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But Javi said this was our Friday night date, and even if it, too, was weird, since it was pizza at his place where he thought I was platonically spending the night (though, I hoped we made out a little), it was definitely a date this time. And you didn’t wear a lounge outfit on a date.
You also didn’t shower and put on a lounge outfit if you wanted to convince your date to let you pack your stuff and move home after it.
But my lounge outfits were super comfy.
You see my dilemma.
I hadn’t come up with an answer before the doorbell rang.
Javi was pulling out the cork on the bottle, and his attention went to the door. Mine did too.
I heard the cork pop before I heard the bottle hit the counter and turned back to Javi as he said, “Pizza’s here,” while moving to the door.
I rounded the island into the kitchen to find a wineglass (if he had one, just a glass-glass if he didn’t) and open a beer for him when I heard him state angrily, “How many fucking times do I have to tell you, this is not gonna happen.”
My gaze raced that way, and at my angle, I could see a man standing outside Javi’s door.
He was huge, like Javi, though older and blond.
But I knew instantly it was Javi’s ex-NFL dad.
The dad who had created a new definition of deadbeat, leaving his son and ex-lover to go it alone on the streets.
I saw the direct lineage through the clean, square, perfect cut of the man’s strong jaw, the straight, exquisite line of his handsome nose, the high faultless angle of his cheekbones, the strong flawless ridge of his brow, all of this he gave to Javi.
Javi’s coloring came from his Latina mom.
The rest was all his dad.
All of it.
Including his tall, muscular body.
Whoa.
“Son, I have—” the man began.
“I’m not your fuckin’ son,” Javi interrupted him with such venom, I felt his fangs sink into me all the way across his townhouse.
And that poison was so potent, it instantly turned my blood ice cold.
“You have a brother and two sisters,” the man said.
“You had one of those kids on the way when you cheated on your wife with my ma and left her and me swinging in the breeze.”
“I made a mistake.”
Wait.
Hang on.
What?
Oh no, he did not.
A mistake?
He characterized what he did as a mistake?