Lex and Lu(60)

She glanced back at him, but his eyes were downcast, so she avoided direct contact. Even through the haze of anger, she could appreciate his beauty. His hair was much longer than at the funeral. Even though it looked like it needed to be cut, it worked for him. No surprise there. Everything worked for Lex Pellitteri. She could tell he’d just come from practice because his fresh, clean scent had bombarded her senses in the office. He hadn’t shaved yet today. Dressed in worn jeans, sneakers, and a sweatshirt, he oozed sex appeal. That she could be checking him out at this most inappropriate time seemed to send her anger to another level.

She finally found herself in front of Nina. Careful to maintain her daughter’s dignity, even though she wanted to grab her by the ear and pull her out of the school, she merely said, “Let’s go.”

Her clipped voice and stern tone were not lost on her daughter. Looking up, Nina stood to precede them out of the main office. When they reached the parking lot, their division as a family seemed to hit each of them. Suddenly they all stopped, not sure how to move from this place to the next. More than any event in the last several months, this pause in their movement stood out to Lu as the epitome of their lives. Three people. One man, one woman, one child—intimately connected without a tie to hold them together. How could Lu have thought that Nina could handle this when she herself had been avoiding it?

“See you at the house?” she said, not wanting to issue an invitation but not willing to let him get out of this either.

Lex continued to look anywhere but at her.

“Sure,” he answered. Turning away from them, he walked toward his car.

“I don’t want to take the train,” Nina whined.

“I don’t really care what you want,” snapped Lu.

Lu knew the moment Lex remembered that she didn’t have a car. Turning, he walked back toward them. “Sorry. My car’s over here.”

Lu really didn’t want to be in the car with him. The proximity would be stifling, but the quicker they got home to figure all this out, the better. The car ride was as bad as Lu thought it would be. No one spoke, each wrapped up in their own thoughts. As they traversed the London streets, Lu felt the anger from earlier in the day continue to beat at her. While she knew that they needed to deal with this specific issue, she also saw this for the opportunity that it was. Lex needed to step up and she intended to tell him that. When they pulled up to her building, Lex stopped the car to let them out.

“I’ll park and be up,” he told her.

Without responding, she grabbed Nina’s hand and crossed the street. When they entered the apartment, Lu, who could only deal with one thing at a time, walked Nina to her room.

“You are to stay here until I tell you to come out.”

“Time-out is for babies,” Nina replied defiantly.

Lu glared at her, but kept her voice calm and level. “The only activity you are allowed to engage in for now is to read. If I come back and you are doing anything else, it will be reflected in your punishment.”

“I’ll just go live with Dad!” Nina yelled as tears pooled in her eyes.

Great, thought Lu. This is a threat I’ll have to live with for the rest of my life. Maturity and maternal wisdom flew out the window as Lu responded, “You do that. I’m sure that will work out very well. You can learn how to be a good daughter and he can learn how to be a dad!”

Horror dawned on Nina’s face and she crumbled to her bed as she yelled, “I hate you!”

Lu slammed her door. She moved down the hall and stopped, leaning on the wall. Real mature, she thought. She lightly banged her head against the wall. “Fuck,” she whispered. What kind of haze had she been living in? How did she not see that Nina was struggling with all of this? “Mother of the year candidate I’m not,” she muttered.

At the knock on her door, she heaved herself away from the wall. Depositing her purse, which she hadn’t released when they walked in, she moved slowly toward the door. Complete-bitch mode took over. Pulling open the door, she glared at Lex. For the first time since the Sunday-school room, blue eyes met green. What Lu saw surprised her. The green eyes, which were usually so full of merriment, were lifeless and dull. Empathy filled her. Then out of nowhere, the anger that had been absent over the last several months blossomed into a prickly thorn that burst the bubble of empathy. “Ready to start acting like a father?” she snapped.





26





“Yeah right, Lu. I’ll get right on that. Although somehow I think you’d be just as pissed if I knew exactly what I was doing.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” she fired back as she stepped away from the door so that he could come in.