Exes and Ohs Page 10

  “Should I be frightened?” I asked when he picked me up on Saturday morning.

  “Probably.” He made no move to touch or kiss me when he opened the passenger-side door, but he didn’t seem hostile, either. Just frustrated and exhausted.

  “Are you nervous about meeting Leo?”

  “I don’t know.” He started the car and turned the radio up, drowning out any attempts at further conversation.

  The sky was heavy with thick gray clouds. When we pulled into the Santa Monica Beach parking lot at nine-thirty I tugged at the sleeves of my black hooded sweatshirt. “Here we go.”

  He slammed the driver’s side door. “Here we go. And Gwen?”

  “Yeah?”

  “I shouldn’t have been so…curt with you this week. In your office.”

  “Don’t worry about it. I completely understand—I’d be outraged with me too.”

  This elicited a small smile. “I’m not outraged with you. Anymore.” He looked like he had more to say, but he stopped himself and leaned in, giving me a quick buss on the cheek. Then, before I could reciprocate, he had shoved his hands into his pockets and started walking toward the ocean.

  Harmony had suggested that we all meet by the Ferris wheel at the Santa Monica Pier. Her reasoning seemed to be that the cotton candy, flashing lights, and mimes on the boardwalk would distract Leo from the built-in trauma of the whole experience.

  Foolproof, right?

  Alex took my hand as we neared the sand. I squeezed his fingers. He squeezed back. Neither of us said a word.

  Screeching gulls wheeled overhead. At this hour, the sand was nearly deserted except for the occasional jogger and one daring child who, wearing a hooded coat and no pants, darted in and out of the icy surf, laughing uproariously.

  I smiled and pointed. “Obviously a midwestern child.”

  Alex did a double take. “Where are that kid’s parents?”

  I pointed to a pair of nontanned, nonblond adults huddling under a blanket and waving at the child. “Right there. See? Midwesterners.”

  He shook his head. “Do you know how cold that water is right now?”

  “That’s why he’s wearing a coat.”

  “I wouldn’t go surfing in this weather without a full wet suit,” he said. “And no child of mine—”

  He broke off and let go of my hand. “But of course, I have no idea what my child has been doing for the last four years.”

  I reached out for his hand. “Hey.”

  He pulled away. “Those Synchrona maniacs probably encourage nudist wading. The colder, the better.”

  “Come on. Harmony loves Leo,” I said. “She’s a little, you know, nontraditional, but she tries to be a good mom.”

  He stopped walking and turned to me. “How many times have you met Harmony? Once? Twice?”

  “Twice.”

  “Twice,” he repeated. “I almost married the woman. I know she’s very charming at first. But, trust me, there is no telling what she would or wouldn’t do.”

  I didn’t break eye contact. “She loves Leo. She really wants the best for him.”

  He shrugged. “Yeah. She loved me too. She tends to get love confused with self-interest.” He turned back to the concrete path that led up to the pier. “Let’s do this.”

  Leo apparently felt that his first meeting with his father called for full Spider-Man regalia. When Harmony finally showed up at the Ferris wheel, twenty minutes late, the child by her side was a human billboard for all things arachnoid. Hat, sweatshirt, sneakers—all red, blue, and webbed. He looked smaller than ever, somehow.

  He smiled shyly when he saw me. “Hi, Miss Gwen.”

  “Hi!” Harmony shoved her gold-rimmed Chanel sunglasses up into her tawny hair. “Sorry we’re late, but the 10 was totally backed up.”

  Leo peered up at his mother from beneath the baseball cap brim. “Mommy, you said we’re late ’cause you lost your lipstick.”

  “Well, whatever. There was traffic too.” She gave me a cute little squinchy-nosed face. “Kids.”

  Both of us turned to Alex, who was staring at Leo with his mouth open and his hands behind his back. I waited for him to comment, but nothing seemed to be forthcoming. Either he was bonding with his offspring or he had gone completely catatonic.

  Harmony followed my gaze over to Alex. She grinned and framed Leo’s shoulders with both hands. “So? What do you think?”

  No response from Alex. Definitely catatonic.

