Keep Me If You Can (If You Can #3)

7. No and No Again

Chapter seven

No and No Again

“W ho the fuck is K. DUNN?” I asked, staring at the name flashing on my phone screen.

“Probably a telemarketer or a wrong number,” said no one since I was studying by myself in my apartment a few days after JP’s visit.

But I did think it, and I thought about not answering it like I always did when I didn’t know who was calling, and then I tapped on the screen.

“Hello?” I said.

“Hello,” said a familiar but unrecognizable woman’s voice. “Is this Nellie?”

“Yes,” I said. “Who’s this?”

“It’s Kimberlee.”

I blinked in surprise. Or annoyance. Or confusion. Or all three.

I’d never been close with any of my dad’s girlfriends. I’d never wanted to be close with any of them. Before Kimberlee, some of them had tried, like they thought if they got on my good side, it would be less obvious they were just looking for a sugar daddy. But it had always been obvious that it was all a show, just like every other plastic thing in my dad’s life.

Kimberlee, on the other hand, confused the hell out of me. She was nothing like my dad’s ex-girlfriends. I couldn’t figure out why she was with him; if I separated the fact that she was dating my dad from the rest of what I knew about her, I might think she was a decent person.

But she knew what kind of person my dad was.

She’d seen what kind of person he was.

She’d watched him empty my closet as punishment for doing the best I could in a bad situation. She’d listened to him berate me for daring to express my condolences to a widow at a funeral because he was trying to make a business connection. She’d stood by while he pressured me to change to a career I didn’t want so I could make him look good. And yeah, she’d said a few things to him here and there, but it wasn’t like it bothered her enough to leave.

Which was fine. It wasn’t like I expected her to end a relationship she was clearly getting some kind of kickback from just because the guy she was with was awful to his daughter sometimes. I didn’t need her to do that for my benefit.

But I didn’t need to like her, either.

“Kimberlee,” I repeated.

She chuckled. “I know it is a little out of nowhere and I apologize. But I wanted to speak with you about something and I wanted to make sure you understood it was coming from me.”

“Okay,” I said unsteadily, both suspecting and dreading where this was going. “What’s that?”

“Well, I know you are very busy with classes this semester and have told Max you cannot attend any events, but I’d like to plan a dinner party—”

For fuck’s sake.

“Can’t make it,” I interrupted. “I’m busy that day.”

“I haven’t set a date yet,” she said, her voice gentle.

“Yeah, but I’m busy that day.”

Kimberlee reacted with the same infuriating grace she always extended to me. “It will be a small dinner party, with only the important people in attendance. Close friends and some of my family and, I hope, you as well. Because you are one of our important people, Nellie.”

I tried not to roll my eyes, then remembered Kimberlee couldn’t see me and rolled them to my heart’s content. “I don’t have time to drive to Montreal, attend a party, and come home. I have a ton of work for school.”

“I know,” she said. “Which is why I was thinking of the Thanksgiving long weekend, so—”

“Kim, I’ve told my dad I’m going to Toronto for Thanksgiving and that I can’t be there. So no. Definitely not. I am not coming to your dinner party.”

“Okay,” Kimberlee said, and I cringed with guilt at the soft disappointment in her voice. “I understand. Is there perhaps another time—”

“No.”

“You would only need to be here for a bit,” she said. “I would take care of everything and—”

“No.” I picked at the skin around my thumb. “You’ve seen what my dad is like. You know how he acts around me.”

“He will not be like that,” she said. “I swear to you. I will not allow it.”

“Well, you’ve got nerve, I’ll give you that.”

“Excuse me?”

“It takes a lot of audacity to think you could change anything about my dad,” I said.

She sighed in frustration. “Nellie, can you please just consider—”

“No,” I said.

“But—”

And I hated that it happened. I hated that I couldn’t control it.

But I snapped.

“No,” I said. “And no again. And no as many times as you need to hear it to get it to stick. Because honestly, Kim? I don’t like him. And by association, I don’t like you . I don’t want to spend time with either of you. I want to finish my year of university and move on with my life. I get that you’re with my dad because he’s got a fat bank account and—”

“I am not,” she snapped back, and I was almost stunned by the anger in her voice. “That has nothing to do with why I am with Max.”

“Sure it doesn’t,” I said. “It’s totally normal to date a sociopath in his fifties when you’re in your thirties. Just another one of those phases, like being emo or pretending to like country music.”

I heard the deep inhale she took to steady herself. “It is not my place to tell you what to do or ask you to understand what is going on, but I promise you, I am not with your father for his money.”

“Whatever,” I said. “It doesn’t matter. I don’t care what he promised you to get you to call and pretend like he’s not behind all of this, but the answer is no.”

“He did not—”

And I hung up, fuming.

Then, still fuming, I tapped on my messages.

Me

You’ll never guess what—

And then I stopped.

And I stared.

And I deleted the four words I’d typed, mindful of avoiding the arrow that would’ve sent them away from my control, before closing my chat with JP.

