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We were definitely not on the same page. I wanted to climb this man like a tree. And he wanted me to fall from one and break my spine. It was obvious he wanted to be polite and move on. His body was already half-tilted to give me his back and walk off. My eyes ticked.
“Yeah.” I slipped my hair behind my ear. “I mean…I, uhm, agree.”
That’s not even a sentence, Cal. Just a collection of filler words.
He turned around, about to walk off and leave me there. Something compelled me not to leave it at that. Guilt, maybe?
“Do you remember much about him?” I blurted out.
Everyone who graduated from Staindrop High knew Dad. He was that teacher. With the checked shirts, nine pens in its breast pocket, and a fanny pack he’d gotten for free from his insurance company. But Dad had never discussed his relationships with other students with me. He’d cared about their privacy just as much as he had about his own.
“All the good parts.” His eyes crinkled. “Physics and chemistry were my favorite subjects in high school.”
“I didn’t…know…that.” This was awful. Looking at his face and trying to English properly at the same time. On second thought, it was time to wrap it up. “Well! Thanks for coming, I better—”
“I visited him the day before he passed.”
He had? I hadn’t even known he was in town. How had Mom failed to mention that?
Well, she didn’t know he took your virginity and whatever was left of your soul the night before you moved to NYC.
I stared at him, too shocked to pick up my jaw from the floor. “You did?”
“He asked if I was going to attend his ‘real fun.’” Row quoted with his fingers. That was what Dad had called his impending funeral. Real fun. Because he’d wanted people to be happy that he’d lived, not sad that he’d died. “Said to remind you that he isn’t in pain anymore. That he is probably in heaven right now, playing chess with Leonid Stein and Abe Turner and eating Beluga caviar.”
I blinked at him, registering his words. That was the most Dad thing I’d ever heard. “He didn’t believe in heaven.”
“He said you’d say that. And to tell you that he was wrong. The first and last time that happened.” Row half shrugged.
Tears stung my eyes, but I was smiling. “What else did he say?”
“He asked you not to call it a celebration of life because that always feels like rubbing it in to the dead person.”
I felt my chin wobbling. “And you remembered his exact words?”
“Well, it is three sentences,” Row said coolly, glowering. “And I’m not a fucking idiot.”
“Is there anything else? Something more he wanted to tell me?”
“That’s all she wrote.”
I started laughing and crying simultaneously. Somewhere between touched and moved and completely shattered. Row said nothing. Just stared at me dispassionately with his liquid gold eyes. I wiped my face quickly. I hated that every encounter with this man involved me looking and acting like a hot mess. He twisted again, about to walk off and leave me. Man, he couldn’t stand me. I was going to keep him here and talk to him just to piss him off. How dare he? He took my virginity and it was my dad’s funeral. He was going to be nice to me if it was the last thing he did in his life.
“So how’s Paris?” I sniffled, wiping at my eyes.
He stopped mid-step. Growled in dissatisfaction. Turned to look at me. “Don’t know. Ask someone who lives there.” He spun to pluck a clean plate from a stack on the table, piling it with food. He was downright arctic. Whatever grace he might’ve given me as a teenager did not extend to my adulthood.
“I asked you.” I tried peering into his face, dread blooming in the pit of my stomach. “Because you live there. Wikipedia says so. So it must be right. It’s right, right?”
“Great, another stalker.” He scowled, stabbing a piece of prosciutto with a plastic fork, loading it onto his plate.
Another? How many were there?
“You’re famous and I grew up with you. Of course, I jealousy-googled you. It’s not like I stole your sperm. And hey, I actually had the chance.” I really needed to shut up. The sooner, the better. Twenty minutes ago would’ve been ideal.
“I live in Staindrop now,” came the reluctant answer. “Though ‘live’ is an exaggeration. This place doesn’t even have a fucking Whole Foods.”
We were going to be neighbors? Lovely. Things just kept getting worse for me. And I’d spent this morning picking up my father’s ashes from a crematorium. Sliding over a clean plate, I joined him, pretending to examine the options I myself had arranged there only an hour ago.
