“At least we have a selection.” Katie squealed as she found an “I Love My Daddy” onesie, navy blue with white lettering. “Austin will love this.”
“You think you’re having a boy.” Miranda sorted the blankets out, placing a few in her lap—all of them traditional girl colors, Evan noticed.
Katie shrugged. “Don’t feel one way or the other. Don’t care. We’re not going to find out. We want it to be a total surprise.”
Miranda gave Evan a look. “Dare I ask your nursery color scheme?”
“We’re cosleeping, so it’s not really an issue.”
“What if you roll over and squish the baby!”
“There’s a thing you buy and attach to the bed, Miranda. The baby sleeps there. Totally safe.”
“I’m going to buy you a hemp baby carrier.”
“Is that supposed to be sarcastic? Because I totally want one. Oh, I have a picture on my phone.”
“You have a corporate job! Why do you act like a hippie?”
The gentle bickering felt familiar. Evan suppressed a smile as he rummaged through the bin.
THINGS WERE going along nicely after a break for lunch. They ate Chinese food at the kitchen table, sharing memories that flooded back as each bin revealed another stage in the Cerelli children’s lives. Baptism gowns and Communion dresses, soccer uniforms, baseball jerseys, two full containers of dance costumes and tap shoes. Lunch led to dragging out picture albums; at some point Evan looked up and realized it was nearly dinnertime.
“I should cook something,” he said, unenthused as he flipped another page of the album. He didn’t want to cook anything. “You two staying?”
Miranda checked her phone. “Kent’s still in Chicago, so you’re stuck with me!”
“Can I call Austin and tell him to bring Josiah over?”
“Of course.” Evan stood up and stretched. “Matt should be back soon. I haven’t heard from Danny, so I’m not sure if he’ll be dropping in.”
Miranda made a face that Katie echoed. Then they looked at each other and Evan’s Spidey sense tingled.
“What?”
“It’s Saturday night, Dad. He’s out with….” Katie trailed off, exchanging raised eyebrows with her sister.
“With?” Evan’s spine snapped to attention, and he crossed his arms over his chest. The rush of “cool, bro” flared back up, as did the fact that he hadn’t followed up with his son.
“Leah.”
Leah was thirty-five, a teacher who supervised the St. John’s Spanish students when they went to Spain to study. She and Danny met in the St. John’s parking lot, then again when he was studying abroad. Only Elizabeth had met her, and there was some dispute between the girls as to whether she approved.
Evan sat on the recliner, hands clasped between his knees, forehead furrowing in concern. “Thirty-five? And his teacher?”
Miranda pursed her lips. “In-appro-priate,” she said, popping her p’s.
Even Katie nodded. “I mean, the age thing is like—to each their own, but I don’t love the power dynamics,” she pointed out. “She’s in a position of authority over him. And who was supervising this whole shebang while they were off… uh… canoodling?”
“Basically you spent money to send him to Spain for an extended booty call.”
“Miranda!”
“What?” Miranda shrugged. “It’s true.”
Evan felt a little woozy.
“MY FAMILY!” Matt called out as he walked in an hour later. He could smell—well, he couldn’t smell anything, which sucked because it was seven o’clock and he was starving. “Did you eat everything already?”
Josiah and Austin were on the couch playing basketball on the Xbox—or rather Josiah was beating his father soundly as Austin just poked buttons with a confused expression. They gave Matt equally baleful looks as Josiah rubbed his stomach in a sad pantomime. Austin’s head tilted toward the kitchen, accompanied by an eyebrow wiggle.
Code.
Uh-oh.
“Pizza and wings?”
“God, yes,” Austin mouthed, while Josiah fist-pumped next to him.
Matt gave him the thumbs-up, calling up the Seamless app on his phone as he trudged toward the kitchen.
Evan, Miranda, and Katie sat at the table, an empty pitcher in the center, massive piles of clothing on every chair that wasn’t already occupied, all of them sharing identical Cerelli furrowed brows.
