Seducing My Dad's Best Friend novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Never Promised Not to Look

Stan interrupts the porch, and in the morning Vicky takes a desk at the yard and tells Gabe she will make him break his promise where nobody can see.

"Four years ago," I said.

"The week you turned twenty-two."

"That's when I started looking at you, Gabe. He asked you for it before I said a word to anyone."

"Your father isn't blind, Vic."

The back door opened and light fell across the boards.

Gabe stepped away from me so fast he knocked the cooler lid against the rail.

It was my father.

He stood in the doorway with a plate of cake in each hand and his reading glasses pushed up into his white hair.

"Vic-Vic," he said. "There you are. I've been trying to hug you for an hour."

"I was getting air, Dad."

"Gabe, they're waiting on the toast." He looked at Gabe for a long moment. "Everything all right out here?"

"Fine, Stan," Gabe said. "Just the cooler."

He picked it up and walked past my father into the house without looking back.

My father handed me a plate and put his big arm around my shoulders.

He smelled like beer and engine grease, the way he had smelled my whole life.

"Happy you're home," he said into the top of my head. "Whatever the reason is."

I leaned against him and ate a piece of cake I could not taste.

I did not ask him what he had said to Gabe.

I wanted to see him say it to my face first.

Inside, Devon called for quiet and held a glass up high, and I stood in the kitchen doorway with the plate in my hand and watched Gabe stand next to her.

He clinked glasses with her.

He kissed her cheek.

He did not look at me again all night.

In the morning I woke up in my old bedroom under the sloped ceiling with a headache and a plan.

I wore my oldest jeans and my mother's green flannel jacket and walked down the hill to the yard at seven.

The lake was flat and gray.

Boats in winter storage stood on jack stands along the shore in long rows, wrapped in white plastic that cracked in the wind.

My father was in the office with a coffee and the haul-out schedule.

"I need a job," I said. "Desk, truck, whatever you've got."

He put down his cup.

"You quit Columbus."

"A week ago."

"Were you going to tell me?"

"Yesterday, before Gabe made an announcement."

He rubbed his mustache and said nothing for a while.

Then he slid the schedule across the desk.

"Forty boats to cover and block before the freeze," he said. "Twelve haul-outs. Nobody's keeping the book. You can have the desk by the window."

"Thank you."

"It's temporary."

"I know it's temporary."

"Vic-Vic." He looked at me over the glasses. "Be careful where you walk around here."

"It's my yard, Dad."

"It's Gabe's too."

I took the clipboard and went out.

Gabe was on the roof of the boat shed with a bundle of shingles and a nail gun, working along the edge in the cold.

I stood below with my hands in my mother's pockets.

I watched him for a full minute before he knew I was there.

When he did, the gun stopped.

"Morning," I said.

"Vic."

"I've got the winter work list. Your name is on every line of it."

"I know what's on it."

"Then come down and tell me what the shed needs from the office."

"Send it up."

"No."

He stood there with the nail gun at his side.

He had not shaved.

His jacket was open at the throat, and I could see the pulse beating under his jaw from where I stood.

"I looked at it all night," I said.

"Looked at what?"

"What you said on the porch. You promised my father you wouldn't touch me."

"Vicky."

"You never promised not to look."

He went very still.

"And you did," I said. "Just now. Before I said good morning."

"Go to work, Vic."

"I will."

I turned to leave and then stopped and looked up at him again.

"I'm going to make you break it," I said. "And nobody is going to see."

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