  I rubbed my fingertips across the soft cotton shirt covering his shoulder blades. “Hey. How you doing over there?”

  Harmony gave up on both of us and turned to the only socially competent member of the party.

  “Pookie, this is your dad.” She patted his head. “Remember how we talked about meeting Dad?”

  “Yeah.” For the first time since I’d met him, Leo took his hat off. He kept it clenched in one hand as he crossed his arms over his chest and sized up Alex. “Are you my mommy’s new boyfriend?”

  Alex’s mouth snapped shut. He looked at Harmony. “Am I what?”

  Leo sighed and rephrased the question, speaking slower this time. “Are you going out with my mommy?”

  Harmony’s giggle had an edge of desperation. “Pookie, no. We talked about this, remember? This isn’t Mommy’s boyfriend. This is your daddy.”

  The little boy stuck out his lip. “You told me I didn’t have a daddy.”

  Alex looked at Harmony with eyes like obsidian.

  “Silly! I never told you that,” she trilled, a bit hysterical now.

  Leo nodded earnestly at his mother. “Yes, you did.” He leaned way back, looked Alex right in the eyes, and put his cap back on. “Mommy says you’re going to marry her. And come to live with us.”

  Alex stopped breathing. I heard his air passage empty out in a strangled choke.

  Leo kept staring. “So, are you?”

  Alex turned to Harmony. “May I speak with you for a moment? Alone?”

  She winced. “Now?”

  “Now.” He wrapped his hand around her elbow and dragged her toward the railing several yards away.

  I figured that as long as I was going to get left out of the grown-up discussion, I might as well make myself comfy at the kids’ table. I sat down on the wooden slats of the pier. “So. Leo. What’s new?”

  He pointed to the Ferris wheel. “My mommy’s gonna take me on the rides today. The big ones. Scary ones.”

  “Oh yeah?” I patted the floor next to me, and he collapsed in a cross-legged heap.

  “Yeah. She promised. And we’s going to get cotton candy. As soon as I meet my dad.”

  “Well…” I pointed over to Alex, who was muttering in low, black tones. “There he is.”

  “Uh-huh.” Leo seemed unimpressed. “He’s tall. But not as tall as Fider-Man.”

  “You know what?” I bumped gently against him with my shoulder. “I know your dad. He’s nice. Really nice.”

  His eyes were big as dinner plates. “Do you think he’ll be nice to my mom?”

  “Um…” I glanced over at Alex and Harmony, both of whom were gesticulating wildly and snarling. The wind changed direction, blowing small snatches of conversation our way.

  “How many men have you paraded through your house in front of him?”

  “My personal life is none of your business.”

  “Apparently it is, if you’re trying to coerce me into moving in with you. I can’t believe you told him that. What the hell were you thinking? You are so incredibly—”

  “Shut up! Just shut up! You’re gearing up to spend your next life as a frog.”

  I gave Leo my best fake grin, which of course he saw right through.

  “They don’t like each other,” he announced.

  “Well…” I nudged at a candy bar wrapper with my sandal toe. “I know he’ll like you.”

  The dinner-plate eyes widened to serving platters. “Why will he?”

  “He’s going to love you, Leo. You’re his son,
and dads love their sons.”

  “He has to?”

  “He wants to,” I assured him. “He’s very, very lucky to get a little boy like you for his son.”

  He twisted up his mouth and looked over at Alex and Harmony, who were still knee-deep in the world’s hissiest hissy fit. “Mommy says I have to be nice to him.”

  “She’s right. You’ll be nice to him, and he’ll be nice to you.”

  He drummed his heels against the wooden planks. “She says we’re going to be a family now.”

  “Oh really?” I was not going to pump an innocent preschooler for juicy details. I was not going to pump an innocent preschooler for juicy details.

  As it turned out, I didn’t have to. He was more than willing to spill his guts.

  “And when my dad comes to live with us, he’s gonna come to Synchrona too.”

  My eyebrows shot up. “He is?”

  “Yep. ’Cause that’s where dads go. Mommy said.”

  “Interesting.” Before this day was over, we were going to need a riot squad, a tranquilizer gun, and someone to buy the movie rights.

