Page 46 of Brighter than the Boss
"Oh, there's our bag! I'll be right back." Sunny ran off to the conveyor belt, leaving me with the dog and her dad and a whole lot of awkward silence.
"You're the first man Sunny's brought home." John had stood back up and was looking at me with a straight face.
"Yes, sir. She mentioned that."
"You two serious?" Still no hint of a smile.
"I'd like to be, yes, but I'm leaving that for Sunny to decide." I glanced over at her struggling to get the suitcase off the belt. I wanted to run over to help, but I didn't want her dad to think I was running from his line of questioning.
Which I totally would be.
"I don't know you yet so I can't say one way or another, but isn't that a little risky? Leaving it all up to my daughter?"
"Well, to be quite honest, I don't know what I'm doing. I never envisioned being in a relationship with anyone, let alone someone like Sunny, so I'd rather leave the ball in her court. She knows where I stand, but she's got to decide if I can give her what she wants and needs." I slammed my jaw shut, wondering if I'd said too much or the wrong thing. Probably yes on both accounts. I didn't need to present all the reasons not to like me on a platter.
There was a beat of silence before Sunny reappeared at our side, suitcase in hand.
"Ready!" She was all smiles, looking back and forth at us, either oblivious to the tension or simply looking past it with her characteristic optimism that all would be well given enough time.
She'd have to be optimistic enough for both of us.
"Okay, let's get back to the house. I know your mother is looking forward to seeing you." John pulled his keys out of his pocket and led us over to the double doors sliding open to the parking lot outside.
I followed with Chili's crate in one hand, our suitcase in the other, having finally wrestled in out of Sunny's hand like I'd wanted to from the moment it came down onto the conveyer belt. If I let the dog crate get a little more jostled than the suitcase, I was sure it had nothing to do with payback for his lack of affection towards me. Thankfully, Sunny didn't notice the scratch of his little nails against the crate bottom as he tried to remain upright.
Sunny stayed by my side while we walked to her father's car, her refusal to ditch me for walking with her dad doing more for my confidence than all the pep talks I was having internally. Hopefully I could pull her aside and beg her not to leave me alone with her dad again. New rule for the weekend: stick together always.
Except for bathroom breaks. But even then maybe we could wait outside the door for the other person to finish. No, wait. That might be too weird. Damn, I couldn't think straight with these nerves. What the hell was wrong with me?
* * *
The rest of the evening passed without incident. The conversation with her mom and dad flowed naturally around the dinner table and I knew I'd found an ally in her mother when she winked at me and told John to quit with the twenty questions. She looked a bit on the frail side, with an old USC hat of Sunny's covering her bald head. However, she was lively in the conversation and flashed a million smiles throughout dinner, telling me exactly where Sunny had gotten her disposition from.
When Sunny pushed back from the table, excusing herself to go to the restroom, the nerves returned full force. I nearly followed her, even going so far as to stand up.
"Hey, Cain. Let me show you the rest of the property." John also stood up and put his hand on my arm, steering me toward the back door. I gave Sunny's retreating back one last look of longing before letting him push me outside. We walked across the small field in silence towards an old dilapidated barn, for which I was grateful, even though it felt like just a matter of time before the other shoe dropped. Before he told me to leave his daughter alone. Before he confirmed what I already knew: I wasn't good enough for Sunny.
John led me around back to a little white picket fenced-in square. He stopped and stared down at the ground inside the fence line, where wildflowers were growing. Not knowing quite where this was going, I stared too, trying to understand what I was looking at.
"Doesn't look like much, does it?" John finally spoke, his gaze still on the ground.
"No, sir." I clenched my jaw, waiting for the blow that was sure to come.
He finally smiled, eyes watery. "This is a graveyard of sorts. Marie and I buried eight children here. Eight times my wife got her hopes up, thinking we'd finally have a baby. Eight times her body miscarried and we grieved. She quit picking out names after the second one, thinking maybe she was jinxing her pregnancy. Ten years of elation followed by unthinkable sadness and despair. Anybody would think the universe was trying to tell us something. Hell, I heard neighbors and people we called friends whisper the same thing when they thought we couldn't hear them. We weren't cut out to be parents. Plain and simple."
Then he looked up at me, his gaze fierce, none of the softness I'd seen just a few moments before. I couldn't look away, knowing instinctively what he was telling me was important.
"We could have bought into that nonsense, but we didn't. We decided that being parents would bring us our life's greatest joy. We just had to keep the faith and keep trying. We could choose to be bitter or we could choose to believe there was a purpose. And I thank God every day that we made the right choice or we wouldn't have the gift of Sunny." He stepped closer into my space, making me fidget like a little kid in the principal's office, still not knowing where this conversation was going.
"So you can think you're not cut out to be in a serious relationship, but you'd be wrong. Life is full of surprises. You just have to keep your eyes and heart open. When you find something that lights you up on the inside, like what happens to your face when I see you look at my daughter when you think no one's looking, you gotta grab that happiness and not let it slip away. Now Sunny hasn't shared with me exactly what happened in your past, but I see you today. The man that you are. Not who you were or who raised you. I see you. And you're a good man. And you make my daughter happy."
My jaw unlocked, only to fall open and stay there. The guy had barely spoken a complete sentence to me since we'd gotten here and now here he was dropping bombs on me in the form of life advice. And his guesses about my hang-ups were spot on. Eerily so.
"So what's got you all twisted up, thinking Sunny won't choose you, even though you're clearly crazy for her? Even though, from the little she's told me over the phone, she's crazy about you too." His eyes turned kind, the corners crinkling with the hint of a smile.
I wanted to be angry at him for the invasive questions, poking around in areas that didn't concern him. But on the tail of that thought, I realized that my mental healthdidconcern him. If it affected his precious daughter, the one he'd endured a decade of pain to get to, then my current state of affairs affected him too.
Instead of counting to ten, I repeated my mantra and pictured Sunny's face with that smile of hers that woke up the dead corners of my heart. The look of hope and admiration that would shine in her eyes, like I could slay dragons and conquer the world for her.
