Page 68 of The Parent Trap

“Absolutely. I can’t wrangle a deal like that, Delia. I don’t know Haimovitz, I wasn’t the one who got him on the hook, and I don’t know the proposal you’ve been working on. What could I do? Use my conversational skills to…soften things up.”

“But with me, in a personal sense…”

“I’m just…being me. Talking to you.”

“Putting me at ease.”

He sighs, but it’s frustrated. “You’re still chewing on things. I can tell. Somewhere in the back of your head, the wheels are turning. About me. About…everything.” He didn’t say “about what happened,” for which I’m thankful. “You said you didn’t want to talk about…anything heavy…so I’m just keeping it light. But it’s not an act. I’m not—I’m not manipulating you.”

He pulls into the drive-through lane of a Jack in the Box.

I frown at him. “Uh-uh. No way. I don’t eat that kind of food.” He lifts an eyebrow. “I don’t! I haven’t had a cheeseburger in…god, years.”

He shakes his head. “So skip the bun and the soda. Just…live a little. Loosen up. Enjoy a fuckin’ burger and fries, man. Once isn’t going to kill you. You’re not going to eatoneburger and a handful of French fries and suddenly wake up looking like the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man. Woman. Whatever. It will befine. It’s the habits that get you, anyway.”

We’re at the order box, and he orders…I don’t know. Probably a giant burger with everything on it. He looks at me, expectant.

“Fine,” I huff. “Just order something for me. No onions, no tomatoes. And no bun.”

He places an order for me, and we pull through, pay, and get our food. Instead of pulling into a parking space and digging in, though, he leaves the lot. I don’t ask, this time. Try to just enjoy the ride, Delia, I tell myself.

We drive another ten or fifteen minutes, and then he pulls off into a little roadside park overlooking the ocean. There are picnic tables under old pine trees, a little abandoned playground with rubber-seat swings and a rusted yellow merry-go-round. He exits the car, carrying our bag of food and tray of drinks over to a picnic table.

The food, as he pulls it out of the bag, smells admittedly delicious. I honestly don’t remember the last time I ate fast food.

Freshman year, maybe?

Tentatively, I nibble the end of a fry, and Thai just watches me. “Ohmygod.” I eat the rest. “This is why I quit eating this shit—it’s too fucking good.”

“It really is. I only eat it once in a great while myself.” He rips the wrapper off a straw and shoves it into his paper cup. “This, right here, this is my Achilles.”

“The soda?”

“Dr. Pepper.” He takes a swig, and sighs. “So fucking good. Absolutely horrible for you—pure cancer in liquid form. But damn—so good.”

He watches me eat another fry.

“These are my weakness,” I say. “God, I can’t believe you talked me into this. I’m going to gain literally five pounds from this.”

“So what?”

“So…you don’t have a clue what it takes to keep it off. No clue. None at all.”

“No, I don’t. I’ve been blessed with the metabolism of a jackrabbit and incredible genes.” He takes a huge bite of a burger. “But.” Another bite. “I do work hard to look the way I do. I know it’s not the same. I just know, once in a while, you have to do something for you. You have to just…kick off the—I don’t know—the bullshit. The rules and rigid, dogmatic formula for success. Take your hair down, take the bra off, and put your feet up.”

I don’t answer—I’m too busy inhaling the burger. He got me unsweetened iced tea—and it’s amazing. Everything is amazing.

“Yeah, I don’t do that,” I say, wiping my lips with a napkin. “The hair down, bra off, feet up thing. It’s not in my repertoire.”

“I know,” he says. “Thus…” he gestures vaguely, at himself, at me, at the food, the car. “All this.”

“Thus, prickly and uptight.” I eat the fries more slowly, savoring them.

“Hey, you said it, not me.” He grins as he says it, though, and while the truth of it stings, I know somehow that he doesn’t mean anything unkind by it.

Perhaps the opposite.

Maybe.