I considered texting Sydney, but part of me knew I’d end up telling her my instinct had been to text JP over her or Anne-Marie or literally anyone else. That problem wouldn’t exist with Anne-Marie, since the last thing I wanted was for her to find out that I was talking to her brother at all, but I realized as I looked at my chat with her that I hadn’t actually heard from Anne-Marie for a few days. Guilt ate at my stomach and I opened the chat, firing off a quick message asking how she was because it felt weird to jump into my own problems when I hadn’t even realized she wasn’t texting me as much as usual.

Then I chewed my thumbnail for a moment before calling my mom.

I couldn’t tell her any of this, of course. I hated lying to her, but I hated the idea of disappointing her even more. And picturing the look on her face if she ever found out I’d asked my dad to pay for my degree was enough to make my stomach fold in on itself again and again and again, until it was twisted into a little ball small enough to move up my throat so I could spew it on the ground in front of me. In her mind, I’d cut ties with him the moment I’d turned eighteen like she’d told me to.

Especially because the only reason any of this had worked in the first place was because of how fiercely independent both me and my mom were. It wasn’t weird to her that an entire summer had gone by without me going back to Toronto. When she was around my age, she’d gone over a year without seeing her parents because she was travelling around the country doing her own thing.

It wasn’t that she didn’t care. She did, and I’d never question that. The way she showed she cared was by trusting that I knew what I was doing and letting me do it.

Even though I had no idea what I was doing and clearly shouldn’t have been trusted.

So I couldn’t tell her why I was upset. I didn’t even tell her I was upset at all. I just knew hearing her voice would help, and like always, it did.

“John was absolutely in the wrong!” my mom said heatedly as I sprawled on my living room floor, laughing.

“Okay, but you can’t tell me you don’t think Santi deserved it after the tentacle dildo episode,” I said.

“All his clothes, Daughter of Mine. He had nothing to wear but maid outfits and cat ears for the entire trip!”

“Mother of Mine, do you seriously think he didn’t go out and buy different clothes after realizing John switched the luggage?”

My mom didn’t go silent immediately. She made a noise that was kind of like a high-pitched “ah,” like she was about to say something, then cut herself off when she realized she couldn’t argue with me.

“Or he could have borrowed something from Liam,” I continued. “Remember that episode where they were fighting about the sweaters because they both wanted the only large one and they ended up measuring everything ?”

“I can’t believe you got me into this damn podcast,” she finally said. “Why are you like this?”

“Blame yourself,” I said. “You raised me. And anyway, you haven’t even listened to the next episode yet.”

“Oh God. It gets worse?”

“Well, you know what they say,” I said. “Don’t give someone a raccoon tail butt plug and a maid outfit unless you’re ready to see them wear it.”

“No one says that, hon.”

“Well, they should.”

“You’re joking. He didn’t seriously use the butt plug.”

“Well, either all of them lied or Santi’s really good at PhotoShop, because John said there were pictures.”

“Oh Lord thunderin’ Jesus,” she said. “You can’t be serious. Santi would not use a butt plug.”

“Are you saying you don’t think Santi’s the kind of guy whose wife owns a strap-on?”

“Nellie!” she exclaimed, scandalized even as I cackled. “How do you even know about that kind of thing?”

“I’m almost twenty-two, Mom.”

“Oh, God,” she said. “You don’t own one, do you?”

“Mom!”

“I’m just curious,” she said. “You don’t have a boyfriend so it wouldn’t make sense because who would you even use it on, but—”

“Uh, a girl?” I said pointedly.

“Right,” she said quickly. “But you don’t have one of those, either. So it’s not like you need a strap-on if you’re not… well.” She giggled. “Getting together with someone to use it, you know?”

And all I could do was force a laugh.

My mom wasn’t exactly conservative about anything—obviously, considering the topic at hand and the fact that she was even listening to the Why Am I Like This podcast in the first place—but there was a difference between joking about raccoon tail butt plugs and telling my mom that the only reason that my bedpost hadn’t fallen from all the notches ruining its structural integrity was because I didn’t have a bedframe with posts.

And sure, maybe it was pretty normal for people to keep details like that from their parents, but for me, it was just another reminder of all the things I’d been hiding from her.

“Daughter of Mine? Are you still there?”

I dug my finger into the side of my thumb. “Yeah, I am. Actually, speaking of changing the entire topic of conversation because this is getting awkward, Thanksgiving?”

But that made everything worse.

“Oh,” she said. “Right.”

“Don’t sound so excited,” I said. “I’ll have to get a therapist or something.”

My mom let out an awkward laugh. “Oh, hon. It’s not that.”

“What is it, then?”

“Don’t be mad.”

“Mad about what ?”

She sighed. “Well… I just… I have an opportunity. Something I haven’t gotten to do in a very long time. And it would have to be that weekend. But I thought, you know, do we need to do Thanksgiving things on Thanksgiving? Maybe instead, we could get together another weekend.”

“What opportunity?” I asked.

“A vacation.”

I frowned. “With who?”

“Just a friend,” she said far too quickly to be anything but a lie. “We’d be going to Las Vegas. And hon, I haven’t gotten to travel since before I escaped the devil”—she meant my dad, of course—“when we went to Disney World. Remember that?”

