My Dad's Best Friend Said No Daddy Jokes, So I Made Him Say Yes novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Not Like This

Lucius sends Declan home; behind the ice house Mona tells him what she wants, dares him with a word he forbids, and he kisses her back before he stops.

Lucius did not let go of my hand until the glass stopped skittering.

Then he let go, slowly, one finger at a time, and walked past me down the dock.

Sixty people made a lane for him.

Declan stood over the wet planks with his empty fist still in the air.

"Pick up the glass," Lucius said.

"You're kidding."

"There's children barefoot on this dock. Pick it up, and then go home."

Declan looked around for the laugh he usually got.

Nobody gave it to him.

My cousin's little boy, six years old and barefoot, stood by the ice chest with a hush puppy in each hand and watched.

Declan crouched and picked up the pieces one by one, with his watch flashing under the string lights.

He dropped them into a bucket and stood up.

"Good luck, Captain," he said, pleasantly, to Lucius, and then past him, to me. "Tell me how far you get."

He walked out down the dock with his shoulders back.

Odette turned the speaker up, and the zydeco came roaring back, and sixty people found something to do with their hands.

I stayed where I was, shaking.

Not with fear, I realized.

With something I had no word for, because I had never needed one.

A hand closed on my elbow.

"Come here," Lucius said, low.

He took me around the end of the ice house, where the light stopped and the dock smelled like diesel and wet rope.

He put his back to the cinderblock and let me stand in front of him.

"You have lost your mind," he said.

"I have not."

"You walked a hundred and forty feet in front of your whole family."

"I know exactly how long it is," I said.

His mouth twitched.

He controlled it fast, but I saw it.

"Why me?" he said.

"Because you have never once looked at me wrong."

"Monalisa."

"And because you go stiff every time I stand within a yard of you, and I want to know why," I said.

He said nothing.

The bayou slapped the pilings.

"Six years," I said. "Declan said it, and every man after him confirmed it by my not feeling much. Maybe he's right. Maybe something's switched off."

"Nothing is switched off."

"Then prove it."

I said it flatly.

I have spent my career writing down what people say in rooms, and I know how a line sounds when it's meant.

"I want you to find out," I said. "Tonight. If I'm cold, you'll know in a minute. If I'm not, I'd like to know that too."

"I taught you to mend a net."

"You did. I'm very good at it."

"I'm forty-nine years old," he said.

"I'm twenty-seven. I can read a calendar."

He put his hand over his eyes.

I had never seen him do that.

"I was your father's friend," he said.

"He's dead, Lucius. He's been dead eleven years. It's us here."

His hand came down, and his eyes were different.

I stepped closer, until the toes of my sandals touched his boots.

I could feel the heat of him through the cotton of my dress.

"Come on, Daddy," I said.

I said it as a dare, soft, right at the hollow of his throat.

I meant it to land.

It landed.

He caught my wrist, not hard, and held it away from his chest.

"No," he said.

"No what?"

"No daddy jokes. Not from you. Not ever."

His voice had gone rough and flat.

"It was a dare," I said. "I'm sorry. It wasn't a joke."

"I know what it was."

He was breathing hard through his nose.

Neither of us moved.

I turned my wrist in his hand until my fingers were laced through his.

I said, "Tell me to go home, Lucius. If you mean it, say it, and I'll go."

He did not say it.

He looked at my mouth.

The kiss was my idea, and I'll admit that, because I got up on my toes and he let me.

For one second his mouth was only warm and still.

Then he made a sound deep in his chest.

His free hand went into my hair.

He kissed me back so hard my head hit the cinderblock.

He tasted of coffee and salt.

His hand cupped the back of my skull to take the hit.

He pulled my hair out of its pins in his fist, and my curls came down over his wrist.

I got both my hands in his shirt.

He turned us, one smooth heavy step, until I was the one against the wall and he was the wall in front of me.

His thigh pushed between mine.

I felt him against my hip, hard, and I felt every part of my body wake up.

"There," he said into my mouth. "Feel that?"

"Yes."

"That's not cold."

"No," I said. "That's not cold."

I ground down on his thigh, and he groaned, and his hand slid down my back and gripped my ass through the yellow cotton.

I was gasping.

I had not known I could gasp from this.

Then he stopped.

He took his mouth off mine, and his hand out of my hair, and put his forehead against the wall beside my ear.

His whole body was shaking.

"Not like this," he said again.

"Then how?"

"Not behind the ice house with sixty people ten yards away. Not drunk on being angry."

"I'm not drunk," I said.

"You're angry. I'm not letting you spend it on me."

He stepped back.

He looked at me for a long moment with his chest going up and down, and I saw him put something away behind his face.

"There's something else," I said. "I think I called someone, that night. When Papa died."

His face went completely still.

"I don't remember. I was sixteen, at a party. My phone died. Odette says I never called anyone."

My hands were cold.

"The report said the phone records weren't in the file. I asked the deputy once, years ago, and he said they were lost."

"Monalisa."

"I haven't been over that causeway since. I take the Bolivar ferry to go anywhere. I thought I was being dramatic," I said.

He did not say a word.

His eyes had gone to some place behind me.

Then he pulled himself back and took his hat off a nail by the door.

"I'll drive you home," he said.

He drove me the long way, down the Seawall with the Gulf black on one side and the lit-up hotels on the other.

He did not turn on the radio.

At my door on Twenty-third Street he left the engine running.

"Not tonight," he said.

"All right."

"Five in the morning. The net shed. Bring nothing."

I got out of the truck with my knees gone.

"Lucius."

He looked at me across the seat.

"You said no daddy jokes."

"I did."

"I didn't say I'd stop," I said.

← Chapter 1 · All chapters · Chapter 3 →

Want to keep talking to characters like these? Chat with AI romance characters: AI Boyfriend · AI Girlfriend · Dark Romance · Fantasy Romance · BL (Boys’ Love) · Billionaire Boyfriend · Mafia Boyfriend · Possessive Boyfriend · Hockey Boyfriend · Older Boyfriend · K-Drama Boyfriend · Anime Boyfriend · Vampire Boyfriend · Werewolf Boyfriend · Demon Boyfriend · Fae Romance · GL (Girls’ Love) · Anime Girlfriend · Goth & Alt Girlfriend · Gamer Girlfriend · Tsundere Girlfriend · Fantasy Girlfriend