Page 30 of The Main Event

“Also, if Jesse has time, can you have him come out?” Daisy asked. “Apparently, he and Jax used to go to the same gym in Boston.”

“Oh, yeah?” Lux’s expression changed in an instant. “Were you guys friends?”

“We had beers more than a few times,” I replied. Suddenly, I felt as if I was on the hot seat and my balance was precarious. “We went to his brother’s taproom and watched a few games.”

“Cool.” Lux’s smile was warm. “I’ve been saying that Jesse needs more friends to hang out with. He works too much, and he spends almost all of his free time when he’s not working with me.”

“I thought that’s how you liked it,” Daisy teased.

“Yeah, but I want him to feel like Salem is his home. Right now, he keeps calling it my home.” Lux took on a far-off expression. “It’s fine, but it can’t possibly hurt for him to have another friend close by. I’ll send him out.”

I was thoughtful as I watched her go. “She’s interesting,” I said finally.

“She’s awesome. If you want to know anything about Salem, anything about the history, she’s the one to ask. She used to work as a tour guide.”

“And now she owns a restaurant?”

Daisy shrugged. “Life takes swerves. You should know that.”

“Yeah.” I tapped my fingers on the table as I regarded her. Even in the muted light of the restaurant, she practically glowed from within. “What made you want to go into party planning?”

“I don’t know that I ever sat back and dreamed about party planning,” she hedged. “It wasn’t a childhood dream. When I was little, I wanted to be an astronaut.”

“What stopped you?”

“Apparently, you have to be good at math. I can run a calculator with the best of them, but it’s not my strong suit.”

“What is your strong suit?”

Her shoulders hopped. “Most everybody I know says I’m a people person. I think I just like making people happy. That’s what my moms say anyway.”

She’d opened the door, and I only debated on whether to walk through it for a few seconds. “You have two moms?” I prodded finally. I’d already heard the basics. I figured her take on it would be more interesting.

She smirked at my obvious discomfort.

“You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to,” I said hurriedly. “It’s really none of my business.”

“It’s fine,” she assured me. “It’s not as if I’m embarrassed by it or anything.”

A server I didn’t recognize picked that moment to deliver our drinks—I figured Lux was back trying to schedule a man date for Jesse and me and she’d lost interest in waiting on us—and I took advantage of the momentary distraction to take a large gulp of the beer. It was good.

“When I was in elementary school, my parents started having deep talks behind closed doors,” Daisy explained. “They never fought in front of me. They always got along. Heck, to this day, they’re still best friends.”

“And what were they talking about?” I asked.

“The fact that my mother was suddenly attracted to a woman in her yoga class.” Daisy’s smile was rueful. “She tried to fight her feelings. She never wanted to hurt my dad. She tried to ignore what she was feeling for a long time, pretend it wasn’t happening. Eventually, they talked about it, though.”

“And your father was cool with it?” I tried to picture myself under the same circumstances, and I couldn’t imagine it going well.

“I don’t know that he was cool with it,” Daisy replied. “He didn’t want my mom to suffer, though. They tried counseling for a bit. That didn’t take for obvious reasons. Then they started talking about a divorce.

“It wasn’t some big traumatic thing, if that’s what you’re wondering,” she continued. “My father didn’t move out right away. He commuted to work from here for another six months or so. Then they decided it was better if there was just a little bit of buffer space between them.”

“Because your father was hurt,” I surmised.

“He had a broken heart,” Daisy agreed. “He didn’t want to hurt my mother in retaliation, though. He wanted her to be happy. So, he got a place in Boston, and their custody agreement was very liberal. I still went to school here, but my father wouldcome over in the middle of the week to have a dinner, just him and me, and I spent a lot of time in Boston on the weekends.

“My mother and Rosie moved in together when I was in middle school and were married not long after that,” she continued. “She was always like a cool aunt in a way. I could talk to her about things I couldn’t talk to my mother about because, even though she realized she was a lesbian after being married and caused a scandal, she’s still something of a prude.”

---