“You think I’m funny?” Kael’s voice drew me out of my memories of my mom just as a knot in my chest was beginning to move up toward my throat.
He was eyeing the green light above us. I pressed the gas.
“What?” I faltered, clearing my throat. I was reliving my childhood while he was still on a question I had asked him. My chest was aching, and focusing on his cool voice and his steady eyes helped fade the image of my mom.
He turned his body toward me. I kept my attention on the road. We drove past a Subway and it reminded me of my brother always craving their cookies when he was stoned.
“People don’t usually ask other people if they’re funny. It kind of ruins the joke,” he said, and stared out the window.
I gave him an annoyed look. “Do you want me to apologize for asking you about your humor? Is this a thing?” I turned onto the main road and tried to figure out where I was.
“No. Not a thing.”
“Okay, so we’re going to my dad’s house and not only am I late, which he hates, he’s kind of . . .” I exhaled, trying to pinpoint such a complicated man with one word. “He’s sort of—”
“Racist?” Kael asked.
“What? No!” I felt a little defensive over his question, until I turned toward him and saw the look on his face. It said that he figured that was what I was going to say and that I couldn’t find a tactful way to say it.
I didn’t know what to think about that.
“He’s not racist,” I told Kael as we drove. I couldn’t think of anything my dad had ever said or done to make me believe he was. “He’s just kind of an asshole.”
Kael nodded and leaned back in his seat.
“This dinner will drag on longer than it should. Too much food for three people. Too much matching cutlery, too much everything.”
Kael nodded again. Ugh, his silence here wasn’t helpful. He wasn’t prepared for my father.
I made sure to stay on the main road, really the only route I could navigate without getting lost in the sprawl of Fort Benning. We were less than five minutes from my dad’s house. But I was more than half an hour late. It would be fine. I was an adult, and something came up. They would get over it. I repeated that to myself and began to concoct an excuse that didn’t necessarily involve a stranger staying at my house.
My phone vibrated in the cupholder between us, and I reached for it the moment I saw that it was Austin calling. I couldn’t remember the last time he’d returned one of my calls.
“I’m going to get this, it’s—” I didn’t finish explaining to Kael.
“Hello?” I spoke into the phone but got only silence.
I lifted it from my cheek. “Damn it.” I’d missed the call. I tried to call him back, but he didn’t pick up. I hated feeling like I let him down by missing a call or not being there for him, even though he had no problem ignoring my calls and casually treating me like an inconvenience.
“If you see the screen light up, tell me. The sound doesn’t always work.” I looked down at my phone and Kael agreed with a nod.
“Another broken thing,” I swear I heard him say. But when I asked him what he’d mumbled, he shrugged.
I turned onto my dad’s street and tried to spend the last two minutes of the drive conjuring up an achievement, or something I could stretch to sound like one. I would need something to talk about after the scolding for my extreme tardiness. My dad always asked his darling wife and me the same questions. The difference was, it only took her planting a flower bed or going to someone else’s kid’s birthday party to get praise, when I could save a small village and he would be like, That’s great, Kare, but it was a small village. Austin once saved a slightly larger village and Estelle created two villages.
It wasn’t healthy to compare myself to his new wife or to my brother—I was self-aware enough to know that. But the way he cosseted her still bugged the hell out of me. And then there was the fact that Austin was my dad’s doppelg?nger, and I was my mom’s. We were twins, but he looked like him and I looked like her. This worked out better for my brother than it did for me; to my dad, I was a copy, and a constant reminder of my mother.
“We’re almost there. My dad’s been in the Army a long time.”
Kael was a soldier; he wouldn’t need more of an explanation. He nodded beside me and looked out the passenger window.
“How long have you been in?” I asked.
I heard him swallow before he spoke. “Little over three years.”
“And you’ve already deployed?”
He nodded. “Twice.”
I was curious to know more, to ask him if he liked being in the Army, but we were pulling up in front of my dad’s house.
“We’re here,” I warned him. “It’s like a whole fiasco. Three courses. Lots of small talk and coffee after. Two hours, minimum.”
“Two hours?” He blinked.
“I know. I know. You can take my car if you want to skip it, as long as you pick me up later.”
“No, dinner’s cool. Anything else I should know?”
“My dad doesn’t do strangers. We could lie and say you’re my brother’s—Austin’s—friend? He’s my twin.”
“Austin. Got it.” Kael opened the passenger door and leaned down to talk to me while I was still in my seat.
I checked my hair in the mirror. It was almost dry. The air was thick with humidity and it showed. I wiped away the little black specks of mascara under my eyes.
I grabbed my phone. Austin hadn’t called back. The pounding guilt was there again for not answering the call. It was only one call, I reminded myself.
“I’ll tell you, however awful you think it’s going to be, it’s gonna be worse than that.” The more I thought about it, he probably should have stayed in the car. I didn’t even know him and he wasn’t exactly friendly—but neither was my dad.
“Mhm,” I thought I heard him say. I looked up as the passenger door shut. The reality of just how bad an idea it was to bring a stranger to Tuesday dinner was sinking in.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
I was fidgety, wiping my hands on my legs. I always did that when I was nervous. We walked up the sidewalk as the little solar light trail was turning on with the sun going down. The house was brick, recently power-washed, and clean as always
“I’ll do the talking,” I said to Kael, as we approached the door. “Let me explain why we’re late. Why I’m late.” Then it dawned on me who I was talking to. A soldier wouldn’t have a problem being quiet, especially not this one.
I really could have used a shot of tequila, or some magic pill to get rid of the race of thoughts tearing at my mind. Distracted by my anxiety, I started to knock on the white wooden door, then realized what I was doing, opened it, and took my shoes off, suddenly mortified that Kael could see I didn’t have matching socks on. He politely took his boots off, setting them next to my little sneakers.
“One of the many rules in this house,” I whispered to him, and he nodded, looking me in the eyes instead of around the room.
He followed me into the kitchen, which was filled with the aroma of honey and cinnamon, and what might have been ham. It smelled like a holiday.