Tattoos & Teacups (9 page)

“You’ll need a jumper or something, honey,” I told her. “It’s chilly out.”

“Dad,” she whined. “No one says ‘jumper’.”

“Sweater. Cardigan. Hoodie. Coat, jacket, fleece. Bloody poncho, Chlo, just put something on.”

She rolled her eyes and stomped back up the stairs.

“Good luck,” Mike murmured, slapping me on the shoulder and wandering back off into the house.

She appeared with a hoodie with the logo for her cheerleading squad on it and, at my raised eyebrow, threw it on over her head.

Chloe had taken after her mother in the looks department for the most part; like her mother, she was petite, her eyes too big for her face, giving her a permanently startled, deer-in-headlights sort of look which had always amused me when she was a baby. As she’d grown, so had the lashes framing her rich brown eyes (the color, at least, she’d inherited from me), making her more of a doe-eyed Bambi now.

“Not that cold,” she said as we headed to the car.

“Cold enough,” I told her.

As we pulled off down the street, I looked over at my daughter. “How did the competition go yesterday?” I asked.

“You remembered,” she said, looking at me like I was an alien. I felt like one.

“Of course,” I told her. It was a little white lie. Lu had reminded me.

“We got second place,” she said. “Out of fourteen teams, it was pretty good.”

“Congratulations,” I enthused.

“Yeah. Thanks.”

We went through our normal script of questions: how was school (boring), homework (done), boys (Dad,
please
), her mother (fat). I laughed at the last one, and she cracked a smile.

“She was huge when she was carrying you,” I said. “For such a little woman, it was funny. She was like a weeble.”

“What the hell is a weeble?”

“Weebles wobble but they don’t fall down?” I said. “No? Oh. They were toys your Aunty Jilly and I had when we were kids.”

She shrugged and gave me that blank teenager look that said,
You’re old.

“So, Dad,” she said, her eyes fixed on the road. “Why aren’t you married and having kids?”

I choked on nothing. “I don’t know,” I said after clearing my throat. “I’m just not.”

“Don’t bullshit me, Father.”

“Language.”

“Tell me.”

I sighed. “Who have you overheard? I’m not mad, Chloe. I’m just curious.”

“Mom was on the phone to Aunty Jilly and said something about a boyfriend,” she muttered.

“Ah. Um. Yeah. Well.”

“Concise,” she said sarcastically.

“I’ve been seeing him for a few months.”

“Oh.” Silence. “How come you never told me before?”

“It was never an issue. You were too young to understand, and I didn’t want to upset you by trying to explain.”

“I don’t care,” she said, screwing up her nose and frowning.

“That I’m… gay?” I asked.

“No. It’s cool.”

I nearly swerved off the road. “Are you kidding me?” I asked.

Chloe rolled her eyes. “Liza at school has two gay dads. They buy her whatever she wants.” She looked at me hopefully.

“Well, Liza—” The name caught in my throat. “—is lucky. Your gay dad is still just a poor professor.”

She sighed dramatically. “Well, I think you should marry a rich guy. Then I can be a bridesmaid at your wedding. Blake’s parents got married the other week and they had a huge wedding at the country club and loads of gifts. And cake.”

“Is Blake a boy or a girl?” I asked, teasing.

“A girl,” she said, clearly scandalized at my ignorance.

“I don’t get this name androgyny,” I said. “How are you supposed to know if it’s a boy or a girl?”

“Not everyone is called John or Jane these days,” she said. “It’s cool. Mom is going to call the baby Columbus or Carter if it’s a boy or Kennedy or McKenzie if it’s a girl.”

“God help us all.”

“Dad! Be nice. You chose my name, right?”

“And you should be glad I did,” I told her. “Otherwise you might be stuck with a monstrosity of a name like McKenzie McKinnon.”

“You could have been a bit more imaginative, though. Like Khloe Kardashian. She spells her name with a K,” Chloe informed me.

“Who’s Khloe Cardigan?” I asked her. I was being a dad on purpose, and it prompted the right kind of reaction from her. My daughter sighed heavily, and I could almost hear her eyes rolling in her head.

“Dad.”

“Well,” I said. “There’s no precedent for how the letters K H should sound next to each other in the English language. It could be like ‘knife’ with a silent K.”

She muttered something about having a teacher for a parent, which I chose to ignore.

