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“Oh. Okay. Let me get another piece of bread.”
I hear something being tossed in the trash, presumably bread with mustard on it.
“He doesn’t like tomatoes either.”
Allie blows out a sigh. “I guess I never knew that.” Something else gets tossed in the trash.
“Ham, not turkey,” Bug says in frustration. “Here, just let me do it.”
I close my eyes and lean against the wall, wishing their conversation would take a turn.
“Darla, there’s a lot your dad and I don’t know about each other. Like what kind of sandwiches we like to eat, what fruit we like in our smoothies, and how brown we like our toast. But, honestly, right now, those things don’t matter. What matters is how much we mean to each other. All that other stuff will come in time. And Darla, I hope you know that you mean something to me as well. I’m not trying to step on your toes or take your dad away.”
“Whatever. Here.” I cansensethe eye roll.
“That looks like the perfect sandwich. Thanks for teaching me how he likes it. You’re coming with us to look at houses, right?”
“Dad says I have to.”
“You don’t want to?”
I step into the kitchen, but neither of them sees me.
Bug shrugs.
“Buying a house is a big deal, and we want you to like it as much as we do,” Allie says.
“It’s just a house.”
It saddens me that Bug is acting this way. After all the ‘requests’ she shared with me over the past few weeks about what she desires in a house, she’s acting like it’s no big deal now that she’s talking with Allie about it.
“Your opinion is important to us.”
“Us,” Bug says, repeating the word like it’s a curse word. “You say that like you’re my mom or something. Me and my dad, we’re the ‘us.’ You’re not my mom. You’ll never be my mom. You’re just someone he slept with and accidentally got pregnant and now he has to‘do the right thing’.”She emphasizes that last bit with air quotes.
I’ve had all I can take, so I stride forward. “That’s enough, Darla. You need to apologize to Allie.”
“For what?”
“You’re being disrespectful.”
“I’m being truthful.”
I sidle up to Allie and wrap an arm around her shoulders. It fucking breaks my heart that she looks sad. And it guts me that my own daughter is the reason for her sadness.
“We aren’t together because we’redoing the right thing.”
“That’s not what you said two weeks ago.” She pops a potato chip in her mouth.
Allie stiffens, and I know Bug sees it.
Bug continues, “Did you or did you not say that you were going to step up and raise them because it’s what’s in their best interest?”
I scrub a hand across my face. “Well, yes, but—”
Allie shrugs my arm off. “You said that?”
I blaze a punishing look at my daughter. “Go unpack. Now.”