Page 79 of Instant Bond

Grandma Tracey had taken my dad under her wing a few years back, desperately trying to pass him the torch of incredible party planning. I was starting to suspect he would never quite develop her zen energy when it came to it, but he was getting pretty decent.

When my pop came back out of the house, with practically half a first aid kit in his hands, my dad dutifully let him tend the almost non-existent wound with no complaints. When he was done, he lifted my dad’s hand to his mouth, tenderly kissing his bandaged finger. My dad looked at him with an embarrassingly dreamy expression, before cupping his face and pulling him down for what I personally considered to be an inappropriate kiss for a sort of public setting. I grimaced, turning away so they could finish up. Gross.

“You’ll get it one day, buddy,” Pop told me, clapping a big hand on my shoulder as he passed by me to head over to the pool. Yeah, yeah. I was pretty sure Igot itnow, but that didn’t mean I wanted to see my parents making out in front of my face.My dad watched him for a few more moments, before returning his attention to the glasses of lemonade.

“A party sounds good,” I agreed. “I can help.”

“You don’t need to help me, baby. You should just enjoy your summer.”

“I like helping you,” I told him. “We make a pretty good team, you know.”

When he leaned over to plant a kiss on my head, like he always did when I said something that made him happy, I dipped my head down so he actually could.

“There’s no one I’d rather have on my team than you,” he said, finally handing me over a frosty glass filled with the strawberry lemonade he’d made from scratch in our kitchen just a few hours earlier. A lemon wedge rested on the side of the glass, hopefully worth the near-mortal injury he’d endured for it.

“Me too,” I said honestly. When he walked around the bar to head toward everyone else, I followed him.

My sisters were floating at the edge of the pool now, chatting with our pop. They looked more like him, with golden curls of hair and pale blue eyes. I looked like our dad. But when we all went out together, we got compliments all the time about what abeautifulfamilywe were. My parents always preened about that.

My brattier sister was 11 years old. She was named Calliope, but no one called her that, just like no one called me Tytan. I think my dad just liked giving us covertly weird names. My youngest sister, 8, decidedly less bratty, was named Artemis. Calli and Missy.

They begged me to get in the water with them, and even though I didn’t really want to, I knew I’d eventually give in anyway. I had a hard time telling them no about anything. I guess I was kind of like Pop, in that way. He couldn’t tell any of us no either, especially Dad.

When I glanced back to see the two of them already cuddled together on a single lounger, lost in each other, I rolled my eyes and jumped into the pool, hopefully raining a big splash over them to show my displeasure with their inability to keep their lips off each other.

If they kept being gross, I’d have to pull out my secret weapon to humble them, which I’d only pulled out a few times over the years. The fact that if not for me really,reallywanting a ducky donut, they never would have met. So technically if it wasn’t for me, they would never have gotten married and the girls wouldn’t even exist.

But if I really stopped to think about it, there were way worse things than parents who kissed all the time. Even if it was gross and embarrassing, I wouldn’t have traded them, or any other part of my life, for anything or anyone else in the world.

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