Dating Daddy's Best Friend novel · Chapter 1 of 32
Chapter 1: Five Words
A week after her forgotten thirtieth, Britt hears her stepson call her a bimbo, packs her husband's bags and watches him walk out to his work wife, then learns her father has been in the cardiac unit for two days.
It took my stepson five words to end my marriage.
I was standing outside his bedroom with a basket of his clean laundry on my hip.
His door was open a crack, and he had a friend on speaker.
"Is your stepmom coming to the regatta?" the friend asked.
Coby laughed.
"God, I hope not. She's such a freaking bimbo."
Then he saw me in the gap, and he slammed the door in my face.
The basket was still on my hip.
His crew hoodie was on top, folded the way he liked it, sleeves tucked under.
I had been folding it that way since he was six.
I set the basket down on the hall floor.
I walked downstairs to the kitchen and looked at the table.
Two plates. Jarrod's was clean. Mine wasn't touched.
He had eaten my lemon chicken in ten minutes with his phone propped against the salt grinder.
He'd laughed twice at whatever Kiersten sent him.
Kiersten Draper was his new VP of sales.
She texted at breakfast, at dinner and at two in the morning.
She called herself his work wife, and he thought that was cute.
A week ago, on Thursday, I turned thirty.
Jarrod got home at nine, kissed the top of my head and asked if there was any chicken left.
Coby didn't remember either. I didn't expect him to.
I had made my own cake and put it in the fridge, and on Sunday I threw it out.
None of that had made me pack a bag.
I went upstairs to our bedroom and pulled Jarrod's big rolling suitcase out of the closet.
I folded his quarter-zips first. Navy, gray, navy, gray.
His dress shirts. His running shoes. The watch box his father left him.
I filled his gym bag with his socks and his belts.
Then I went into the bathroom for his toiletries.
His razor. His cologne. The blood pressure pills he forgot unless I set them out.
His toothbrush was standing in the cup next to mine.
Blue and green, touching, like they had been for ten years.
My chest went tight and I had to hold the edge of the sink.
Then I picked up the blue one and dropped it in the bag.
I rolled the suitcase down the stairs one step at a time.
I set it by the front door with the gym bag on top.
At 8:40 the garage door went up.
Jarrod came in through the mudroom with his laptop bag over his shoulder.
"Hey, babe."
He didn't look up.
His thumb was moving on his phone, and he was smiling at it.
He walked straight past the suitcase.
He opened the fridge and stood in its light, still typing.
"Jarrod."
"Mm."
"Your bags are by the door."
He finally turned around.
He looked at the suitcase, and then at me, and then back at his phone when it buzzed.
"Is this a thing?" he said. "Britt, I've had a fourteen-hour day."
"I know. Kiersten told you all about it."
He sighed.
"We work together."
"At ten at night. At two in the morning. On my birthday."
He opened his mouth.
I watched him try to remember my birthday.
"I'm sorry about that," he said. "We had the Chicago launch. You know what spring is like."
"Coby just called me a bimbo."
"He's sixteen. They say stuff."
"Where do you think he heard it?"
Jarrod set his phone face down on the counter.
That was the closest he'd come to looking at me all week.
"Okay," he said. "Let's be adults about this. You know whose house this is."
"Yours."
"You signed the prenup. You came into this marriage with a chair and a duffel bag."
"I remember."
"So where exactly are you going to go?"
"I'm not going anywhere tonight," I said. "You are. Go stay with your work wife."
He laughed.
Then he stopped, because I didn't.
His phone buzzed against the granite.
He turned it over and read it, and I watched his face soften for someone who wasn't me.
"Fine," he said. "I'll give you the night to calm down."
He picked up the gym bag. He pulled up the suitcase handle.
He was typing again before he reached the mudroom.
He didn't ask why. He didn't ask about the toothbrush.
The garage door went down behind him.
Upstairs, Coby's music went louder.
I stood in my kitchen for a long time.
Then I took my coat and walked down the lawn to the dock.
Reeds Lake was black and still, and I could see our house in it, every window lit.
I had furnished every one of those rooms.
I scrolled to my father's name. Arie DeVries, DeVries Boatworks.
I hadn't called him since Christmas. Jarrod always had a reason we couldn't drive to Saugatuck.
Dad always picked up on the second ring.
It rang five times.
"DeVries phone."
It wasn't my father.
The voice was deep and tired and I knew it from somewhere.
"Who is this?"
"Britt?" A breath. "It's Cullen. Cullen Bray."
My father's best friend. His partner at the boatyard.
I had met him maybe five times, always at Christmas, always with Jarrod talking over both of us.
"Why do you have my dad's phone?"
The line was quiet for a second too long.
"Britt, your dad's been in the cardiac unit at Holland Hospital since Tuesday."
My hand went cold around the phone.
"He made me swear not to call you."
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