Page 1 of Who's Your Daddy?

1. Peter

“Honey, I’m home.”

The hard slam of my front door jolts me from sleep. I groan. That’s Dylan. Why he thinks I’d want to be awake at 5 a.m. is beyond me, but that’s his wake-up call every morning. This is a fairly new routine. Ever since he proposed three months ago, he’s spent every night at his fiancé’s place. She co-hosts a breakfast show and has to be at the station by 4:30.

After she leaves, Dylan drives all the way back to my place to have an hour-long session with his punching bag. Why he can’t just do that at a nearby gym is beyond me. He insisted bag time was something he had to do alone, so when he moved in, I converted the spare bedroom downstairs into a small workout area for him. And what did I get for this courtesy? Nothing!

Instead of sneaking in like a normal person and quietly going about his business, he slams the door shut, then starts speaking to me like I’ve been awake the whole time, just waiting for him to come home.

He drives me crazy sometimes. We’ve been friends since high school, so one would think I’d be used to him being a pain in the ass. But no. It’s impossible to build a tolerance level that high.

He’s been my roommate for a while now. Roommate is maybe the wrong way to look at it. My house is effectively a pit-stop between marriages. He moved in with me after he got divorced about eighteen months ago, and in two and a half weeks, he’s going to get marriedagain.

I can barely maintain a relationship for more than a week, and here he is getting married for thesecondtime. But that’s Dylan. He’s the sensitive, sentimental one in our trio of friends. He’s all about love and soul mates and commitment. All the things I actively try to avoid. Just the thought gives me a headache. Women are more trouble than they’re worth. I’ve been trying to instill this very basic principle into Dylan since we were teenagers, but he’s a brick wall when it comes to matters of the heart.

Actually, he’s downright foolish where the opposite sex is concerned, which is why his ex-wife now has his house and hiscurrentfiancé unleashed all her fury on his brand-new Lamborghini. And I’m not talking about your run-of-the-mill tire-slashing rage. Nah, this woman went ape-shit crazy with a goddamn garden spade and totally fucked up his car. Now, if it were me, I would’ve packed it in and given up on the love game, but not Dyl. He’s a sucker for punishment.

And I get it. Women use their feminine wiles to bend men to their will. Hips and legs and tits and lips. It’s impossible to resist them. I, too, have fallen victim to their alluring charms on many occasions. We get tangled in their web...and then they screw us over. Thankfully, I’ve been sensible enough to not develop any emotional attachments. The key thing is to keep all interactions to a minimum. From my experience, the drama only starts after about three weeks, so I have a rule. If I ever want to indulge in anything more than a one-night stand, I tap out at around two weeks.

“You want breakfast, sweetheart?” he yells from the kitchen.

This is another annoying habit of his. He speaks to me like I’m his intermediate wife. Dylan has never been very reliable, and sometimes if he gets into a funk, he just switches his phone off and disappears for days at a time. When he moved in with me, I asked him to just check in with me so that I’d know if he was okay. That minor act of concern led to this bullshit.

Most days, I just ignore him, toss over, and go back to sleep, but I’m starving this morning, and I’m not going to pass up a gourmet breakfast. He’s an incredible chef, and he’s moving out in two and a half weeks, so I might as well take advantage of it. I drag myself out of bed and walk downstairs to the kitchen.

I have a modest-sized condo. It’s a two-story, four-bedroom home with French oak hardwood flooring and lightwood cabinetry in all the living areas. The large modern kitchen comes complete with quartz countertops and stainless-steel appliances. The whole west side is basically glass from ceiling to floor, which opens up to a large balcony from my bedroom upstairs and a spacious patio from the living room downstairs. Simple yet sophisticated, that’s what I like.

I own many properties, but I chose to live here because this particular project took so much time and effort that I developed a personal connection to it. Three years ago, I purchased this plot of land and contracted multiple companies to develop it into a gated community. On the west side of the complex, we built three two-bedroom apartment buildings, and on the east side, we built twenty uniquely designed luxury homes. I wanted prestige. I wanted exclusive living, so this place is equipped with everything: a swimming pool, a fitness center, a bar and clubhouse, a park with different hiking trails, a tennis court, even a day spa.

This is now prime real estate. While I sold the free-standing houses and turned a good profit, I earn a more stable income from renting the apartments. I’ve had an average occupancy rate of about ninety percent since I started leasing them out.

The smell of sizzling bacon greets me as I enter the kitchen. “Make mine extra crispy,” I grumble.

“Wow!” His eyes widen in surprise before his focus returns to the pan. He tosses mushrooms, green pepper, and a mild amount of seasoning. “You’re out of bed before eleven? The end of the world must be coming. I should’ve lit an extra candle when I went to church last Sunday.” His lips quirk up in a smile when I drop onto the stool on the opposite side of the island stove. He seems proud that he’s managed to annoy me this early. “What time are we going to the gym today?”

I run a hand over my face in an attempt to wipe the sleep away before I look up at him. “About two-thirty. Scott and I are going to the country club to have lunch with his dad first and then we can meet you at the gym...or do you wanna join us for lunch?”

“Bella wants me to go to some cake place to do a taste test of our wedding cake, but I’m sure I’ll be done before lunch, so yeah, I’ll meet you guys at the country club.”

He plates my omelet and slides it across to me. One bite and I forgive him for all the wrongs he has ever done to me. “This is great, Dyl.”

“Mmm.” He nods his agreement as he scarfs down his breakfast. “So, I was thinking,” he says between bites. “Why don’t you ask Chelsea to be your date for my wedding?”

“Dyl, I haven’t even spoken to Chelsea in over a month?”

“What? Why? I thought you liked her.”

“I mean...she was alright, but...” I don’t know how to say this without sounding like a dick. “I just...got bored. There are only so many times you can have sex with the same woman before it becomes monotonous.”

His jaw tightens. If there’s one way to piss Dylan off, that would be it. He hates any kind of derogatory comments about women. And I’m not trying to be derogatory. I’m just stating facts, plain and simple. Chelsea was great on all four occasions that we saw each other. It was a fun week, but eventually, the time came for us to part ways. Four dates are three more than usual for me, so I think he misconstrued it as something more.

He shakes his head, sighing his disappointment. “You’re gonna die alone, Pete.”

“Don’t you think it’s a little too early for you to be so bleak?”

He knows his statement didn’t impact me in the slightest, and I can already sense that he’s on the brink of a lecture. We’ve had these discussions a million times, so I know all the signs. The look of condescension on his face. The inkling of hope in his brown eyes because he genuinely believes that one day I’ll change.

“I’m serious, man. Your friendship with me and Scott is the only relationship you want to maintain on a long-term basis.”

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