“He’s not—”
Zephyr cut me off. “Good to see you again, Walt.” He held out his hand to Dad and they shook. “I hope we’re not too late for dinner. Lynn had to work late tonight.”
Zephyr moved around me and stepped into the apartment.
“If I would have known you were coming, I would have ordered more. I only got enough for Lynn, Steph, and I.”
I stepped in and closed the door behind me. “I’m not that hungry, and I doubt Steph will be here.” I pulled Dad’s prescription from my pocket and moved into the small kitchen.
Dad made his way to the dining room table where a bag of Chinese takeout sat. “You don’t know that. I left a message on her machine.”
I rolled my eyes. As if leaving a message on her voicemail meant Steph was actually going to grace us with her presence. “Did she call you back?” I grabbed his pillbox and flipped open the one slot I didn’t fill.
“Well, no, but you know she is busy with her important job,” Dad defended her.
I popped open the bottle and dropped in a pill. “Yeah, working the cash register at the gas station is super important.”
Zephyr smothered a laugh with the back of his hand.
Don’t get me wrong. I wasn’t making fun of the fact that Steph worked at a gas station; it was the fact that she acted like she was the Queen of Sheba who didn’t have thirty seconds in her day to call Dad.
“Is she still taking classes?” I questioned. I snapped the container shut and dropped the bottle of pills with the others.
“She decided to take this semester off.”
I dropped my chin to my chest and sighed. What in the hell was Steph thinking? She was less than a year away from being an RN, and she decided to take a semester off?
“You’re kidding.” I turned to Dad and folded my arms over my chest. It looked like Zephyr was going to have to deal with my family mess right off the bat.
Dad shrugged and sat down at the table. “It’s just a semester, Lynn. She said she wanted to take a break for a second before she gets an RN job.”
I grabbed a stack of plates from the cabinet and set them on the table. “She’s dumb,” I grunted. “She has the world at her feet right now, and instead of finishing school, she’s taking a semester off to work at a shithole gas station.”
“Did you go to school?” Dad asked Zephyr.
My eyes snapped to Zephyr.
“Uh, well, no. I wasn’t really the smart kind. I was happy to have graduated high school.” He pulled out a chair next to Dad and sat down. “If I had the smarts, I would have gone to college.”
Well, that was an okay answer. All except for the part where he said he wasn’t smart. I knew that higher education wasn’t for everyone. Graduating high school and jumping into the job pool was more than okay. But that didn’t mean the people who skipped college weren’t smart. “You’re smart.”
Zephyr looked up at me. “If you say so, darlin’.”
I rolled my eyes. “You are. Trust me.”
“Because you went to school and have a college degree?” Zephyr chuckled.
I pointed my finger at him. “This isn’t about you. It’s about my sister making bad decisions because she’s afraid.”
“Afraid of what?” Zephyr asked.
Dad shrugged and started pulled containers from the bag of food. “She’s young. She has her whole life in front of her to work. One semester isn’t going to hurt.”
I wasn’t going to argue with Dad about this. Hell, Steph didn’t want me to be a part of her life, so I didn’t need to stress myself over what she was or wasn’t doing. I grabbed an eggroll and plopped down in the chair next to Zephyr. “Anything exciting going on around here?”
Dad may live in lower-income apartments, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t much happening.
“Marg from two doors down has a mixer thing on Friday. We’re supposed to wear clothes from the seventies.” Dad opened the two containers of lo mien and stabbed forks into them. “I’m going to go to the thrift store and see what I can find to wear.”
“You don’t have anything in your closet?” I watched Zephyr grab a plate and spill a bunch of noodles onto a plate.
“Nah.” Dad shook his head.
“You want me to come with you?” I asked.
Zephyr looked up from his plate at me. “Lynn.”
I reared back. “Uh, what?”
“You’re pretty busy with work lately,” Zephyr reminded me.
I rolled my eyes. “I’m always busy with work, Zephyr.”
Zephyr shook his head and forked a huge mound of noodles into his mouth. “I can go to the thrift store with you, Walt. I’m sure I can get a couple of the girls to come with, too.”
“Girls?” Dad asked.
“What?” I gasped. “You’re not taking my dad to the thrift store,” I protested.
“It’s not like I’m taking him to grab a fifth of whiskey and head to the strip club, Lynn,” Zephyr laughed.
I glared at him. What in the hell was Zephyr trying to prove? I was busy, but that didn’t mean he had to step in and do everything with Dad. We had spent one night together, and now he thought he could just take over my life?
“You don’t need to take time out of your day to take Dad to the thrift store. I can take him when I get off of work, or I can even take him on my lunch break.” I would just have to move a couple of appointments around on Thursday and then work until eight.
“It’s not a big deal. I don’t have much going on this week,” Zephyr explained. “And I have a feeling the girls would get a kick out of dressing your dad up for a seventies party.”
I shook my head. “I really doubt that is a good time for Kimber and the girls.”
Dad laughed loudly. “You had me at girls coming along. Pick me up at eleven on Thursday, and we can grab lunch on the way.”
Zephyr nodded. “Sounds like a plan, Walt.”
I had absolutely no control over any of this. “Why am I even talking?”
Zephyr reached out and patted his hand on mine. “I got this for you, darlin’.”
I looked at his hand and blinked. I didn’t know what to say besides being a bitch and telling him I didn’t need his help. Except I did need his help, and if I actually stopped for a second and thought about it, Zephyr taking Dad to the thrift store would actually help me a lot. “Are you sure?”
Zephyr shrugged. “Yeah. I can take your dad by the project the club is working on after.”
I narrowed my eyes. “Project?” I had heard about one of the club's projects at a funeral home. A funeral home they were turning into a strip club.
“Calm down, Lynn. We’re still doing the demo. Your dad won’t see anything that would corrupt him.” Zephyr chuckled and winked at Dad.
Dad let out a full belly laugh. “Boy, back in my day, I would have been the one doing the corrupting. I’ve seen it all.”
I shoved my eggroll in my mouth and growled. That was the damn truth. While Dad was out seeing it all, I was at home taking care of Steph.
A knock sounded on the door.
My eyes connected with Zephyr’s.