“So her name could be pronounced like….” I considered it. “Hulooo. Hulooo Cardigan.”

The snort of laughter was inelegant and sounded so much like her mother it made my heart ache. “You’re such a geek,” Chloe informed me.

“Thanks,” I said. “Tell your mom that for me, would you? It’s the risk she’s taking with all of those creative spellings.”

She smiled and tried to hide it by looking out the window.

“So, what’s his name?” she asked.

“Chris,” I told her.

“Do I get to meet him?”

“I think he’d like that,” I told her.

Chloe kicked her heels up onto the dash. I decided not to argue with her and let her do it.

“You look different,” she said suddenly, sitting up straighter.

“I do?”

“Yeah. You’ve had your hair cut. And you’re growing a beard.”

“I’m not growing a beard,” I said, laughing. “I just didn’t shave this morning.”

“And… and… you look… different,” she finished lamely.

“Better?” I teased.

“Anything is an improvement.”

“I’ll call Joan Rivers, see if she can get you a job. Your critical eye is clearly an untapped talent.”

“Ha ha,” she deadpanned. “He’s changed you,” she accused.

“Maybe,” I said lightly. “I don’t mind if he has. Like you said, it’s an improvement.”

She turned the radio on then, effectively ending the conversation with Lady Gaga. I considered calling Chris and picking him up on the way back to the flat but decided against it, thinking Chloe would probably be more comfortable meeting him in a more public, nonthreatening environment. Neutral territory. Switzerland. She would probably rejoice at a trip to Europe, actually. Although my first choice of location would be taking her back to my homeland.

But I digress.

I needed to stop back at the flat to pick up my wallet, which I’d forgotten in my haste to leave the house that morning, and Chloe wanted to see the cat. We ended up crashing in front of the TV with two mugs of coffee, leaving me wondering when my teenage daughter had started drinking the stuff. I blamed her mother.

We were tuned in to Oprah when my phone buzzed. I smiled as I answered it to Chris.

“Hi,” I said, trying not to let the goofy smile escape from my face.

“Hey. Did you pick her up okay?” he asked.

“Yeah, we’re just chilling before we go do something.”

“’Kay,” he said, and I heard him shifting about.

“Are you still in bed?” I asked incredulously. It was closing in on 11:00 a.m.

“Dad, please,” Chloe muttered.

“I didn’t get in till three,” Chris protested.

I told him to hang on and turned to Chloe. “Is it okay if we pick him up in an hour? I’ll take you out for lunch.”

“Sure,” she said, shrugging it off.

“Get your ass out of bed,” I said to Chris. “We’ll be there in an hour.”

“Fine, fine,” he muttered and rang off.

Chloe was silent, staring determinedly at the TV. I wasn’t too concerned. I was aware of the soporific, trancelike effects of television, especially on young minds.

“Where did you meet him?” she demanded after a few minutes.

“Hmm? Oh. At a pub,” I said.

“A gay bar?”

“No, Chloe,” I said gently. “Just a pub. We just got to talking.”

“Then how did he know you’re gay? You don’t look gay.”

This was the part of the coming-out-to-my-daughter process I was dreading. Explaining things. Maybe it would have been easier to tell her when she was younger.

“I was out with Alex. He sort of orchestrated our meeting.”

“Oh.”

More silence.

“Chloe,” I said, attracting her attention. “I know this is a lot to take in all at once. But I hope you’ll give Chris a chance. He’s a very nice person.”

She nodded and stood, taking both our mugs back to the kitchen. “We should go,” she called.

If possible, the drive over to Chris’s place was even more awkward. I could tell she was nervous, on edge, and strangely defiant in her own way. I couldn’t figure out why.

I beeped the horn rather than getting out of the car, and he was halfway out the door already, shouting obscenities at his housemates.

“Motherfuckers,” he yelled, laughing as he jogged down the path. He was smiling.

“Hi,” I said as he hopped into the back of the car.

“Hey, baby,” he said, leaning through the divide to plant a quick kiss on my cheek.

“Chris, this is my daughter, Chloe,” I said.

“Oh,” she squeaked.

“Nice to meet you,” he said, awkwardly angling his arm through to shake her hand. And he gave her one of those cheeky, sexy, winning smiles. She was a goner.

