“I don’t know if I should tell you this, but I saw Warren Wilde,” César said.
It felt like my heart stopped for a moment and I carefully put down my phone. “Where? Why?”
“He came by the practice facility to see us play. He wanted to check on Davis Blake’s recovery.”
“Oh. How…how was he?” The last time I had seen him, he’d been high as a kite and ranting to me that he’d impregnated my mother and told her not to have the baby. Me.
“He seemed like he’s doing ok,” César told me. “I didn’t know if you’d be upset about it.” His eyebrows lowered and he watched me.
“I don’t care about Warren Wilde,” I said. “But I don’t want to talk about him, either. Let’s talk about…today I…” I couldn’t think of anything but my father. Even more about a 20-pound newborn would have been a welcome distraction.
“Camdyn, he told everyone that he’s moving out of state. Maybe to California or Arizona.”
“He is?” I breathed hard, and felt my heart pound. “Great. Good for him. Good for me that he’ll be gone.” I stood up. “I’m going upstairs. I’ll eat later.”
“I knew I shouldn’t have told you. Wait a minute.” César moved fast, and he was at my side before I went very far. “You lost all the color in your face when I said his name.”
“He’s an asshole. He’s a horrible guy and you shouldn’t be around him. No one should.”
“It didn’t sound like it was certain that he was moving. Maybe you could talk to him about it,” César suggested. “I can’t imagine not talking to my family.”
“We’re not exactly in the same situation, are we? Your family and mine are very different. And no, I won’t talk to him. God knows what else he would tell me, what other horrible things he’s been hiding that I don’t want to hear.”
“He is your father.”
“So what?” I challenged. “I don’t need him, and anyway, I can’t trust him. He’s a liar, a horrible liar. For my whole life, he pretended that he loved me, that he was my generous, wonderful uncle who paid for everything out of the goodness of his heart. He tricked me and he tricked Soleil.”
“Your mom? How did he trick her?” César asked.
“Soleil was extremely trusting,” I explained. “I’m sure he managed to fool her somehow to get her to sleep with him. Probably she was drunk or high, or both, and he used it to his advantage. And he lied to me about why she kept me, too. He said that neither of them wanted me, and she only had me because she wanted to get money from him.”
César looked pained. “That’s awful. That must have been terrible to hear.”
“Yeah. And it’s so infuriating because I know it’s not true! That’s not how she was, not at all. She never thought or cared about money.” That was why we’d always had issues with our lights getting turned off, or with her having too many cars. It was feast or famine, and Soleil had never been able to keep track of our finances.
“Then tell Wilde all that,” César said. “Talk to him and tell him he’s a lying jackass.”
“He doesn’t deserve to have any contact with me. First he ruined Soleil’s life by getting her pregnant, then he dropped a nuclear bomb on mine, announcing that he was my dad and he and my mom had been hiding it. He tried to ruin my memories of my mother.”
César just shook his head. “Your situation is seriously fucked up. Your mom…”
“What about her?”
He shook his head more. “She either slept with her sister’s husband for money or because Warren Wilde manipulated her? That’s terrible.”
“Yeah. Terrible to sleep with someone and get pregnant by him,” I said angrily.
“I’m not talking about us.” He looked impatient. “It was a mistake,” he reminded me.
Exactly. To my father, to my mom, to César, I was a mistake. “I’m not ever, ever going to tell the baby that we didn’t want her,” I said loudly. “You can’t ever say that to her either, even if you drink too much or something. Not ever.”
“What?” He looked shocked. “I would never say that! And I do want her, of course I do.”
I knew that he did. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have said that stuff before about babies being gifts. He wouldn’t currently be cooking spinach so I’d have more vitamins and minerals, he wouldn’t keep knocking on my door to tell me to turn off my light and go to bed, he wouldn’t do any of the things that showed how he already cared about her. I just nodded, feeling as tired as I ever had. “I’m going upstairs,” I said again.
“Stay down here and eat.”
“I’m not very hungry right now. I’ll eat later, I swear,” I told him over my shoulder.
My phone was going nuts. I lay in my bed and looked at all the notifications of people very excited to come to my house—César Hidalgo’s house—and party. I tried to get excited about it again but I kept thinking about my father, Warren Wilde, and Soleil, my mom. How awfully he had treated her, and me, too, by lying and pretending. I hated him.
I fell asleep and woke up hours later, starving. When I went down to the kitchen, I found that César had left dinner for me, covered and still warm in the oven. I even ate the spinach.
∞
“Wait, I think I met him,” Lindy told me. She stirred some honey into the herbal tea she had ordered instead of coffee. “Yeah, he totally came to a party I catered! You live with him?”
“He’s my roommate,” I explained, like I had to explain to everyone who freaked out about me living with César. “We’re only roommates.”
“I don’t know how you can keep yourself off him. He’s gorgeous.”
“I’m not interested. Really, I’m not!” I exclaimed, when she looked at me with a “bitch, please” kind of face. “He’s great, but
