Page 4 of Faking It With the Grumpy Single Dad

The rest of my belongings, including my car, won’t arrive for another week. It’ll be like camping. Like a real adventure. And a little bit like the old days, too, when I would rough it with my dad and his bandmates on the road.

But I don’t really want to think too much about that. Not right now.

“It’s a nice place, Poppy,” Aiden says, looking around at the sparse, yet large and bright, rooms. “You did well.”

Placing my hands on my hips, I smile wide.

“My intuition is flawless,” I say. “The place definitely has potential.”

And I can’t help thinking that, without a doubt, I know my dad would love this place.

Chapter Two: Joe

“Dad, I can’t find my shin guards!”

“I don’t know why you’re telling me, bud. You’re the one who last wore them.”

Eli grumbles something unintelligible before rushing into the mudroom.

“They’re not in here!” he calls back to me.

“Well, you better find them soon, because we were supposed to be out the door five minutes ago!”

Cody comes wandering in, his soccer bag slung over his skinny shoulder. I know I’m not supposed to make such judgments, but he’s definitely the more organized brother.

“Actually, I think I left them outside!” exclaims Eli, darting through the kitchen toward the back door and flinging himself out into the dewy yard.

His younger brother lets out a long-suffering sigh. I check my watch. I’ve got a meeting out in Mermaid Shores in twenty minutes that I really can’t afford to be late for. It’s a new client. And a huge project, by the sound of it.

A minute later, Eli comes barreling back into the kitchen, holding his shin guards over his head like trophies. “I found them. They’re all wet, though. It must’ve rained last night. Oh well!”

Cody, with all the disdain of an elderly gentleman contained in the body of a nine-year-old, wrinkles his nose. “You’re going to play with wet shin guards?”

I clap a hand on his shoulder and, before Eli can retort, say, “He doesn’t have much of a choice, does he? This is why I tell you boys to—”

“Take care of our belongings,” Eli finishes for me. “Yeah, yeah. Sorry for making us late, Dad.”

“Don’t you worry about it, kiddo. Just go get in the truck.”

The boys scamper off, leaving me alone in the kitchen for a brief moment. I take a deep breath, screw on the cover of my travel mug, and take a sip of fresh black coffee. I’m starving, but if I stop at Judy’s Diner for a breakfast sandwich, I’ll definitely be way too late for this meeting. At least the boys already ate, bickering and joking in equal measure with their mouths full of Cap’n Crunch. My best option is to snatch a protein bar from the pantry and pray that it holds me over until I finish dealing with this new client. I do that and walk outside.

The truck rumbles to life. In the backseat, the boys are having an intense discussion about Roblox. I only vaguely understand what that is, so I tune them out as I speed along the familiar route to the boys’ schools. I drop them off every morning, since Eli really struggles with waking up early enough to catch the bus. Plus, Cody gets pretty bad motion sickness on the bus, so it’s a win-win for both of them. I don’t mind the extra stop in my morning commute—it gives me a little bit more time with them.

School ends in a few weeks, though. That means I’ll switch to transporting them to various day camps and friends’ houses, or carting them off to work with me if their grandmother can’tbabysit for the day. Summers are challenging when you’re a single parent who runs his own business, but we make it work. In a few years, the boys will be old enough to fend for themselves during the day.

Until then, I find myself being approximately ten minutes late to the job site most mornings.

I pull up to the curb in front of the elementary school, muss Cody’s head as he hops out the back, and then I swing the truck around to the other end of the lot to drop Eli at the middle school.

“I’ll come get you after soccer, okay? Have a good day!”

“Bye, Dad!”

With the boys taken care of until about four thirty this afternoon, I take a deep breath and direct the vehicle into the swarm of Monday morning traffic heading in and out of Barnstable.

“Alright,” I mutter to myself. “It’s go time.”

I take a swig of coffee and launch past a line of confused tourists trying to get off at the wrong exit. Happens every summer. It’s only May, but the entire Cape is about to be packed with out-of-towners. I don’t begrudge them, though. It’s those out-of-towners that make up the bulk of my clientele. As a general contractor, there’s always some beach house or forested cabin or glamorous mansion to fix up.

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