“Hello, family,” Matt said, swiping and pressing buttons until he secured a large amount of food to be delivered ASAP. The soonest of possibles possible. “Hello, Matt! We are so very sorry your kitchen is full of clothing and not food. You look so handsome today, even in your foodless fatigued state!”
“You have ego problems. Not everything is about you,” Katie said, standing to give him a kiss on the cheek. He patted her teeny tiny baby bump because he had blanket permission to do so into perpetuity. (There was a signed napkin around here somewhere.)
Matt gasped in horror. “Lies.”
“We got caught up in things,” Miranda said, offering her cheek as Matt made his way around the table. He did not touch her baby bump because it weirded her out if anyone did it, except for Kent. Matt kept his hands to himself.
“Why am I imagining this little powwow isn’t because of impossibly small socks?” Matt reached Evan, tipped his head back, and attempted to wipe that pained expression off his face with his tongue.
“Get it!” Katie yelled.
It didn’t quite work. Evan accepted the kiss, then whomped him in the chest.
Matt leaned against the counter with a cold beer as his family brought him up-to-date on the Danny/Leah situation. He kept waiting for more—she was married. Or a black widow. Wisely, he kept his mouth shut as Katie got to the part where it wasn’t cool for a teacher to date a student.
“And yet the plot of many porn movies,” he muttered, earning a shot in the face with a balled-up piece of paper from Miranda.
“Matt….”
“I know, I know.” He put his hand up to stave off Evan’s irritation. “So who is the person—not it, called it fair and legal—that takes this conversation to Danny?”
“Pulling the pregnancy card,” Miranda said, holding her hand up. “And pulling it for Katie preemptively.”
“Thanks.”
All eyes turned to Evan.
“This hardly seems fair. Or democratic,” Evan said, resigned to his fate.
The doorbell rang, and Josiah’s happy shouts of “Yay! Pizza!” cut off further conversation.
EVAN MULLED over the situation for the rest of the evening, through pizza and the girls doing a fashion show of baby clothes draped over their small bumps. Matt narrated like it was a pro wrestling match while Josiah played music on his father’s phone. Laughter rang through the house, but Evan managed only a smile.
“HE’S OLD enough to make choices about who he sleeps with” was what Evan ended up with, then said out loud as Matt climbed into bed. “He’s twenty.”
“Uh-huh.” Matt smoothed the covers over his chest, leaning back against the pillows. “That’s not the discussion the Cerelli Family Council had. Did you just nod to shut everyone up?”
Evan scowled, removing his clothes in as angry a fashion as he could manage without falling over. “I’m thinking about what the girls said. And I’m thinking that no, I’m not happy about it being a teacher, but—”
“Hey, I got in trouble for the porn comment!” Matt looked positively delighted. “You did just nod to placate the girls! You have no problem with your son dating an older woman! You’re just as much of a jerk man as I am!”
“Shut up.”
“I mean, I’m guessing your reaction would be different if Elizabeth brought home a thirty-five-year-old teacher who she’d been booty-calling in Spain—”
“Shut. Up.”
Evan stormed into the bathroom to brush his teeth, just barely resisting the urge to slam the door behind him. He avoided looking at himself in
the mirror, preferring to brush in the semidarkness. It was hard to miss Matt’s laughter mocking him from the other room.
He hated when Matt was right.
And if Helena found out about any of this, he was a dead man.
“WHY DON’T you meet me in the city and we’ll have dinner on Friday?” was all he said to Danny a few days later as he drove home from work.
The cell phone gave a staticky silence in return. Evan waited patiently, tapping his hands on the steering wheel.
“Uh, sure. Everything okay?” his son finally asked as Evan eased the car forward in the congested rush-hour traffic.
“Yeah. It’s just been a while since we did a father/son thing. How about seven? Gallagher’s.”
Danny wasn’t fooled; his tone removed any illusion of that. “Sure. See you then. Later.”
