Seducing My Dad's Best Friend novel · Chapter 18 of 24

Chapter 18: The Porch

My father was on the porch at eleven that night with the light off, in the rocker my mother had bought at a church sale.

I sat down on the top step beside his boots.

The harbor lights were small and orange across the water.

"Well," he said.

"Well."

"That went about how I pictured it."

"You pictured Devon's desk going out on four men's shoulders?"

"I pictured it on six. One of them dropped out for his back."

I laughed so hard I had to put my head on my knees.

He laughed too, wheezing, and wiped his glasses on his shirt.

"I was awful to her," he said when we had stopped.

"You were fair."

"I was a little awful. It felt good."

"Dad."

"I'm allowed one."

He rocked for a while.

Then he reached into his shirt pocket and took out something small and wrapped in a handkerchief.

He held it out.

It was a gold earring, a plain hoop with a bent catch.

I knew it before he said anything.

"Your mother had two," he said. "She lost one in the lake the summer we married. She wore this one every day until she died, and I took it off her myself."

"You never told me that."

"I wasn't ready to."

I held it in my palm.

It weighed nothing.

"Wear it at the wedding," my father said. "If there's a wedding. I'm not assuming."

"There's going to be a wedding."

"Has he asked?"

"Not yet."

"He's slow."

"He's got conditions."

"He's always got conditions." He rubbed his mustache. "Vic-Vic. I want to say something and I want you to let me get to the end."

"All right."

"I asked him for that promise because I was scared. I thought I was protecting you. All I did was make two people I love spend four years hurting."

"You didn't know."

"I knew enough." He looked out at the water. "You've got my blessing. You don't need it, you never did, but you've got it. Be as happy as you can stand."

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