The red-and-white checkered tablecloth grabbed at the back of my hand as I slid it out from under my paper plate. It’d been freshly wiped, and a little of the moisture from the rag still clung to the rubberlike material.
But it wasn’t something that you grumbled about at Vinito’s, and if you were smart, it wasn’t even something you thought about complaining about on a Friday night.
The line had been out the door when we’d gotten here thirty minutes ago, and that was just to order at the counter and wait patiently for a slice of heaven. With their combination of melted cheese and perfectly seasoned sauce, Vinito’s had some of the best pizza in Manhattan, and if you were a New Yorker, you’d know that was really saying something.
It’d taken another ten minutes to actually procure a slice and another two to hunt and peck out a table. But Lexi was the best at stalking people, studying their weaknesses, and waiting to make them break. It was in her nature to be analytical, but she’d also been practicing every other Friday night for the last year and a half.
The first year and a half after I moved back, I’d spent all my time convincing Winnie Winslow that I could be a real father to our daughter. I showed up at all of Lexi’s football games, remembered all of the important dates, and called her every night before bed. I was in her life, for good, and I had to prove that to Winnie, Lexi, and truthfully, myself.
I could do it. I could be the father she wanted and needed, and I could give up anything that stood in the way.
It’d actually been surprisingly easy. Lexi was a brilliant force of nature. She liked you or she didn’t, and despite my mistakes, she’d sniffed out something in me she believed in.
I clung to that on the days I doubted myself.
After a long road of building trust, Winnie had finally admitted to the change she saw in me. And so, she’d given in. Selflessly, and without past repercussion, Winnie had put her daughter first, at the very front of the line, and given her alone time with me on a regular basis.
Every other weekend, Lexi came to me on Friday evening and went home Sunday. And every Friday, we came to Vinito’s.
It might seem like a cop-out to take her to the exact same restaurant every Friday, but Lexi, diagnosed as high-functioning on the autism spectrum, lived for routine and planning. Vinito’s was known, it was comfortable, and honest to God, the pizza really was heaven.
“My slice has forty-two crumbles of sausage, but yours has fifty-three. Peculiar,” Lexi observed keenly, and if I wasn’t mistaken, with a little ire. Her spatial reasoning was superhuman, and her love for sausage pizza was a close second.
“Would you like to switch?” I offered.
Instead of answering, she reached forward, grabbed the edge of my plate, and slid it toward herself. She compared the two pieces closely while they were side by side, and I chuckled when she didn’t slide one back.
“Lex.”
“Mine has approximately two percent more cheese than yours, and the sauce ratio is nearly one to one.”
“Lex, please just pick a slice and give me the other.”
She huffed. “It’s not that simple.”
“Lexi.” I tried to be patient, I really did, because it was amusing as all hell and seriously special to watch her mind work, but if I let it, this could go on forever.
“Give me a minute,” she shushed me, waving a hand and diving closer to smell each slice. I could only assume she was assessing the herbs.
I was just about to reach out and grab one before they both got cold when my phone rang in my pocket.
Lexi, knowing that meant she’d have a little more time for her appraisal, smiled gleefully.
I narrowed my eyes, and then without looking at the screen of my phone, swiped my finger across it to answer it and put it to my ear.
“Hello?”
“Well, hello, trivia letdown.”
I rolled my eyes and sank back into my chair with a smile. Charlotte. “I never claimed to be good at trivia.”
“You’re a neurosurgeon!”
“Yeah, that means I know about the brain. It also means I have very little time for anything else.”
“Jesus Christ, I’m coming over later to give you a DVR tutorial.”
“Most of the time, if I’m home, I’m sleeping or spending time with my daughter. Not watching TV.”
“Couldn’t some of that time with your daughter be spent at a sporting event?” she argued cleverly.
I laughed. “Charlotte.”
“All right, all right. Jesus. I just expected a better performance out of you, Dr. Raines.”
“Sorry. I guess you’ll have to find a new partner for…” I glanced at Lexi and decided to abbreviate. “FMSP.”
“No way!” she nearly yelled. “You’ll just have to brush up for next time.”
“Next time?”
“Trivia night is every Wednesday.”
My eyebrows drew together. Lexi, meanwhile, finally slid a slice of pizza back over to me. It was the one I’d started with.
“You know I said no to the job, right?” I asked suddenly. I knew she knew, but she was still trying to make me her new best friend. I didn’t want to let myself succumb to the pull, only to find out it was all a powerful professional ruse.
“Yeah,” she said easily. “Of course.”
“All right.”
“Why?”
“You’re just contacting me a lot. I wanted to make sure you knew it was a dead end.”
For the first time since I’d met her, she actually sounded a little bashful. “I’m contacting you a lot because you’re cute.” She laughed, but it was completely devoid of its normal magnificence. “And dense, apparently.”
Jesus, I’m an idiot.
“Charlotte—”
“Dad!” Lexi interrupted. “I chose the better slice. Eat your inferior one.”
“You sound busy,” Charlotte said in my ear. “I’ll talk to you later, okay?”
“Charlotte.”
“Bye!”
Ah, fuck. I sighed and pulled the phone away from my ear to stare at the blank screen and grind my jaw. That didn’t go well.
“Who was that?” Lexi asked frankly and without pause.
Internally, I groaned. I couldn’t lie to Lexi. She’d sniff that out faster than a police K-9 looking for weed, but I really didn’t feel like going down this road right now. I already felt like a Grade A jackass for embarrassing Charlotte unnecessarily.
I thought she was cute too, for shit’s sake. I was just…slow.
“Her name is Charlotte,” I said, hoping a vague answer would satisfy her curiosity enough to move this conversation along.
Of course, if anything was true about Lexi, it was that her curiosity was never, ever satisfied.
“How old is she?”
“Uh,” I mumbled, swallowing a surprised half laugh. “I honestly have no idea.”
“Are you having sex?”
“What?” I yelled. Everyone in the pizzeria turned to look at me at once. Averting my eyes to the table, I picked at the crust of my rapidly cooling slice and forced my voice back to normal. “What? No. Why would you think that?”
“According to Brice and Romlan’s latest study, male-on-female interaction, without familial relation, is seventy-two percent more likely to be sexual in nature than platonic. It’s biology. The male brain—”
Jesus Christ.
“Okay, yeah, I get it. But no, Charlotte and I are not sleeping together.”
She shrugged. “You don’t have to sleep together to be sexually active.”
I shook my head and looked to the ceiling, asking God why he made me have these conversations with my almost ten-year-old daughter. Part of me thought it might be penance for missing so much of her magnificent mind when she was younger, but the other suspected it was strictly for His entertainment.
“Sleeping together is an expression for sex,” I explained, rubbing roughly at my eyebrow as I tried to fight a blush.
“Oh.” She shrugged. “You should really find out her age. If she’s not eighteen, you could have a legal problem.”
I laughed, just one sharp bark, before biting into the flesh of my bottom lip. “She’s older than eighteen, and we’re not having sex.”
“I’m just saying.”
“Well, stop. I know Charlotte from work.”
She rolled her eyes. “Your smile didn’t say work.”
I pulled my face into a frown almost on reflex. “I wasn’t smiling.”
“Okay, Dad,” she allowed with a small scoff.
Dad. Every time she called me that, I swear, my heart contracted in my chest.
“She got off the phone fast,” she criticized.
“Lex,” I chastised.
She didn’t even bat an eyelash before delivering the real blow.
“Well, you’ll be jail-free for at least another day. After your performance just now, tomorrow should be sex-free for sure.”