The line disconnected, and Evan resisted the urge to smack his head on the dashboard. Why had his kids decided to have growing pains at the same damn time? There were four—they really needed to have a schedule of some sort.
EVAN PRACTICED all his conversation starters, muttered under his breath or played over and over in his head in the shower, for the rest of the week. By the time he got home on Thursday, he felt pretty good about the strategy and cautiously optimistic about the discussion the next night with Danny. Assure him his life was his own, but he should consider carefully his choice of romantic partners, and then a whole thing about power dynamics he’d googled on his phone. Rational Danny, rational Evan—it would all be fine.
Then Matt met him at the door, a forced smile on his face.
“Oh hey, glad I caught you. Danny brought his girlfriend over unexpectedly and they’re at the dining room table with a danish ring I found on the top of the fridge.”
“What?” Evan shook his head. “They’re here?”
“Yes. Danny and Leah, who seems okay, but I’m pretty sure we’re both intellectually outgunned. She uses a lot of big words.”
Evan looked over his shoulder. “Make a break for it?”
“Oh hell no. I’ve been looking forward to this cage match since the doorbell rang.”
REINING IN his amusement, Matt hung up Evan’s coat and left his briefcase on the coffee table. He herded Evan into the dining room, firm hands on his shoulders and a smirk in his heart.
Danny—in a button-down shirt and tie, for God’s sake—sat next to Leah, whose pencil skirt and turtleneck combo made her look like a central casting librarian, complete with mod eyeglasses and a neat bun on the top of her head. She was pleasant, conversational as they sat down to wait for Evan, but no mistake, Leah the teacher looked pissed off.
“Mr. Cerelli,” she said politely as Evan shook her hand. Danny studied the surface of the dining room table like he was looking for clues to a murder.
“Ms.…”
“Leah is fine.” She folded her hands on the table. “I’m sorry to just drop in on your home like this, but Danny and I discussed things and thought we were long overdue to speak to you.”
Danny’s gaze never left the table.
“Uh-huh.” Evan sat down in the chair across from Leah, with Matt taking the one next to him.
“I can understand why you might have some… concerns….”
“Oh good.”
The tableau, already awkward, seemed to freeze in time. Matt’s desire to be amused was quickly replaced by the urge to shiver because Evan’s voice was basically an iceberg smacking into the table and knocking that danish ring to the floor.
What happened to “Twenty! Make your own girl decisions!” was what Matt wanted to know.
Leah straightened up a smidge more. “Danny is a consenting adult and he has a right to make decisions. A right to privacy.”
“All true,” Evan said, shifting in his seat. “I was going to tell him as much tomorrow over dinner.”
Clearly surprised, Leah opened her mouth to speak, but Evan cut her off.
“Also true is the fact that you are his teacher. I don’t care if you are a few months apart or fifteen years, you are breaking about a thousand ethical violations right this second.”
“Danny does not have any classes with me. I am a teacher, but not his. I take my professional conduct very seriously.”
“So you can tell me, professional conduct seriously taken, that nothing went on when you two were in Spain together.”
Leah cleared her throat but said nothing while Evan turned a shade of burgundy that didn’t look healthy.
Matt imagined a pin dropping. And then exploding like the end of Apocalypse Now.
He wanted to say something, but nothing of worth slid onto his tongue. Sarcasm? A question? A joke to break the unbearable tension currently sucking air out of the room? Instead, Matt looked at Danny.
Tiny beads of sweat knotted into the hair on his temple, his normally tanned skin pale as milk. He looked fucking miserable—not angry, not embarrassed, not indignant.
Miserable.
Matt took a deep breath. “All right, let’s take a minute here.” He could feel Evan’s heated gaze against the side of his face, but God help him, he ignored it. “Danny? You okay?”
“Uh.” Danny’s head shot up, as if he was surprised he was being included in this conversation. Laid-back and easygoing Danny looked like he was about to puke.
