“That’s what I’m trying to figure out. We, umm. We were, uh. When we got back, we…”
“Were intimate?” Dad asked cautiously.
Blood rushed to my face. “That,” I said.
I’d never talked about sex with my dad and I wasn’t sure the kind of restaurant that had tablecloths was the ideal place to start.
“Okay,” Dad said. “I know about sex, just so we’re clear.”
I looked up at him. “You have two kids,” I said. “I know.”
Logically, Ididknow. I knew my parents had to have had sex at least twice, and I never planned to think about it beyond that knowledge.
Dad chuckled. We’d always had a similar sense of humor, and that was making this easier. Slightly easier. Noteasy, though.
Then again, nothing worth having came easy. He’d taught me that.
Having an understanding with my dad, arealone, where we got to know the whole of each other, that was worth the effort and the awkwardness.
Aiden…
Aiden I was still deciding on.
“You don’t have to tell me any of the finer details,” Dad said. “But how do youfeelabout it?”
That was an excellent question, one I wasn’t sure I had an answer for.
“I don’t know,” I said. “Not bad. Good, even. Great?”
Dad raised an eyebrow.
“It was new, but not as new as I thought it’d be. Aiden’s…”
I didn’t want to sayeasy, because that wasn’t what I really meant. What I meant was that he wasn’tdifficult. That things between us were easy, that I never really felt awkward around him, even though I really should have. That he put meat ease.
“Kind?” Dad suggested. “Warm? Funny? Confident?”
“All of those things,” I said. “And generous and talented and a lot braver than I am. Why is he interested in me?”
Other than a lingering teenage crush and proximity, what was Aiden getting out of this?
“You’d have to ask him that,” Dad said. “You’re not exactly hard on the eyes, if I say so myself.”
I looked alotlike my dad. I had Mom’s curls and her nose, but the rest of me was Dad. His sweeping cheekbones and gray eyes and perfectly average jawline.
“You think that’s it?” I asked, knowing he was teasing me but still wondering what the hell else itcouldbe. I was a sad, lonely late-twenty-something who didn’t even have a fun party trick to entertain people with.
“I think you’re patient and quiet and smarter than anyone I know, your sister included, don’t ever tell her,” Dad said. “Wish you’d come work for me, to be honest. I know your mother wouldn’t approve, but…”
Right. Dad was a builder. No amount of owning his own company, growing it into a business with millions of dollars in turnover, being able to keep all four of us comfortably while we were all living together, or any of the other things he’d accomplished really mattered to Mom.
She’d always taken the benefit, but she’d resented that dad barely had any qualifications to speak of, a high school diploma he’d scraped through and half a college degree from Slow Falls Community College.
My dad wasn’t stupid—no stupid person could have done what he did.
He was like Aiden, I supposed. Not cut out for endless hours behind a desk, studying or otherwise.
Meanwhile, my whole life was a job I didn’t care about and only kept because I was good at it and there was nothing else in particular that I wanted to do.
