Page 132 of A Lick and A Promise
Oh jeez.
I was getting all teary-eyed, because that was so sweet.
Jacob was the man.
Alexis’s dad’s jaw was working, but obviously, to all his daughter had said, he had no retort.
Alexis did, and what came next broke my heart.
“I thought you’d get over it,” she said. “I thought you’d come around. But this?” She swung an arm to indicate the courtyard. “This is unforgiveable, Dad. I rescind mom’s and your invitation to the wedding. I want you nowhere near the Oasis when I become my man’s wife.”
Jacob was suddenly there (which meant now Cap was doing what Knox was, sidling close to be on hand just in case).
He put his arm around her and curled her to him. “Stop talkin’, baby, so you don’t say anything you can’t take back.”
“I’m okay with everything I’m saying,” she retorted to him then looked to her dad. “I don’t know what the flipside of disinheriting is for a kid, but I’m disinheriting you.”
She looked over her shoulder, so I looked over her shoulder, and I saw her mother was now deathly pale.
“Both of you,” Alexis concluded.
“Roy,” her mother called anxiously.
“Fine by me,” her father, who apparently held the world record for the amount of stubborn he could display, shot back. “Your mother has always wanted to go to Paris, and we can have a slam-bang trip with your wedding fund.”
Alexis flinched.
Jacob growled.
I fought giving her father a bloody nose my damned self.
“Roy!” her mother shouted.
“You’re a goddamned piece of work,” Jacob muttered, beginning to turn Alexis toward their apartment.
“Speak up, boy,” Roy ordered. “Be a man and say that to my face.”
Cap and Knox stopped sidling and closed in.
But Jacob simply turned back and said, “You just let the most precious thing on this earth slip through your fingers. You’re not worth it. And I gotta look after my woman, who seriously fuckin’ is.”
Bill and Zach, one of our two-bedroom couples, our official community organizers, the presidents of our residents’ association and recently, part of the residents’ wedding planning team (long story), came jogging up with Bill asking, “What’s happening?”
“Alexis, honey.” Her mom reached out to her as Jacob guided her into their apartment.
But Alexis withdrew from her touch.
Her mother quailed.
Jacob closed the door.
Now it was Martha in Roy’s face.
“You’ll be leaving now,” she declared.
“I don’t take orders from some spinster cat lady who lives in a shabby apartment complex,” Roy rejoined.
Everyone in the audience (save probably Knox and Cap) gasped in afront because Oasis Square was not shabby.