  There was no point in trying to convince him that Alex and Harmony were old meditation buddies. Four-year-olds can scent emotional deception from fifty paces. So Leo and I broke off our conversation, stared intently at his parents, and waited for them to wrap up the brawl.

  Harmony was mid-“you son of a—” when I cleared my throat.

  She and Alex whipped their heads around to look at us.

  “Hi. Remember us?” I tilted my chin down at Leo. “We’re getting bored. And chilly. So could you guys table the discussion for now?”

  Alex gave his ex a final glare. “We’ll finish this later.”

  “Oh, I think we’re done.” She hoisted Leo up into her arms. “What do you want to do, Pookie?”

  He tucked his face into her neck. “Ferris wheel.”

  She kissed the exposed patch of hair near his ear. “You want to go on the Ferris wheel?”

  “Yuh-huh. With you and my dad.”

  Another long pause. The three adults all glanced around with shifty eyes. Leo didn’t look at any of us.

  Harmony shifted her hold on him. “You think me and Daddy should both come with you?”

  “Yep. But not Miss Gwen. She’s not in our family.”

  The kid who had been my best buddy not three minutes ago turned on me with the swift ferocity found only in hungry sharks and cranky preschoolers.

  Alex came to my defense. His first verbal exchange with his only son went thusly:

  “But you like Miss Gwen, don’t you, Leo?”

  “No. She’s ugly.”

  Alex recoiled as if punched in the face.

  Harmony gasped. “No, she’s not.” She gave me the patented eye-rolling smile of parental apology. “She’s very pretty.”

  Leo shook his head, burying it farther into his mother’s shirt. “She’s a demon.”

  I bit back a bubble of laughter.

  Alex crossed his arms and looked at Harmony, who said, “Don’t blame me. I don’t know where he picks these things up.”

  I held up my palm. “Relax, relax. I’ve been called worse.”

  My erstwhile boyfriend looked dismayed. “You have?”

  “Sure. Preschoolers aren’t exactly masters of understatement. It’s no big deal. Seriously. I think he’s just a little…overwrought.”

  Alex nodded. Harmony seemed unconvinced.

  “Really?”

  “Of course. Very understandable. I mean…” What I meant, obviously, was who wouldn’t be overwrought with this freak show of a family, but I kept this to myself. I got to my feet, brushed off my pants, and smiled in what I hoped was a nonchalant fashion. “Why don’t you three go on the Ferris wheel? Give Leo a chance to talk to his dad?”

  Harmony saw her opening. “Maybe I’ll stay down here too. Let my little Pookie bond with Daddy?”

  “Nooooo!” We all got a glimpse of Leo’s tonsils.

  “You should go,” I told Harmony. “He’ll be more comfortable if you’re there.”

  If only we could say the same for “Daddy.” Alex had lapsed into a long, heavy silence. He kept raising his right hand, almost touching his child, and then stuffing his fist back in his pocket.

  Leo wiped the scowl off his face. “Okay. Let’s go. Daddy.”

  And Alex just melted from the inside out. I could see it in his eyes—the resurrection of all the sitcom fantasies, complete with home-baked apple pie and impromptu baseball games in the meadow. He looked at Leo, and something steadfast and pure emerged from the confusion and animosity.

  Father and son smiled at each other, and no kidding, the bright morning sun literally burst through the clouds. A vast patch of flawless blue spread out overhead.

  I know. Total atmospheric overkill, but impressive nonetheless. I watched Alex’s face, I felt the solar heat start to seep into my black sweatshirt, and I knew that, no matter what happened between him and me, I had done the right thing encouraging Harmony to call him.

  His veneer of casual confidence relaxed into actual happiness.

  “Okay.” He offered his hand to Leo, who took it. “Three for the Ferris wheel.”

  “Aww.” Harmony dug a Kleenex out of her purse, apparently forgetting that she had cursed this man to reincarnation as an amphibian a scant five minutes ago. “You guys are the cutest!”

  “Come on, Mommy.” A four-year-old waits for no woman.

  Alex regarded me with the kind of adoration that I had tried to wrest out of Dennis for two fruitless years. “Thank you, Gwen.”

