Page 15 of Faking It with the Frenemy
Wyatt
The temporary residency Sweet Darlings arranged for me and Vi is in a detached wing of a fancy hotel. It has everything—a full kitchen, two bedrooms and a living room. But you can’t miss the fact that it’s a hotel as you walk through the lobby with a huge front desk to enter and exit. It’s just not a good environment for a child—all the guests coming and going make for a lack of the consistency she needs to feel secure—but we’ll be moving to our real home tomorrow morning. It took a couple of weeks, but the new place is just the thing—the kind of normal home in a normal neighborhood that a normal family might live in. Providing Vi with the stability she hasn’t had up to now is absolutely critical, and that means home-cooked meals, even though the leather-bound room-service menu on the living room table promises every culinary delight imaginable, including the bacon cheeseburger I didn’t get for lunch.
I pull the two salmon filets from the griddle and sprinkle them with chopped dil
l. The steamed veggies are done—thanks to the microwave and instructions on the back of the bag.
They look pretty presentable, if I do say so myself. And it only took me forty-seven minutes to make the dinner. Well, the concierge also sent me a recipe, just in case.
It’s easier to just order something that looks healthy off the menu, but it feels a little too impersonal. Vi deserves home-cooked meals and good conversation a few times a week so we can connect and rebuild our relationship. I know I’ve neglected that, being busy with work and all, coming home late, traveling and working on my patents. I thought Geneva was taking care of Vi…but it turned out she wasn’t. It pissed me off to learn that she fed our daughter nothing but takeout crap, then parked her in front of the TV after school. But what upsets me more is I didn’t know until it was too late. It was my job to know. I’m Vi’s dad.
Placing the plates on the table, I call out, “Dinner’s ready!”
A moment later, one of the doors in the hall opens and Vi comes out. She’s in a school uniform—a starched white shirt and pleated burgundy skirt. My little girl, so tall now, the center of my universe.
Right now, she’s sporting a shocking shade of red on her lips…and what the hell is that on her cheeks? “What are you doing?” I ask.
“What?”
“That. Your face.”
“Experimenting.”
“Experimenting.” When I was young, experimenting never meant anything good.
“Yeah.”
“With makeup.”
“Well, yeah. Duh.”
“Isn’t ten a little young for that?” What is a good age to start wearing makeup, anyway? “And where did you even get that stuff?”
She rolls her eyes. “I’m not a little kid anymore, Dad. Every drugstore has it. There’s no age limit on buying makeup,” she says like she’s explaining the facts of life to an idiot. She comes over and sits at the table. “I was trying to contour.”
My confusion must be obvious, because she sighs. Dad, the clueless adult. Then she wrinkles her nose. “I don’t like salmon.”
Finally a subject I can talk about with authority. “It’s good for you. Growing kids need good fat, and fatty fish is full of it.” I recite the information I read on a nutrition site.
Her mouth turns tight. “I’m not a kid.”
“Actually, you are.”
“I’m going to be in junior high soon.”
“Not for another two years. And junior high kids are still kids.”
“Elementary school is stupid anyway. I don’t know why I have to go. Can’t I just skip it?”
I do my best not to sigh. She’s been struggling since the divorce became final late last year. Leaving Corn Meadows for L.A. two weeks ago didn’t help, but it was necessary for the deal with Sweet Darlings. And Geneva getting remarried was a blow. Maybe Vi was harboring a secret hope that Geneva and I would reconcile, but that won’t be possible. Ever.
I need to find her a new counselor she’s comfortable talking to as soon as possible. I’m not qualified to deal with this on my own.
“You can’t just skip everything,” I say. “How are you going to learn what you need to know to be an adult? Besides, your school is one of the best in the city.” Dane would never recommend anything less than the best, even if he does have questionable preferences in tuna names.
She sneers, and her attempt to appear older than she is wrenches my heart. Why does she want to grow up so fast? Can’t she just stay my little girl for a while longer? I need to make up for the neglect she’s suffered.
“Krystal does the best contouring. She said her mom taught her,” Vi says, still refusing to touch her dinner.