Chris smelled nice, not too strongly of anything but enough that his presence was announced to our olfactory senses. His hair was a mess, and he was wearing jeans and a soft, gray knitted sweater that covered his arms to the wrists. It covered nearly all of his tattoos, but not the skull on his hand.

Chloe was staring.

“I thought we could go to Bennie’s,” I said, suggesting Chloe’s favorite Italian restaurant, one that I hadn’t had a chance to take Chris to yet.

“Oh, I love that place,” Chris interjected quickly. “They make the best NY cheesecake I’ve ever had.”

“Their cheesecake is the best,” she said breathily, physically twisted in her seat now, trying to get a better look at him.

“She likes me already,” Chris stage whispered to me.

I smiled and kept my eyes on the road.

Chloe excused herself to the bathroom once we’d been seated, and I turned to Chris, leaning forward so my forehead touched his. He kissed me quickly and sat back.

“Okay?” I asked him.

“Of course. She’s great.”

“I think she likes you,” I teased him. He rolled his eyes.

“Everyone likes me.”

The waitress came over, and I ordered Chloe a Coke, not sure if she was still on her iced-tea obsession or not. When she came back from the bathroom, Chloe had taken her sweatshirt off, and I would have sworn the tank top was dipping lower over her chest than it had when we’d left her mother’s.

She nodded her thanks at the Coke and looked up at Chris.

“How old are you?” she said frankly.

Chris nodded, as if he’d been expecting her question. “Twenty-three.”

“Bit young for you, isn’t he, Dad?” she said as she concentrated on her drink.

“Chloe,” I said, my tone issuing my warning.

“What?” she said. “He’s only nine years older than me.”

“And nine years younger than your dad,” Chris said reasonably.

“If it’s not such a big age gap between you two, then it’s not such a big age gap between your boyfriend and your daughter,” she said.

I went to speak, to chastise her, but Chris gave me a look. A look that clearly said,
Shut up and let me handle this
. I decided to trust him. Besides, I couldn’t figure out how best to argue with her.

“Chloe, I’m younger than your dad. There’s no use in trying to pretend that I’m not,” he said. “But it’s because of this that we get on so well. With my career, I’ve spent a long time bouncing around from place to place and partying. Since we’ve been together, I’ve brought that sweet, fun nature out of him, and he’s given me something to ground myself to.”

“I don’t see where you get the benefit from this,” she said bluntly.

Chris laughed. “I get someone who is willing to take the time to get to know me rather than having rather… brief relationships.”

“So you fuck around,” she said.

“Chloe!” I exclaimed. “That’s out of order. Apologize.”

She did, reluctantly. “But you’re safe, right? I mean, I don’t want my dad to die of AIDS.”

“Jesus Christ,” I muttered.

“Rob,” Chris said sharply. “She has questions. This is a lot to handle. Give her a break.” He turned back to the daughter he knew how to handle a lot better than I did. “I don’t have AIDS, Chloe. I don’t have HIV. I don’t fuck around, no, but I’m not exactly famous for having long-term, committed relationships.”

She nodded. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be,” he said quickly, before I could get a word in. “I don’t have a problem with answering your questions.”

She seemed to soften after that, and I was happy to let Chris orchestrate the conversation about their shared interest in music and Chloe’s favorite bands. I heard the word “Bieber” and tuned out. Besides, watching them interact was far more interesting to me than actually taking part in their conversation.

For all I knew, these could well be the two most important people in my whole life.

We ordered another round of drinks and a few baskets of chips to share as awkward conversation softened into something slightly more natural. It was clear, to me at least, that Chloe’s guard was still up and she didn’t trust Chris just yet. That was okay, though. If there was one way that Chloe took after me that I was actually happy about, it was in her natural reluctance to trust people.

By the time we were ready to leave the restaurant, I was getting a bit tired of Chloe’s attempts to flirt. Apparently she didn’t need to trust the guy to flirt with him. Any confidence in her that I’d gained slowly slipped through my fingers.

Every day she got a little older, a little bit more like her mother, and suddenly the sheer loathing Lu’s parents still had for me got a little bit more understandable.

When Chloe climbed into the car after saying goodbye to Chris, I led us away a few steps for a more private conversation.

“Okay?” I asked him.

“I’m fine. Stop worrying.”

I kissed him softly.