  Then he took off with his child and his ex-girlfriend, all of them chattering about Spider-Man and snakes.

  I didn’t want to watch him walk away from me without a backward glance. So I leaned over the railing and watched the tide pound against the pier’s stout wooden pilings.

  I told myself that I wasn’t the pathetic, soon-to-be-ex girlfriend who refused to see the neon writing flashing on the wall. I told myself that brand-new relationships had weathered worse than this.

  But I knew what was coming.

  And sure enough, when Alex returned from the Ferris wheel, windblown and toting Leo’s baseball cap, he stopped grinning and placed his hand over mine like an oncologist who’s about to break the bad, inoperable news.

  “Gwen.”

  I knew that tone. “Oh no.”

  He furrowed his brow. “I think I’m going to have to get back together with Harmony.”

  11

  Picture me saying, “What?!?” And then picture me saying it about five hundred more times while internally rattling off the F-word, and you have a pretty good idea of my reaction.

  When I finally pulled it together enough to say something other than “what” I segued right over into disbelief and hostile recriminations.

  “But you said…” I took a deep breath and tried to remain rational. “You said, and I quote, that there was no way, no day…”

  “Gwen, okay. Come here.” He tried to put his arms around me, but I wrenched away.

  “Do not touch me,” I spat. “Oh, wait, it’s too late for that, isn’t it? I cannot believe you”—I glanced over at Leo, who was pointing out sailboats to Harmony ten feet away—“trifled with me like that, and now…”

  Pieces of my heart that had just started to heal split wide open again, and I started to cry, thus completing my total humiliation.

  He stopped trying to comfort me but positioned his body so that my escape route was blocked. “I did not trifle with you. Last weekend meant something to me.”

  “So much that you just have to run back to Harmony?” I shook my head and swiped at my eyes with the backs of my hands. “You know, it’s bad enough that you’re treating me like a one-night stand. Did you have to lie this morning too?”

  He sighed. “I didn’t know.”

  “You didn’t know what?”

  “I didn’t know what it would be like to actually meet my child. And now
that I have, I just think that—”

  “You dragged me out here just so you could dump me in front of your ex-girlfriend! That is beyond sick.” Then a horrible thought occurred. “Is this supposed to be some kind of revenge for not telling you about Leo? Because if it is—”

  “Gwen, are you listening?”

  I shoved my hair back with both hands and seethed. “Yes.”

  “I didn’t lie to you.”

  “Really? Then riddle me this, Batman—how exactly does promising not to go back to an ex-girlfriend, then going back to said ex not constitute lying?”

  His put a hand on my arm. “I didn’t have all the information. Harmony is threatening to move to New York and take Leo with her if I don’t—”

  “Batman?” Leo suddenly materialized between us, glancing from my face to Alex’s. His mouth was open in a round little O.

  We both stared down at him. “I’m sorry, what?”

  Leo poked my kneecap. “You said something about Batman.”

  I shrugged away from Alex’s hand. “Oh. Yeah, I did say ‘Batman,’ but I was just—”

  “Are we going to see Batman?” His eyes lit up. “I know! Let’s go home and watch Fider-Man.”

  I arched an eyebrow at Alex. “I think that’s a fine idea. Why don’t you go home? It’ll give you a chance to bond with your bride-to-be. And P.S.: enjoy the Synchrona initiation rites. I hear they’re into nude wading.”

  I pivoted on my heel and strode toward the sand. Fast, but not so fast that he couldn’t have caught up if he’d tried.

  Behind me, I heard Leo yelling, “Mommy! Guess what? My dad’s going to watch Fider-Man with me!”

  I found a taxi idling near the hotel next to the pier, yanked the door open, and flung myself inside. As the driver pulled away from the curb, I risked a look back at the beach. I didn’t see Alex anywhere.

  “Man alive. Sit down. Have another Sweetart. Actually, here, just take them all.” Cesca pushed the foil roll of candy across the kitchen counter.

  I lowered my head until my forehead thunked against the cool beige Formica. “I’m way beyond Sweetarts.”

  “Hang on. I have Oreos.”

  I shook my head. “Do you have any of Mike’s cigarettes laying around?”