Page 25 of Best Woman

“Well if it isn’t my two favorite children,” my dad crows from the doorway.

“We’re your two only children,” I mutter, moving into an awkward hug. Even in sneakers, I’m half a foot taller than my father.

“What’s up, Pops?” asks Aiden, swooping in for his own much more genuine embrace, complete with manly back-patting.

The house is as cluttered as I remember from the last time I was here two years ago.

Every surface is covered in unopened junk mail, deflated Publix shopping bags, mugs of old coffee, half-read books with cracked spines, empty take-out containers, and, of course, a metric fuck ton of cat hair.

When my parents separated and my dad moved into a new apartment, the first thing he did was adopt a cat.

My mom was incredibly allergic, so it was the perfect symbol of his new life away from her.

The fact that I was also incredibly allergic to cats didn’t seem to factor into his decision.

Most of my memories of weekends spent at my dad’s are clouded by a haze of Benadryl.

I would take library books out to the community pool behind his apartment building and read all day while Dad and Aiden watched sports, coming inside only when I had to pee or was so hungry I thought I’d faint.

As soon as Dad dropped us back off at Mom’s I’d strip off my clothes and throw them in the wash, but I’d still be sneezing, bleary-eyed, and drowsy for days afterward.

When I turned fourteen, I stopped going altogether, filling my weekends with rehearsals and trips to the mall. Dad never seemed to miss me.

“Good to see you, kid,” he says. He’s always careful to call me things like kid so there’s a lesser chance of him forgetting to call me Julia. It hasn’t happened in years, but I still feel anxious around him, waiting for the other shoe to drop.

“How’s the Big Apple?” he asks after we’ve cleared off enough of the couch to sit on. One of his three cats winds its way around my ankles, so these jeans are definitely getting washed later, or possibly burned.

“Good.” There’s a beat of silence before I realize I should probably expand on that. “Yeah, everything’s fine, same old same old.”

“Job’s good?”

“Yeah.”

“How much money are you making now?”

“I don’t really feel comfortable answering that.”

“Aw, come on, you’re my…kid. What’s the big deal?”

Aiden joins us on the sofa, handing out cans of Diet Mountain Dew—which Dad drinks instead of water—and rescues me. “Come on, Dad, not everyone feels comfortable talking about money like that.”

“How am I supposed to know anything about your life,” he asks me, “if you won’t tell me?”

You’re not supposed to know anything about my life, I’d like to say. “So you need us to find your suit, right?”

Aiden and I leave Dad on the couch watching a game (I’m not sure what sport it is and I’d never ask) and head to the garage.

If the house is messy, the garage is postapocalyptic.

There are boxes everywhere, bikes that likely haven’t been ridden since the nineties, broken furniture, and a lingering smell of what can only be described as hopelessness .

If we’re able to unearth a suit from this, there’s no way it can be worn to a wedding this week.

Nevertheless, we persist.

“Do you remember this?” Aiden asks twenty minutes later, holding up a stuffed Kermit the Frog.

Something sharp twists inside my chest and I let out a little “Oh!” of shock, rushing over to grab it from him, but he’s too fast, snatching Kermit away and holding him above me, a haughty smile on his face. “You were obsessed with this thing.”

I stand on tiptoes, trying to snatch it away. “I’ve always had excellent taste in men.”

He yanks up an eyebrow. “Women too. Rach told me she talked to you about Kim.”

Ah, so this is why he’s holding Kermit hostage.

I step back and cross my arms over my chest and watch him do the same.

Inside, I’m sure our father is sitting on the couch with arms crossed exactly the same way.

The thought is sobering enough that I yank my hands free until my arms hang at my sides, hands clenched.

“Yes, we had a lovely little chat while your future wife peed for so long I was worried she’d lose a kidney. ”

He laughs. “Rach has a very large bladder.”

“I really don’t need to know how you know that.”

“You excited for my bachelor party?” he asks, starting to stack boxes in a worryingly wobbly tower.

After we leave here, we’re headed straight to Boomers, a hybrid arcade and mini amusement park where we used to have our birthday parties as kids.

Aiden couldn’t resist the lure of their frozen pizza and go-karts, so we’re going to spend the afternoon reliving our childhood, only this time with beer.

I’m half excited, half anxious. It’ll be the first time all the grooms people are gathered together, and I’ll be the odd woman out.

