Hooking Up With My Dad's Best Friend

Bryce sits up, eyes alight with interest and amusement. “Wait, what’s your usual trick?”

I freeze. Whoops. No. No way. Not going there. “Oh, nothing. You know, vibrator and… accessories.” I look away and slip out of my room into the kitchen to feed Ursula who’s waiting for me impatiently, sitting on the kitchen table.

Hands catch me around my waist and spin me around. “I don’t believe you even for one second. Tell me what it is.”

“Nope.” I wiggle out of his grasp and manage to pour out some dry food for the cat before he catches me again. I won’t make it too hard for him to catch me, though. He is naked, after all. “Tell me,” he begs, pulling me toward him.

“It’s embarrassing.”

He chuckles against my skin, which raises goosebumps all over my body. “I think we’re past that, don’t you?”

“Ugh. Fine. I watch porn. But I made sure the actors had British accents so I could pretend they were you. Sometimes it worked.”

Bryce starts to laugh in earnest now, and I pull away. “Come here, Katti. I think that’s about the sweetest thing I’ve ever heard. And I’m absolutely going to need to see some of those videos.”

“No fucking way,” I say. “No.”

“Why not?”

“Because,” I say, “I have you now. I don’t want to remember the desperation of trying to replace you. And there’s only so much embarrassment a girl can take, you know?”

He wraps his arms around me, and kisses my temple. “Okay. But I think we need to work on your version of embarrassing.”

“Maybe. But not today.”

“Not today,” he agrees. “Speaking of, what are you doing today?”

I flip the switch on the coffee maker and listen to the water start to trickle. “I have to go to the store. Don’t you have to go to work?”

“I have a few calls to make, but nothing too urgent that others can’t take care of. Do you mind that I don’t really want to let you out of my sight yet?”

“No,” I say. “I don’t want you to go either.”

“In that case,” he says, smiling, “you’re going to go to the store, and I’m going to go home and get some clothes. I’ll be back in time for lunch.”

“Okay,” I say, trying to look normal. But my heart is pounding. Because I love the fact that we can make simple plans like lunch. For the first time in my life, I don’t feel like I’m missing anything, and it’s amazing.

9

The rest of the week, Bryce and I are inseparable. Elle laughs at me and teases me every chance that she gets, but I know that she’s happy for me. I never knew I could be this happy. I love having Bryce home with me, going to sleep together and waking up together.

We fit into each other’s routines without much effort. He doesn’t come to the store with me every day, but stays at my house to make calls, or occasionally goes further into Boston to meet with his clients. But on the days he’s not in the corner chair reading, he’s outside the shop at closing time, ready to wrap me in his arms and make me forget any stress that I’ve gathered that day.

Even a few customers notice that I’m in good spirits, one of them commenting on how bright I am within Bryce’s hearing, and I swear that he has a smug smile on his face for the rest of the day.

And of course, there’s the sex. We can’t keep our hands off each other. He knows how to make my body sing like no other person ever has. And when I’m not at his mercy, we talk. We remember things from our separate points of view, and learn more about the things we never had a chance to talk about before.

And now, a week later, we’re in the car together back to Waterton for Marcy’s baby shower. I haven’t told my parents that I’m coming to town, which I know that he doesn’t approve of. But that’s something he doesn’t get to dictate, and he knows that. It’s the only asterisk to this happiness—the looming shadow of what might happen when my family finds out that we’re together.

And they will find out eventually.

They’ll have to, if we want this to be long term. And oh, fuck, I do. I want everything and more with Bryce. The last week has proved that everything I saw in him, everything I longed for, was accurate, and deeper than I could have imagined.

We’re holding hands across the center console, and I’m watching the foliage fly by when he speaks. “You’re quiet,” he says.

I smile. “I was just thinking about this week. How nice it’s been.”

He squeezes my hand, not needing to say anything else, and I lean back and close my eyes. It’s a five-hour drive to Waterton, and we’re barely half-way there. One of the reasons I don’t often go home. “Are you hungry?” Bryce asks, pulling off the highway. “We need gas, and there’s a great diner here.”