Dating Daddy's Best Friend novel · Chapter 6 of 32

Chapter 6: The Rings

I stopped a few feet from the trailer.

I didn't sit down next to him.

For ten years I would have.

"I know," I said. "I was standing right there."

He looked at his hands.

There was a new blister on his left palm, torn open, pink and wet.

I had a box of bandages in the glove compartment. I always did.

I didn't go get it.

"I'm sorry," he said.

"Okay."

"That's it? Okay?"

"Sorry is the easy part, Coby. You get to say it and feel better. I don't get anything."

He flinched.

Good, I thought, and hated that I thought it.

"Do you know what I was doing at nineteen?" I said.

He shook his head.

"I was building boats with my dad. I designed a chair. People drove from Chicago to see it."

"The rocker."

"The rocker. Then I married your father and I quit, because you were six and you wouldn't sleep unless somebody sat in the hall."

He went red to the ears.

"I sat in that hall every night for a year."

"I don't remember that."

"I know you don't. That's how it works. I remember it for you."

I made myself keep going.

"I drove you to practice at five in the morning for four seasons. I learned to make your mom's lasagna from a recipe card in her handwriting, so you'd have it on her birthday."

His mouth shook.

"I didn't need you to love me. I didn't even need you to say thank you."

"Britt."

"I needed you not to join them."

He opened his mouth.

"Dad and Kiersten were..."

"No," I said. "Don't. They didn't say it. You did."

He shut his mouth.

He looked about eight years old and six feet tall.

"Do you want to go to Connecticut?"

"No."

"Then tell your father that. Not me. Him."

"He doesn't listen."

"Then make him."

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