They each point their bottles at the other with a smile, like it’s some inside joke.
“Seriously,” I ask. “Who started it?” Inside I pray for satisfaction. Everything inside me wants it to be my father. Much to my dismay, he points the neck of his bottle toward Mom.
“The hell I did, Butler. I couldn’t get away from you fast enough,” she sasses with an exaggerated eyeroll. “Smug, arrogant,” she ticks off before turning to me, “your father was a true jackass.”
“We didn’t like each other much,” Dad adds, “at first, but I damn sure liked what I saw at that party.”
“Until I shot him down,” Mom quips, tabling her empty beer and snatching his for a sip.
“We went toe to toe for weeks until I shut her up,” Dad continues.
Mom smiles in reply. “Not a bad way to be silenced.”
“This stays PG-13,” I remind them both through a forced grin.
“Let’s just say Nate didn’t like answering to me.”
My smile grows authentic as I grin between them. “So, Daddy, you didn’t know she was your new boss when you met at the party?”
“When he hit on me at the party,” Mom corrects. “Only to get shot down and shown up by his new boss the next day.”
“You knew?” I ask Mom.
“Oh yeah, once he introduced himself. So, I just let him run his game.”
“Let’s get this straight,” Dad spouts, taking his beer back, “you were never my boss. You only had me by the balls because the ad company you purchased bankrolled the controlling interest in my paper at that time.”
“Either way, you were completely misogynistic.” Mom widens her eyes at me. “Yep, baby. Hate to break it to you, but your father was a pig.”
“Horseshit,” he grins. “I just loved seeing you riled up. Especially in that red dress—which you only wore twice in two weeks because you saw my eyes dropping inappropriately when you did.”
“So, it was hate to love?” I ask between them.
“Not at first,” Mom says softly. “I had just jumped out of fresh hell with an ex, and your father had just endured the same not long before we met.”
Whipping my attention back and forth, I do my best to gauge their expressions for any bitterness, lingering sadness, or resentment—especially in my father’s eyes. Thankfully, I come up empty.
Be satisfied, Natalie. Be satisfied. Cancel your trip and move on with your life.
“So, you didn’t like each other, and then?”
“Then we did,” Mom says, her eyes meeting Dad’s for a loaded pause.
“Who broke first?”
“Baby, you’re rather inquisitive tonight,” Mom says, her brows drawing as she breaks her stare off with Dad. “Why such an interest?”
“You were getting to the sex part, weren’t you?” I divert, palming my forehead.
“Well, you weren’t immaculately conceived,” Dad delivers bluntly.
“No shit,” I say as Mom narrows her eyes. She doesn’t like me cursing but allows it because my father has the foulest of mouths. Not that I didn’t taste my fair share of soap or get grounded for PMS-induced emotional lash-outs by both.
“When did you know, Daddy? That it was Mom?”
He tilts his head, studying my mother, who stares back at him unabashedly. The answer settled somewhere in her chest. She knows it, and I’m the only clueless one. Dad grips my mother’s left hand, her large diamond glittering due to the candle burning at the center of the table as he slides his thumb along the back of it.
“I can’t wait until you get to figure that out for yourself,” Dad replies softly before turning to me, his blue eyes glowing with sentiment, “because it’s one of the best parts of living.”
“You aren’t going to tell me?”
“No,” Mom answers in reply, getting lost in the moment with my father.
They love each other, still, and it’s clear. They’ve spent my entire existence loving each other, so why am I so determined to dig into my father’s past?
Be satisfied, Natalie!
But I can’t, especially after living the first year of Dad’s old relationship—line by line—until I was forced away from my desk by Mom’s summons to dinner. I spent the entire ride to my childhood home in stunned silence, the truth evident. My father might have been madly in love with Stella Emerson, but Stella Emerson reciprocated that love fully, in black and white.