Muffin Top

“Dad, it’s not really prom,” Lucy said, holding onto Gussie, who was still trying desperately to wriggle free, no doubt to continue Mission: Nose To The Crotch. “It’s not even a real date.”

Frankie tensed at that pronouncement before he could regulate his reaction.

Tom aimed his dead-eyed stare at Frankie. “Uh-huh.”

Agreeing with the man’s obvious doubts might be what Frankie wanted to do at that moment, but Lucy’s dad knew the score even if she didn’t. So, Tom continued to give him the stink eye as he snapped pics with his phone, telegraphing a don’t-fuck-with-my-daughter message with every extra-hard tap on his phone.

Frankie may have missed a few proms before, but he was getting the whole experience now, and unless he fucked up royally, that would include getting laid, too—but not in the back of a car.

…

“Hey Muffin, can I have a quick word before you go?”

The perma-grin she’d been wearing since she walked into the living room and had seen Frankie standing there with a corsage faded away. Muffin. She fucking hated that nickname. It hurt a little each time her dad said it.

“Sure.” She looked at Frankie, who was hot as hell in jeans and plain devastating in a suit. “Do you mind if I stay back here for a second?”

Frankie winked and gave her hand a squeeze before scooping Gussie up from the floor and walking with the dog out onto the front porch. Once he’d cleared the door, her dad turned to her, the serious expression on his face giving her no doubts that this wasn’t going to be a very fun conversation.

“I know I’ve said it before, but are you sure this is just friendly?” her dad asked.

“Enough.” Tension tightened her shoulders until they ached. “He’s just a friend, Dad, it’s nothing serious. Why do you keep fixating on this?”

“Maybe it’s because I’ve been there.”

And everything she’d stuffed down, all the promises not to let someone in like her dad hit her right in the feels. Unlike those who’d only read about it in books, she’d never seen the romance in unrequited love. She’d seen it from too close up as she watched her dad interact with her mom and seen how he had to rebuild himself after her mom had left—again.

“Believe me. I’m not the kind of girl someone like him goes after for the long term. Really, I’m not sure that there is a type of girl for him for that.”

Her dad gave her a considering look. “So what, this is just for fun?”

Okay, this wasn’t an awkward conversation to have with her dad even if he was a sex therapist. Nope. Not at all.

“Yep, just for fun,” she said as embarrassment burnt her cheeks.

And please God let that be the end of this conversation. Unfortunately for her, the big guy upstairs was busy with other things at the moment, because as she moved closer to the doorway and a quick exit, her dad cut off her escape.

“You know, when I first met your mom, it was like that.” He picked up a framed picture of Lucy from the bookcase near the doorway. The shot was one of the few that were pre-divorce, showing the three of them (her and her dad holding dripping ice cream cones) at a park. “It was fun. Then things happened so fast, and I thought I could change her, make her want something more than just fun. It’s hard if not impossible to change other people, but you can change yourself for the better.”

The sadness in her dad’s voice cut through both ventricles of her heart with an efficiency that left her breathless. Even after all these years, even after everything her mom had done to him—to them—he still loved her. And that’s why this had to be just fun between her and Frankie, because if it was more then there was only misery at the end. If she’d even thought they had any hope, Frankie’s story about his dad would have extinguished it.

The reality of all that sparked an anger inside her she couldn’t explain, but it burned hot and bright and immediate, so she lashed out at the closest person just like she had in high school.

“Frankie and I are not you and Mom,” she said, her voice dripping with resentment and fury.

Her dad’s professionally neutral expression never slipped. “I know that, Muffin, but—”

“I wish you would stop calling me that.” God, she hated it. Had always hated it. Weren’t fathers the ones who were supposed to love their daughters no matter what?

“Muffin?” A divot of confusion made a deep V in his forehead. “It’s short for Muffin Top.”

“I’m well aware of what it means and why you call me that.” She inhaled a breath to slow her racing heart and tried to block out all the times the word Muffin or Muffin Top had been used against her at school, each syllable edged with cruelty as if she didn’t realize that her body shape—the one she was so beyond apologizing for, not that she ever should have in the first place, but the world did a real job on a woman it deemed undesirable—didn’t fit society’s ideal. She’d never gotten that cutting denouncement from her dad, but that didn’t mean his choice of nicknames didn’t hurt. “Still, it would really be nice if you’d stop.”