I did remember that. I’d been ten and we’d missed the character breakfast at the Crystal Palace because my dad had been tired after three days at Disney. He’d wanted to stay at the hotel and my mom wanted us to all go as a family, so none of us went anywhere.

“Yeah, no, I get it,” I said. “I hope you have fun.”

“Don’t be mad,” she said again. “And I promise, I will make it up to you, okay? I’ll pay for you to change your flights and maybe you can play hooky from classes on Friday or Monday some weekend. And we’ll still have a turkey dinner. I told Jack that was part of what I was worried about and he said he’d make one of his two-person dinners for us whatever weekend we choose.”

I didn’t bother telling her that I couldn’t justify skipping classes to stay an extra day in Toronto or that I wouldn’t let her pay for my flight change since my dad covered all my expenses. “Who’s Jack?”

I had to hope I was a better liar than my mom since her voice was suspiciously flippant. “Oh, you know Jack. He owns the little cafe in the same parking lot as my store.”

“What little cafe?”

“Jack’s,” she said.

“I know it’s Jack’s cafe, but—”

“No, it’s called Jack’s. It’s in where the Vietnamese restaurant used to be before they bought the new location downtown.”

I didn’t bother pointing out that they’d sold the restaurant the previous year and I hadn’t been to the liquor store she worked at for far longer than that, so there was no reason I’d have known about Jack or his cafe. “And he’s your friend?”

I tried to keep my voice careful and neutral. My parents had been divorced for over ten years, but where I’d met a new girlfriend of my dad’s almost every other month until he’d started dating Kimberlee, my mom had never so much as mentioned someone in that forced casual voice before.

But unfortunately, my mom saw right through my nonchalant tone.

“I know what you’re implying and you’re wrong,” she said bluntly. “Jack is a friend and he’s doing me a favour so you and I can stuff ourselves on the best damn turkey and mashed potatoes you’ve ever eaten.”

The call with my mom didn’t last too much longer after that. When we hung up, I stared at the books in front of me, not quite seeing them.

I had no excuse not to go to Montreal over Thanksgiving weekend.

It wasn’t like my dad knew that. No one was going to call him up and tell him I wasn’t going to Toronto for the weekend. I could stay home and do homework and hell, maybe I could go out and pick someone up at the bar or something.

Or I could call my dad and get him off my case about visiting him. I could go to his place for one stupid dinner party and that would hopefully shut him up until at least Christmas. And if I was going to be in Montreal anyway, I might as well see what JP’s plans would be like that weekend and—

I hated that my phone was pressed to my ear before I even finished the thought.

“ Ma fille ange ,” my dad answered dryly. “Are you calling to explain to me what Kimberlee is so bothered about this evening?”

I instantly regretted calling him. “You don’t have to pretend like you don’t know, Dad.”

“I do not know,” he said. “I see that she is upset and has asked to be left alone for a bit, which is very unusual for her.”

My stomach clenched with guilt. Maybe Kimberlee had deserved it a bit, but maybe I’d been a bit meaner than I should’ve been.

“And I know it has something to do with you,” he continued. “But she will not tell me why. Which is rather disappointing, since all I want is a daughter who will be open with me about what she’s done.”

And yes, I should have taken a moment to calm down. In hindsight, that was obvious. Kimberlee’s call had upset me, and my mom’s call had frustrated me, and talking to my dad always made my stomach coil into ropes. I’d already snapped at Kimberlee more harshly than I should have. So I should have just hung up right there and walked away.

Instead, I opened my mouth.

“You’ll have to settle for what you’ve already got, then,” I said. “Because I’m not playing this game where I pretend like I don’t know you told Kimberlee to call and guilt me into coming to your house for a dinner party that I’ve told you I can’t go to. I was calling to talk to you about that and see if we can make something else work, but if you’re going to act like I’m too stupid to figure out what you’re doing, then I guess we’re all too stupid to figure out another solution. So I guess I’m calling to remind you that no, I can’t go to your dinner party.”

My dad said nothing. He wasn’t silent; I could hear him breathe, a steady in-and-out that betrayed nothing about his thoughts.

“What are you hiding, Eleanor?” he finally asked.

My lips parted. “Excuse me?”

“This is unlike you,” he said, which was bullshit because this was exactly like me. “My daughter does not speak this way. My daughter knows the value of compromise. My daughter would not give a blanket rejection to everything unless there was something she was hiding. So what is it?”

“I’m not hiding anything,” I said.

“I imagine it must be something I would be able to see,” he said, ignoring me. “Since you have hidden plenty of other things from me before without insisting that you cannot even spare a moment to attend something that is obviously important to us. So what is it? Have you coloured your hair blue and pushed studs into your face and gotten tattoos everywhere? Because my daughter certainly cannot be stupid enough to have gotten herself pregnant, and those are the only excuses I can currently imagine.”

My mouth fell all the way open.

“ Ma fille ange ?” he asked.

“I have to go,” I said.

“Eleanor—”

But I ended the call.

Then I slammed my textbooks shut, stood, and went to the door to grab my purse.

Me

Get ready. We’re going out.

Syd

To the bar? It’s kind of early for that, isn’t it?

Me

Not the bar

Somewhere better