Summer With My Dad’s Best Friend

“I’m so sorry, honey. I never meant to hurt you,” he says to her.

“Is this how it felt when you caught Mom cheating on you?” Annie asks, wiping the tears and makeup from her eyes. She doesn’t say it like she’s blaming him for anything. She just wants to know if he hurt the way she hurt. Like maybe she’s trying to find some common ground between the two of them.

“Honestly, I don’t know,” Ben says. “But it was the deepest betrayal I’ve ever felt the moment I saw your mom with her new lover. I fell apart. It was the last time I could pretend that our marriage wasn’t over. Your mom never really loved me and learning that crushed my heart. I’m just sorry you and your brother and sister had to witness the fallout. And I’m sorry that finding out about me and Jenny this way is hurting you. It’s going to hurt a lot of people I care about. But I love Jenny.” He looks over at me and smiles. Tears glitter in his eyes under the streetlamps. Seeing him so broken hurts me more than I can bear.

At the moment, when I see the acceptance in Annie eyes, it feels like maybe everything will be okay, but then Tulip shows up and says, “We should probably get back to the cabin before the others see that the boys have been left alone.”

My insides turn to cement. It’s time to tell my parents.

10

Ben

I sit out by the lake with John, neither of us talking at first. The sun has gone down, the moon casting a spear of light across the water. A slight breeze rustles the leaves on the trees around us, keeping things from getting too deep in silence.

I could cut the tension in the air with a knife. I know John would love nothing more than to hit me right now after Jenny and I broke the news to him. His wife didn’t take it as hard, but she’s not too happy with me either. I wish this could’ve waited until after the vacation was over, but my daughters finding out put a kink in that plan.

“Dammit, John, say something,” I plead with him. The silence is driving me mad.

John looks at me with disgust and now I’m wishing I could take my words back. Maybe it’s better if he doesn’t say anything after all.

“I’d really like to drown you in the lake right now,” he says.

I nod because I know he doesn’t mean it. He’s just pissed and I don’t blame him. If it had been the other way around and he was having an affair with one of my daughters, I’d want to kill him. “That’s fair.”

“How the hell did this happen?” he asks.

“I don’t know. It just did. One minute she was just Jenny, your daughter. The next she was this woman who I wanted to make laugh, to protect, to never see shed another tear. I want to take care of her. I really love her.”

John stares out into the distance. I can’t read his expression. “Is it serious between the two of you.”

“It is.”

He’s silent again. The bastard has never been silent a day in his life and now he’s doing the one thing he knows I hate. I’d rather be yelled at than ignored and he knows this about me. He’s doing it as a punishment.

I stand up on the dock, ready to leave. I can’t sit here in the quiet.

Before I walk away I say, “Don’t sell the cabin.”

John looks up at me. I’ve finally gotten his attention. “Why not?”

“This place means a lot to Jenny. Some of her best memories are here.”

John sighs. “I don’t have a choice. I need the money to pay her tuition.”

“I’ll pay it,” I insist. “I’ll sell my share of my cabin to my ex—she’s been begging me for full ownership anyway. It will be enough.”

“What about your own kids?”

“Mine have full scholarships and their own funded accounts.” John continues to stare at me, his jaw slack. He doesn’t seem sure if I’m being serious or not and he looks shocked.

“I thought you were having a hardship after paying for the divorce. You never dipped into those funds?”

“I would never be that selfish.”

John shocks the hell out of me by standing up and taking my hand and shaking it. Then pulls me into a bear hug. Is this the part where he throws me into the lake? I wait for it, but it doesn’t happen. Instead he says, “We’ve been best friends since we were kids. You’re not who I imagined for my daughter, but she couldn’t have chosen a more stand-up guy. At least if she’s with you, I know she’ll be treated right.” He shakes his head. “It’s going to be strange for a while, seeing you together as a couple. But I’ll get over it. I’m not going to stand in your way. And I don’t think I’ve ever seen you as happy as you have these last couple of weeks. You were never this happy with your wife, not even in the beginning.”