Yeah, Matt had been a semiprofessional drunk at enough seedy bars long enough to know that look. He pushed his chair back just as Danny jumped up and ran to the first-floor bathroom like he was on fire.
“Stay here, please, and don’t kill each other,” Matt commanded as he stood up, then went after Danny with long strides.
DANNY WAS, in fact, throwing his brain up in the tiny first-floor bathroom. Beer. No mistaking the smell. Matt waited in the doorway, arms crossed over his chest.
“You been drinking?”
Wiping his mouth on a wad of toilet paper, Danny sat against the wall. “Three beers. I was so freaking nervous about this… this meeting.”
“Was it your idea?”
Shaking his head, Danny threw the paper in the wastebasket. “I told Leah Dad wanted to talk to me, and she got all crazy mad. Said we had to confront him directly on our schedule, not his.”
“And did you say, ‘No, honey, that will cause me hysterical panic so much so that I’ll drink three beers and barf’?”
Danny looked at him, sweaty-faced and pale, and gave him an epic eye roll.
“You think what your dad is saying is true?”
That made Danny look away.
“You hit on her, or did she hit on you?”
“God, Matt!”
“Tell me or tell your dad. Or, well, tell me and then tell your dad.”
He covered his face with both hands as Matt leaned into the bathroom to flush the toilet. “Come into the hallway before that disgusting smell gets stuck in your clothes. Believe me, I know of what I speak.”
THEY SAT on the floor, side by side, leaning against the hallway wall. The kitchen lay down at one end, the Florida room at the other. The latter was their personal refuge—too many sofas, the small television, and that weird window that stuck, but it was a quiet getaway when Danny was growing up and Matt just needed space.
“I’ll be honest. When this first came out, I didn’t think it was a big deal,” Matt started. “Even that cage match out there didn’t entirely sway me. But Danny, you look freaking miserable. And correct me if I’m wrong—it’s not just about your dad and Leah going head-to-head.”
Danny picked at his cuticles.
“Lemme ask again—you hit on her, or did she hit on you?”
“I didn’t even know that’s what she was doing,” Danny whispered. “She did a presentation in my class about going abroad, we saw each other in the parking lot and talked. We had coffee the next day because she said if I had any questions… and I did! Actual questions. I didn’t realize what was happening until she asked me to dinner and uh….”
Matt felt a twinge begin in his stomach. “Fi
rst time?”
Danny writhed in embarrassment. “Maaaaatt.”
“So that’s a yes.”
He put his hands over his eyes, rubbing vigorously. Matt patted him gently on the knee. “At her place?”
“Yes.”
“And in Spain, did you?”
Danny fell sideways, leaning against Matt’s shoulder. “A few times. I was busy studying, and there were chaperones. At first it was like… cool. Sneaking around and stuff. But then I wanted to hang out with the rest of the kids. Or go on side trips. I mean, Jane and Ollie and Maia and Brandon were all there, and this was supposed to be like a big adventure. But Leah got mad if I made other plans.”
Matt’s twinge took an ugly flare. “Why didn’t you tell us? Why did you act like everything was okay?”
“Because what is wrong with me? Like, this hot and smart woman picked me and wants to have sex with me and all I can think is—why is this so much work? Why am I stressed out all the time?” Tears threatened in Danny’s voice, so Matt gripped his knee harder.
“Life isn’t a movie, okay? Just because someone wants to have sex with you, doesn’t mean you have to have sex with them,” he said quietly. “And she used her position at the school to initiate this…” Matt was suddenly loathe to use the word relationship. “This thing between the two of you. That isn’t right.”
Danny just sighed.
“It’s not the way things should go. Problems happen even when you’re both a hundred percent committed, but this—this doesn’t sound like it’s good for you.”
“Elizabeth hates her. We all had dinner and I thought I was going to have to break something up.”
“Elizabeth hates, like… bigots and people who hurt animals. Did Leah punch a chicken or something?” Matt made a mental note to give his stepdaughter an extra fifty the next time she came to the house. Because good for her radar.
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