Page 27 of The Girlfriend Zone

After Riley places her order and the server takes off, my dad turns his attention back to us. He’s dressed for travel today, so he’s wearing a charcoal suit with a light green tie that Riley and I gave him for Christmas last year. All his ties come from his daughters. “So now that you’ve mocked me for ordering the same thing?—”

“Which you do every time,” Riley interjects.

“It’s breakfast. Breakfast is supposed to be the same. Mornings are for routine. You get up, exercise, eat a healthy breakfast,” he says, like it’s a mantra.

“And you already ran three miles, right?” Riley asks.

He rolls his dark blue eyes at her—we get our eyes from him. Our mom has brown eyes. I can’t say it bothersme that Riley and I look more like him than the woman who barely wants to know us.

“Yes, Riley. You saw me come back from the run. You still live with me, you sass monster,” he teases.

That’s mostly true—that she lives with him. She also stays with his parents, who live next door to them. When our mom left nearly a decade ago to ostensibly focus on her handbag line, but actually to shack up with Dad’s agent, he became our primary parent. He built a house for his parents on his property in Mill Valley so they could help raise us. I was fourteen then, Riley was six, and Mom had moved to Miami.

She did launch the handbag line with the money she protected in the prenup, and she’s still running the wildly successful Simply Grace. But Michael, the guy she cheated on Dad with? Pretty sure he’s been out of the picture for a long time. Well, she always loved accessories more than anything so I suppose her exit strategy worked out for her. It also taught me a valuable lesson—it’s best if I depend on myself.

I focus on the most important people in my life—my father and little sister. Dad, however, is already focused on me. “So, what’s on tap for today, Leighton?”

“I’m assisting a fashion photographer,” I say, then tell him about some of the work I’m doing with a local designer. “And later this week I’m taking some dog pictures for a Bark in the Park event.”

“Nice,” he says, his tone proud. “And you had a shoot yesterday. How’d it go?”

I mentioned it when I last saw him, so it’s only natural he’d ask. Only now, I feel like a complete traitor lying to him, maybe for the first time. “It…sort of fell apart.”

“What happened?” he asks, and I’m sure he’ll be readyto dole out advice, too, on work and how to handle setbacks. Normally, I like his advice. He knows what it takes to collaborate, manage big personalities, and work with a huge team. Obviously.

Think fast.

“The model canceled, and then the client canceled,” I say. Since he’ll never know Miles stepped in, I add, “So it was a bust.”

He sighs. “What did you do instead?”

Got absolutely wrecked on a chaise longue by one of your fifty-goal scorers. The guy you saved after an injury. Filthy mouth. Big heart. Smart too. Basically, a perfect date.“I just shot some self-portraits,” I say, knowing nothing will shut Dad up faster than the thought of me in lingerie. He knows I’ve been playing around with that type of shot, but not that I want to build a business shooting boudoir.

Riley sits up straighter, then nudges me, her gaze drifting pointedly down to her hands. They’re below the table. She signs,What did you wear? Can you take me shopping for something pretty?

I laugh, then say out loud to her, “Anytime.”

Dad clears his throat. “I do know ASL too.”

We all know American Sign Language, even though I don’tneedit now—I can hear them all well enough and everyone else—clients, friends, neighbors, strangers. I don’t know if I’ll ever truly have to use it. But my high school offered it, so I took it just in case. Riley and my dad decided to learn it too. Someday I might need or want to use ASL to communicate with them, even though I know I could also use conversational captioning tools on my phone. Either way, the future can barrel down on you. So I choose to be practical.

I turn to Riley, smiling as I say to my father, “You know it, but only if you canseeit.”

He rolls his eyes. “That’s just mean.”

I shrug. “You’re a girl dad. We’re going to have secrets from you.”

“Get used to it,” Riley adds.

“Daughters,” he says with an over-the-top sigh then he moves on, turning to Riley. “And you have a chemistry test today.”

“Which she’ll ace,” I add because she’s a genius STEM girl.

“I don’t know about that,” Riley says.

“You kind of ace everything,” I say, grinning.

“You do,” Dad agrees, and when the server returns with his coffee, he thanks him. We chat more, carefully sidestepping any mention of hockey until Dad studies me for a long beat, then says with a chin nod, “Where’d you get that locket? Is it new?”

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