physical gesture to get me to keep talking, but the way he just looked, straight, his facial expression totally blank, made me keep going.

  “It’s been thirty-one years. Longer than that if you want to be technical. The last time she saw my dad was when he was eighteen, seven whole years before I was born. So that’s a whole lot of time.”

  He still didn’t say a word, and I could feel my eyelid get twitchy.

  But I didn’t touch it. What I did do instead was keep talking. “She didn’t miss out on anything. She gave it up. She didn’t want it, and that’s the difference.” Fuck it, I reached up and gave my neck a scratch with my index finger, just one quick scratch, and I dropped my hand again. “Who the hell cuts their kid off because of something someone else did? How do you just… leave them behind? I’ve been mad over things. I’ve been hurt. But I would never do some shit like that. She didn’t come talk to me because she wanted to. She only did it to make herself feel better for getting caught.”

  Jonah still didn’t say a word, but it made me think about what had just come out of my own mouth.

  I scratched at my neck again. “It bothers me more than it should, and I know that. I didn’t even tell Grandpa or Peter what she said. I just said I’d tell them later, but it’s not that easy to talk about someone not wanting you.” I swallowed. “I should be used to it by now though, you’d figure. I shouldn’t let this—her—piss me off. She doesn’t even deserve that.”

  Then, then, he decided to finally open his mouth, and when he did, it wasn’t to say the words I might have expected. “There’s nothing wrong with being mad, love. And you shouldn’t be used to… that. None of it is your fault.”

  I tried to swallow, I really did, but there was a rock in my throat. Suddenly, a rock the size of a fucking Rhode Island-sized meteor sitting in my throat, blocking anything from going in and everything from leaving.

  “She ha
s no idea what she missed out on,” he said in that quiet voice. “Leaves more for us who do know what we have, eh?” Those eyes sparkled. “A good friend. An incredible family member. A loyal, practical, brave woman. One of the most amazing women I’ve ever met.”

  My entire life, I had never known how to be anything other than how I was. Even if it made other people uncomfortable or mad. That I was too mouthy, too bossy, too determined, too blunt, too much.

  Despite all of that, I was and had been loved by a lot of people. People who knew the best and the worst parts of me. Some knew more, some knew less.

  Yet, no one had ever said something like what had just come out of Jonah’s mouth. Not a single one of those people who loved me, and who I loved right back.

  And wasn’t that fucking something?

  But my big fucking mouth went crazy on me as my brain struggled and I found myself asking, “One of?”

  Jonah’s smile was tender. “Yeah. My nan is pretty amazing too.”

  It made my chest go tight, it made my nose sting, and it forced me up to my feet and around my desk, ignoring the curious expression on his face. It made me bend over in front of this man who I’d had a child with and hug him. My forehead went into the warm side of his neck, slightly damp with the sweat of the workout he had probably just finished, my arms loose around his neck and shoulders.

  And I responded the only way I could manage. “Thanks, Jonah.”

  Words weren’t what replied to me. It was a forearm around the middle of my back. It was a hand cradling the back of my head, holding it gently like it was precious or something instead of hard as hell. It was the great big breath that made his chest puff closer to my own.

  A big hand palmed my head. “Come here,” he said to me.

  Most special of all was the way he turned me—or I guess, I let him turn me—to the side and then inward, my arms not going anywhere. They stayed exactly where they were around his neck, my forehead staying in the same exact place because it liked it there and didn’t want to go someplace else. And before I really thought about anything other than how warm he was, how much I liked the scent of a man who was a mix of salty, clean sweat and a deep-scented deodorant, I was on his lap.