“Excited to kick your ass at laser tag,” I say, searching a shelf full of dusty lamps for anything that might resemble a garment bag.

“It’s gonna be an epic stag do.”

“You’re not British.”

“Bollocks,” he says in a terrible accent. “And I’m going to kick your ass at air hockey. Cheerio, pip-pip.”

“Not if I lock you in this garage with one of the cats.” Aiden might not be allergic, but he had an irrational childhood fear that the cats wanted to eat him. I watch him shiver with a smirk.

We continue searching and sorting in silence, the only sound the hum of the second refrigerator as it keeps cases of Diet Mountain Dew at the perfect temperature.

“Sorry if I embarrassed you in front of Kim last night,” he says after a few minutes. “You looked so cute together, I couldn’t help myself.”

“It’s fine,” I say. Guilt, my constant companion, floods back. I grab Kermit from where Aiden left him, press my face against his felt chest, and sneeze from the years of dust.

“I have to say, she looked pretty into you. Maybe all your teenage dreams are about to come true,” Aiden says. His earnestness hurts worse than if he were teasing me.

“Maybe,” I reply. Thankfully, I spy the garment bag wedged under a crate of vinyl records and call off the search, bringing an end to the conversation I’m dying not to have. Aiden knows me too well, will see through me too easily.

Back in the house, Dad is sitting on the couch, arms folded against his chest, asleep. He looks so small and frail, and I’m hit with a wave of affection for him. I don’t always like him, but I do love him. I’m pretty sure the feeling is mutual.

He stirs as I sit down next to him, eyes cracking open and taking me in. “Hey,” he says. “Find anything good out there?”

I hold up Kermit, and he chuckles softly. “You used to carry that thing everywhere. God, you were such a cute kid.” His eyes get that faraway look that tells me he’s lost in memories of a time when I loved him wholly and completely with the uncomplicated affection of a child.

The moment is broken when I look behind him, to where a photo of him and me at my high school graduation is hanging on the wall.

“Can’t you take that down?” I ask, pointing at the offending proof of my pre-Julianess. “I’m sure we have a more recent photo together that could go there.”

I expect him to get defensive, but instead he just looks sad.

“We don’t,” he says. I don’t have a response, so I just dig my fingers into Kermit’s threadbare green belly and let the sound of the TV fill the silence.

…

Three hours later, I’m taking a sharp corner around a racetrack in a go-kart that sounds like it should have been retired around when I went through puberty—the first time.

The entire bachelor party zooms around me in singles and pairs.

Brody and Brian, who are honorary groomsmen, have lapped us twice.

There was a little awkwardness when we all said hello.

Ben was the only one of Aiden’s friends I’d ever spent real time with, and I hadn’t seen the rest of them in years.

But they’d all clearly been primed and were perfectly nice.

Any lingering tension faded sometime between the second pitcher of beer and the first round of laser tag.

The twins win the go-kart race easily and request a beer each as their prize.

“No way,” says Aiden, slurring a bit. “Mom would kill me.”

When he’s distracted by some kind of zombie shooting game, I slip Brody and Brian sips of my beer as we munch on leftover pizza.

We’re the only ones at the table, and I’m reminded of the countless birthdays I spent seated at this same table with this same red-checkered tablecloth.

I always managed to end up sitting by myself while the other kids played, even at my own parties.

“Just pour us our own,” one of the twins begs.

“It’s not as illegal if you sip from mine,” I shoot back, watching Aiden pump his fist in victory across the room. He proceeds to give David, one of the groomsmen, a noogie.

“Come on, ” pleads the other. “Aiden is so lame, you’re our cool sibling.”

“You really think I’m that easy?” I shoot back, shaking my head.

Kids today. “Besides, we’re in Florida. I don’t need some concerned mother looking over here and seeing me getting you drunk.

” As I say it, I’m struck by how real that statement is.

While Boca Raton is a little bubble of quasi liberalism, this state is about as regressively conservative as it’s possible to be.

It’s always in the back of my mind, the need to be more careful here than I would be in New York.

But now I can’t help looking around, making sure no one is watching me corrupting my teenage siblings.

The best woman getting arrested would put quite a damper on the wedding festivities.

Satisfied we’re not being surveilled, I look back at the twins, surprised to find them looking at me with more thoughtfulness and, dare I say it, concern than I’ve ever seen.

“You don’t have to worry, Jules, we’d never let anything happen to you,” one of them says, rather fiercely.