Page 37 of The Kiss Principle

Not Igz. He’d said,With you. NotWith you and Igz. Which didn’t mean anything, I told myself. He felt sorry for me. But it was a nice thing to say.

“I practically raised Augustus,” I said. Once again, the words seemed to slip out before I could stop them. “There’s almost eight years between us. His dad was out of the picture before his cock was dry; we have different dads, in case you hadn’t figured it out.”

“What about your dad?”

“He died.”

“Oh, Fernando.”

“It was a long time ago.”

“I’m so sorry.”

“Yeah, well, I’m sure if he’d lived longer, I would have realized he was a tremendous disappointment. My mom’s taste in men is un-fucking-real.” I adjusted the vents even though they didn’t need adjusting. “I was only three or four, I think, so I don’t remember much about him. He’d take me to the park; I remember that.”

“He must have been a good dad because he raised a good son.”

I shrugged. “He did stuff for me. All the stuff Mom didn’t want to do. And when he was gone, somebody else had to do it.”

When I looked over, the expression on Zé’s face was too intense, and so I focused on the road.

We drove around Laguna Beach for a while, looking for parking. It was crowded—it’s always crowded—but after a while, we lucked into a spot as a Honda Pilot was pulling out. I parked the Escalade, and we got Igz into her stroller. Zé did it, I mean. No fumbling with the buckles. No messing around with the straps. I tried to set up the stroller, and he was kind enough not to laugh as I made a jackass of myself. He made a gimme gesture with one hand, since he had Igz in the other, and thenhe did some sort of twist-yank-shove movement, and the stroller popped open.

“Are you a fucking ninja?”

“Fernando, I don’t have a lot of life goals, but I would be happy if Igz’s first word wasn’t fuck.”

I grinned. “Too fucking bad.”

He gave me a look as he got her settled in the stroller, but I was starting to be able to tell the looks apart. This one made me grin harder.

The buildings around the beach itself were a mix of styles—a lot of concrete and glass of Late Modernism, but some holdout, squat brick mid-century stuff, and, even older, Craftsman bungalows with shake roofs. They weren’t homes anymore, but now they housed coffee shops and bistros and little art galleries. There were microhotels and tiny two-story strip malls. There were yoga studios and places that did a million kinds of facials and clothing boutiques the size of a box of rubbers. All very charming. I fit right in.

We took our time walking toward the beach, stopping to window-shop, stopping again to get coffees, stopping because we found a little park, and the shade was nice, and the smell of the ocean mixed with the perfume of the trees in bloom. Something was bothering me (not, for a change, Mom), and it took me a while to put my finger on it. A pair of guys in expensive shoes and matching shorts stared at us as they passed. An elderly man smiled and nodded and made way too much eye contact. A woman in an enormous floppy hat stopped to coo over Igz, and as she straightened, told me—us—“You have a beautiful daughter.”

“They think we’re a couple,” I said out loud.

Zé laughed. He laughed hard. He laughed so hard, in fact, that he had to stagger in a circle, and then he winced and rubbed his knee, but he kept laughing.

“Go on,” I said. “Enjoy yourself. This is going to be a great fucking memory when you have a peg leg.”

Eventually, he stopped laughing. Not that I minded much. He had these perfect laugh lines that bracketed his mouth. He was usually so calm, so tranquil, and I enjoyed the way happiness made a riot of his face. And listening to him laugh reminded me how long it had been since, well, that had been part of my life. Since Augustus had left. And that had been years ago.

“I’m sorry,” he said as he rubbed his knee. “It’s, I thought you knew—I mean, that old guy winked at you.”

“He didn’t—”

Zé had a tiny, hidden grin.

“You assclown!”

“They think we’re a couple.” He repeated my words with what sounded like despair.

“Well, I didn’t know, weasel-dick. How the fuck was I supposed to know?”

But at the same time, it actually hadn’t been a surprise—more of a revelation, if I had to put a word on it. Like the pieces had been there, and my brain had been trying to put them into place. The way we walked next to each other. The way he caught my arm when he wanted to show me something. How he asked for something out of Igz’s bag, and I got it for him. How I’d put my hand at the small of his back to steady him when we went up the stairs to the coffee shop, and the feeling of firm muscle and warm skin. Everything, in fact, about how we moved around each other, shared each other’s space, talked and laughed. And then the part of my brain that was one hundred percent Fer added, Everything except fucking.

“I’m sorry,” he said again, but I could tell he still wanted to laugh. “Does it bother you?”

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