“Sometimes you just know these things.”
I remember the feel of Ryan’s lips on mine, his fingers squeezing my hips, the look of those chocolatey brown eyes as he said my name. Then I change the subject. “If you could go back and fall in love with Mom all over again, knowing she wouldn’t be here today, would you do it?”
His eyes close for a brief minute.
“Sorry.” I take a seat at the table and squeeze my dad’s hand. “Forget I said anything.”
My dad and I are not ones for serious heart-to-heart conversations. We’re hardly ones for conversations at all unless they involve yelling at each other over pizza orders.
“Forget I said anything,” I say. “I know you don’t like to talk about it.”
“Her,” he says. “I’m always willing to talk about her.”
I hang my head, the somber moment seeping throughout the room. The ache in my heart comes back, stronger than before. My dad hasn’t figured out how to live without her yet, not successfully at least. I’m not sure any of us have.
“I’d do it all over in a second,” he says. “A hundred times, a million times.”
“But this heartache…”
“Is a sign that I did at least one thing right in my life.” My dad has these furry brown eyebrows and they crinkle, his expression filled with pain mixed with joy as he looks at me. “Your mother was the best thing that ever happened to me, and I’d never have known what it meant to love unless I’d met her.”
“But—”
“There are no buts,” he says. “That’s it. I loved her, love her still, and that’s all. She’s the best part of me, even if she’s not here physically. She’s still here, Andi.”
I fall silent, lost in my thoughts, wondering how on earth we even got onto this subject. I’m not in love with Ryan; I’m hardly in like with him. We’ve just met. “Ryan asked me to go to a wedding with him, as friends. Sort of like a date, but…it’s complicated.”
My dad swirls his beer around and looks at me. “Are you friends?”
“I suppose.”
“Does he treat you well?”
“I hardly know him, Dad.”
“Do you want to go?”
I pause, considering everything, and I finally nod. “I don’t know why, though. It’d be easier not to go.”
“Go,” he says.
I blink at him. “What?”
A smile turns his lips upward, and for the first time since my mother’s funeral, I see tears smarting in his eyes. “Go. What’s the worst that can happen? You have a horrible time and come back to your family, your studies, your work?”
“I suppose.”
“Have I told you how I met your mother?”
“No,” I lie. He’s told me many times before, but I love hearing the story.
“It was Christmas, and we were both shopping for gifts for our significant others. I had a girlfriend, she had a boyfriend, and there was exactly one Beach Boys album left.”
“The Beach Boys?”
“A joke,” he says. “We had the same taste in gag gifts.”
“What happened?”
“I let her have it, of course,” he says with a wry smile. “I was a gentleman.”
“Yeah, right.”
“Fine, she was beautiful and I wanted her to like me.”
“But you were both dating other people.”
“Exactly,” he says. “So of course nothing happened. We parted ways until exactly one year later, when I saw her while looking for Christmas gifts again. This time, we were shopping for ourselves.”
“Two bad breakups?”
“Within days of each other,” he says. “I still didn’t know her name when I asked her out to dinner that very night. We were engaged six months later.”
My heart warms and aches all at once. My father might be many things—abrasive, stoic at times—but he always loved my mother more than anything. I saw it, my siblings saw it, and that’s why none of us has married yet. We haven’t found that sort of love.
“The reason I’m telling you this story again—yes, I know you were lying. I’ve told you this story many times before.”
I laugh. “I love hearing it.”
“I love to tell it,” he says. “It brings her alive again.”
“I’m so sorry, Dad.” I pull him in for a hug. “I don’t know what else to say.”
I hear him swallow over the lump in his throat, which surprises me. Of all nights to get emotional, I hadn’t expected my night with our star customer would be the inciting incident for our first real talk in a long while.
“You don’t have to say anything.” He pulls back, takes a drink of beer. “What I’m trying to say is that sometimes, these chance opportunities come along, and you need to take them. Take your chance and run because you never know where the path may lead.”
I smile and sit with my dad until he finishes his drink. He stands first, depositing the bottle into the recycling bin. I stand too, pulling my polo tight around me.
“When’s the wedding?” he asks.
“The twentieth,” I say. “A few weeks away.”
“You have that week off work,” he says. “Angela will cover, and I’ll call your friend Lisa. She does a good job.”
“She does a horrible job.”
“Don’t worry about it,” he says with a grin. “Goodnight Andi.”
“Night Dad.”
That night, I find myself too excited to sleep—excited about my night with Ryan, the upcoming trip, and maybe, just maybe, the possibility of something more.
CHAPTER 23
Andi
My lack of sleep shows the next morning. I wake up early, too excited to lay around in my bed, so I pass the time working on new material. It’s only seven in the morning, and I’ve already come up with a new bit to test during my show tonight.
As I brush on some foundation to cover the bags under my eyes, a pang of regret strikes when I remember that I’ll be missing the bachelor/bachelorette party tonight. I can’t be that disappointed, however. After all, I’ll be accompanying Ryan to the real wedding, which is much more exciting than a night out at the bar.
The more I think about it, the higher my hopes drift, and the higher my hopes drift, the easier it is to forget that this whole thing is a ruse. I’m to be Ryan’s fake girlfriend to save him from having to go with one of his mom’s picks. Even though he posed it like a date, he meant as friends; both of us were clear that there would be—could be—nothing more.
On the positive side of things, after last night, there is no doubt in my mind that he wants me just like I want him—physically, all of him, all the time.
Maybe we could do this thing in a way that meant we could have awesome sex and then call it quits after the wedding, no strings attached. People do that all the time, right? Not me, necessarily, but I bet Ryan has done it plenty of times before.