Seducing My Dad's Best Friend novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: Come Here
At her father's birthday party Gabe announces his June wedding in front of forty people, and Vicky follows him onto the porch and kisses him. He kisses back, then says he promised her father he'd never touch her.
My father's sixty-fifth birthday party had forty people in it when Gabe Stoltz called my name across the living room.
"Vicky. Come here."
I had barely set my bag down.
Everyone from the marina was packed between the couch and the kitchen door, holding paper plates and cans of beer.
My father stood by the window in the flannel shirt I had mailed him, grinning, two beers in.
Gabe sat on the plaid couch with a woman beside him.
She had dark wavy hair and bright red lipstick, and his arm was around her waist.
I knew her from my father's phone calls.
She ran the charter desk at the yard.
I had wanted Gabe for four years.
I had quit my job eight days ago and told nobody.
I had driven three hours from Columbus rehearsing what I would say to him tonight.
I walked over and stood in front of the couch.
"Vic," Gabe said. "Devon and I are getting married in June."
The room clapped.
My father raised his can and shouted something about grandchildren.
Devon jumped up and hugged me before I could decide what my face was doing.
"Oh, I'm so glad you came," she said into my hair. "Your dad has been out on that porch watching for your car since noon."
She held up her left hand.
The diamond was small and sat a little crooked.
"Gabe measured my finger with a piece of fishing line," she said. "I told him I'd forgive him if he got the line right."
People laughed.
I laughed too, because my mouth knew how.
"Congratulations," I said.
"We're so late, too," Devon said. "He took the county road again."
"Forty extra minutes," she said. "Stan had to hide the cake twice. I stopped asking why a long time ago."
She squeezed my arm and went to find me a plate.
Gabe stood up.
He was forty-two, six foot two, in the gray work jacket he wore to everything, and he had not looked at me once since I said congratulations.
"I wanted you to hear it from me first," he said. "Before the toast."
"That was nice of you."
"Nothing changes, Vic. You're still my girl."
He said it fast, and he looked at the wall when he said it.
Gabe never looked at the wall.
He had looked me in the eye when I was nine and broke my arm off the dock.
He had looked me in the eye when I was seventeen and failed my driving test.
He had looked me in the eye when I was twenty-four and he almost kissed me in the boat shed.
He had stepped back that night.
The next day a card came in the mail. Proud of you, kiddo.
I went to the kitchen and drank a glass of water standing at the sink.
Through the window I watched Gabe go out the back door with an empty cooler.
I put the glass down.
So I stopped waiting.
The porch light was off.
He was crouched at the side of the porch with the cooler lid open, and he did not hear me come out until I shut the door behind me.
He stood up fast.
"Vic. Go back inside."
"In August you told me you were done with marriage."
"People change their minds."
"In two months?"
"Vicky."
"You've been with her two years," I said.
"You brought a cooler out here and stood in the dark."
His jaw moved under the beard.
"Your father is thirty feet away," he said.
"Then he can watch."
I took his jacket in both hands and kissed him.
For one second he did nothing.
Then his hand came up to the back of my head and he kissed me back, hard, a low sound in his throat, the cooler hitting the boards.
His mouth was warm and tasted like beer.
I pressed up against him and felt how fast his chest was going.
He pulled away so suddenly I almost fell.
"No."
"You kissed me back."
"I know I did."
He wiped his mouth with his wrist and stared at the dark yard.
The Carol Ann sat in her winter cradle under a tarp, my mother's name on the stern.
"I'm engaged," he said.
"You're shaking."
"Vic."
"If you didn't want me you'd have laughed."
He didn't answer.
Inside, someone turned the music down for the toast.
"I made your father a promise," Gabe said. "Four years ago, the week you turned twenty-two."
I held onto the porch rail.
"What promise?"
"That I would never touch you."
Stan Pawlak had known.
My father had known all along, and he had asked.
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