Read Online The Secret Life of Prince Charming by Deb Caletti - Free Book Online Page B

to call me. He said that me studying child psychology was like an armed robber studying law.
    Anyway, I decided to tell Terrence Vinnigan to take awalk. I told him it was too bad you couldn’t go to the gym and get a new personality. And I told my self-esteem issues to take a walk too. Gavin treats me great. He’s there for me in all the ways that matter. I can be a bitch, my ass can jiggle, he loves me for who I am. You’ve got to have someone who loves your body. Who doesn’t define you, but sees you. Who loves what he sees. Who you don’t have to struggle to be good enough for. “He loves me for who I am”—a cliché, but one of the most fucking powerful clichés in the history of all clichés.
    My mom thinks it’s amazing that I found a great guy so early on. She says it wasn’t until she was over forty and hit a “I won’t take shit from anyone anymore” age that she started looking out for herself the way I do already. She’s really proud of me for that. She says, “How do you do it, my girl?” And I say, “I’m learning from your mistakes, sweetie,” and she knows I mean that in the best way possible.
    Dad worked in his office the rest of the day, and Sprout and I did homework. Later, Uncle Mike and Thomas came over to talk about the Jafarabad Brothers’ summer show, and Dad made beef curry for dinner. Dad was a really good cook, though he didn’t usually do it unless there was company over. He liked to make dishes that he could prepare right in front of guests, rather than something you shoved in an oven and forgot about. He liked to stir things up dramatically and flourish knives and juggle bottles of herbs and spices, same as he would in one of his shows.
    Everyone sat down to eat, and Dad lifted a large goblet of red wine from his place at the head of the table. “To the Jafarabad Brothers’ World Tour.”
    “The world’s gotten pretty damn small.” Uncle Mike laughed. He rubbed one eye with his fingers.
    “Lift your glass, damn it,” Dad said. “Our lives are more interesting than ninety-nine percent of the population.”
    “Barry, you’re so full of shit,” Uncle Mike said.
    “The world?” Thomas said. “Wisconsin? New Jersey?”
    I could almost feel Dad’s face change before I saw it. “Fuck you,” he said. “Fuck. You.”
    The room was suddenly quiet. Mike rubbed his thumb and index finger up and then down over the stem of his wineglass. “A joke, Barry,” he said.
    “I like New Jersey,” Thomas said. He seemed a little stunned. I felt a sort of sick shame, either for Dad or about Dad, I couldn’t tell which.
    “You could still be juggling Coke bottles in your garage, if it weren’t for me,” Dad said. He stared coldly at Thomas, and then seemed to change his mind about the whole thing. Dad looked toward Sprout and me. “All right, then. To my family,” Dad said. “Each and every one of you in this room.”
    We raised our glasses, and the weird and hollow clinks hung there in the tension of the room. Amidst the arm raising and elbows, Sprout knocked over the large bottle of Perrier in the center of the table, sending everyone scurrying for napkins. The strained moment passed, and we ate curry and Dad made Sprout read her story about Ivar and Tucker, which earned a round of applause. The dishes were piled in the sink. “Just put them in there for the maid,” Dad said, even though we didn’t have a maid, of course. After Uncle Mike and Thomas left, there was the smell of garlic and turmeric hovering around the house like a restless ghost.
    Restless was how I felt inside too. I kept passing the living room and looking at that statue and those other objects, feeling a should I/shouldn’t I push-pull. I wanted to confront Dad, but I didn’t want to make him mad. Probably, it wasn’t my business anyway. But why did it feel very much like my business? Why did I feel like one of those art films where time was chunked up and out of order and it was only somewhere