Stuck on You (Steamy Enemies To Lovers Rom Com)

With the fridge properly purged, I walk into the living room, where I know I’ll find my dad melted into his armchair. I swear the thing is shaped around him now. There’s a big dad-sized dent in it whenever he gets up. He’s slumped over, the room dark, the light from the TV doing paranormal kinds of things to the room.

“Dad?” He never greets me even though he knows I’m here, and he never gets up to check and see what I’m doing to his fridge. It’s in the back of my mind that I still need to tackle the dishes. “Dad?” I reach for the side table, grab the remote, and switch off the TV. The room is plunged into total darkness, so I have to go to the wall and flick the switch before I can even find my dad to talk to him.

The light gets his attention in that retina-burning kind of way people get after sitting in the dark for too long. He blinks at me, his red-rimmed, bloodshot eyes watering a little.

“Oh. Ellis,” he says, staring at me blankly as if he can’t quite figure out what I’m doing there. Or maybe it’s just because the details of my face haven’t registered in his brain yet since his eyes are still focusing, and he’s asking if it’s me and not someone intent on burgling the home.

“Yeah, Dad, it’s me.” The room is fairly clean, but I was just here a couple of days ago to tidy it. The house is practically a time capsule from the seventies. Nothing has been changed. Certainly not the hairy brown carpets or the yellow and orange wallpaper. The décor is more modern because my mom had a hand in it, and my dad hasn’t changed anything. The big velvet painting with the cactus still hangs over the TV and the TV stand, while the couches are the same brown suede. My dad’s chair came with the set, so it’s brown suede too. The coffee table has a massive stack of books, magazines, food wrappers, and other garbage on it.

Dad’s clothes are rumpled and stained. He lives in gray sweats and white t-shirts, except they’re not so gray and white anymore, and I know for a fact that he didn’t do a change-up on me since I’ve been here last and put on another set of old, stained clothes to try and trick me into thinking he’d changed. Dad doesn’t care about tricking me. He doesn’t care how much of this I see. I think he gave up on trying to hide that aspect of his life a long time ago.

“Have you eaten tonight?” I ask patiently, moderating my voice, so it’s not scolding.

“Yup.” Dad stares longingly at the dark TV screen.

I sigh. “Turn it back on. I’ll go and tackle the dishes.”

He doesn’t need me to tell him twice since he was in the middle of his favorite true crime show. Dad loves that stuff. He always wanted to be an investigative journalist. I guess he was for a while before he started his own publication. I don’t want to go down that road again because it just leads to potholes and eventually a big drop off into a pit of absolute shit. I randomly look down at my left hand and swirl the ring on my finger.

Wait? Swirl? The thing actually swirled? I think a miracle is about to occur, but like all miracles, it’s just another big middle finger flying in my face while the universe has a good laugh at me. The ring doesn’t budge. I try to swirl it again, but nope. Apparently, it’s done all the movement it plans on doing. I look at Dad, already absorbed back into his show. At least it’s in the courtroom phase and not the bodies phase. Ew. I never liked that kind of stuff. I find it graphic and disturbing. Coming here is pretty much my threshold for how much I can put up with, and hearing about other people’s lives gone so horribly wrong in so many violent ways is too much. Our lives don’t need that extra bit of seasoning. We’re already spicy enough, and by spicy, I mean fucked over by grief.

I head to the kitchen and start on the pile of dishes. To say they’re really gross is an understatement, especially since my dad doesn’t appreciate the fine art of soaking anything after he uses it. I’m still scrubbing away, somehow thoroughly soaked, when the door creaks open. I instantly grab a frying pan, but it’s the last person on earth who should ever step foot in this place, not a robber.

“What are you doing in here?” I hiss. My fingers are still curled menacingly around the frying pan’s handle.

Ash looks around at the kitchen. Then his eyes travel to me. “A sketchy car drove past me full of thugs. You were taking a while, so I wanted to come in and make sure everything was okay.’