Free Faking Perfect by Rebecca Phillips Page A

weekend.
    “Lex! Wait up!” Nolan’s voice was closer and wheezy in that I-really-should-quit-smoking kind of way.
    I didn’t want him to pass out in the street on top of everything else that had already happened, so I stopped walking and turned around. He was just a few feet away. Gus trotted along ahead of him, straining against his leash in his eagerness to reach me.
    “Thanks,” Nolan panted when they finally caught up. Gus circled around me, binding my legs with his leash like he was trying to prevent me from going any farther. “Holy shit, it’s cold out here.”
    He was right; it was freezing outside, but I’d been walking along with my coat wide open, barely noticing the weather. The icy air felt good on my puffy eyes. I untangled myself from Gus’s leash and started moving again. Nolan walked beside me, a foot or so of space between us.
    “Did you know, too?” I asked after several minutes of silence.
    “Know what? I have no idea what happened back there. Mom was crying and then you ran out the door and the next thing I knew, she was telling me to take Gus for a walk. I’m pretty sure that was her way of saying go find Lexi and make sure she’s okay.” He stepped over a slick patch on the sidewalk. “So are you? Okay?”
    I shook my head. “My father’s alive.” I could feel Nolan staring at me, perplexed, so I told him the rest of it. My voice faltered when I got to the part about my father’s new family and, oh my God, the fact that I had half-siblings . “You really didn’t know anything about it?”
    “No,” he said.
    I believed him because Nolan never lied to me.
    “I would’ve told you, Lex. You know that. Mom shouldn’t have kept it from you for so long. It was shitty, but you know her. She always means well.”
    I made a grunting sound and zipped up my jacket to my chin. The cold was starting to penetrate. “It’s not that I even want to contact him, you know? I mean, he let my mother take me halfway across the country and then never tried to see me or talk to me again. So screw him for that. It’s just . . . I guess I wanted the option.”
    Nolan nodded. “Makes sense.”
    We paused for a few moments to let Gus water the snow beside a telephone pole and then kept going. We practically had the neighborhood to ourselves at that time of the day. All the families and dog walkers and middle-aged joggers were relaxing in their warm, cozy houses, eating Sunday dinner and watching sports on TV. No one in their right mind would be out in the cold voluntarily.
    “I wonder how much my mother knows,” I said as we passed by the desolate playground, basketball court, and soccer field area. “Maybe she really did think he was dead.”
    Nolan contemplated that for a minute. “If I had to guess, I’d say she’s been keeping tabs on him. I think she probably knows more than she lets on.”
    I thought of all the times I’d tried to ask her about my father, who he was, where he was, what kind of person he’d been. Each time I pressed her for info, she’d say something like, “He was a drug addict and a drunk, Lexi, and he didn’t give a damn about either of us. Forget him. We’re better off without him, trust me.”
    I did trust her, at least on that topic, and after a while I stopped asking about him altogether. My father was no good, a deadbeat, a loser. Good riddance.
    But, unfortunately for me, I’d always had trouble staying away from no-good losers. Just like my mother.
    “You must be at least a teensy bit curious about him, though,” Nolan said, tucking his un-gloved hands into the sleeves of his jacket. “Don’t tell me you’ve never Googled him.”
    “Of course I’ve Googled him,” I admitted, cracking a tiny smile. “Willpower isn’t exactly my strong suit. I searched his name a few times over the years, but it’s so common, I got like a million results. I hardly had any info about him, so it was like finding a needle in a haystack.”
    “Well, now you know