Page 43 of Opposites (Never) Attract
These days, however, Dad spent most of the year in Florida. He had a condo and a lady friend down there by the ocean. But for three months out of the year, he was up here in my hair yapping about all the changes I made to the place like…central air and a functioning kitchen.
“Pop!” I called out, shutting the door behind me. The guy liked to bitch about the air conditioning, but he kept it like an icebox in here during the day.
“What?” he shouted back, from around the corner in the kitchen that I’d updated with new appliances and countertops. I’d gotten talked into a quartz top island, which I actually thought was pretty slick.
“I’m home,” I said, scraping the mud off my boots beforetaking them off and leaving them in a cubby by the door. Another little addition of mine. Dad refused to use the cubbies, so I picked up his old boots and put them in the other cubby.
The key to cabin living was that everything had a place, and everything needed to be in it.
“I know you’re home! I’m not deaf, am I?”
I smiled. We’d picked up some bad habits, the two of us bachelors living together. Shouting at each other all the time being one of them. But I loved having the old man around. Of course, I also loved when he left and I wasn’t picking up after him anymore.
He was at the sink washing dishes, his back to me. I came up behind him and wrapped him in a big bear hug. He went rigid as a fence post.
Dad was not a hugger. But after a day when I watched a woman find out her life was a lie, I was happy to have a dad, who was in fact, my dad.
“What in the Samhill are you doing?”
“Just showing gratitude you’re my pop. A son can do that every once in a while, can’t he?”
I let my dad go and he whirled around like he was going to take a swing.
That was something I never had to doubt. There was no question Pop was my pop. It was like looking into the future. Same height and build. Same eyes. His dark hair now completely silver over the same sun-weathered face of a cowboy.
Even though his shoulders slumped a little lower and his knees were bowed after years in the saddle, he was still the toughest, strongest son of a bitch I’d ever known. When it was his time to leave this earth, there would be none ofthis ridiculous will drama. No secrets revealed. What you saw with Jeremiah Taggert was what you got.
“Seems sus,” he scowled. “Sus is what the kids say, by the way.”
“You have no clue what kids say,” I said, as I stepped around him to open the refrigerator.
Tonight, I deserved a beer. Wasn’t every day I took a private jet from New York to Wyoming, watched a woman’s life get turned upside down, smacked her ass silly, and made her come like an explosion on my tongue.
Did I mention her panties were in my back pocket?
I smiled at the memory of it. Watching her wiggle out of them, pushing them down her legs. The way she spread them out on my thigh.
So much trust there. In a really short amount of time. That didn’t seem like her, and it honored me that I was the one she trusted.
“How did the Odd Calloway sister handle the news she’s a bastard?”
My dad was a million times the man Leroy McGraw had been, but he also had one foot stuck in the 19thCentury.
“She’s not odd, and I don’t think anyone calls innocent children bastards anymore,” I said, taking a long draw on my beer.
“She was never like her sisters. Should have guessed she was different when she wasn’t a red head.”
I shook my head. “She is a genius, Pop. And this rinky-dink town didn’t know what to do with her. Also, she’s grown up some since you last saw her. I don’t thinkoddwill be the first thing you think of when you see her again.”
“Oh,” he turned to lean against the sink, his white eyebrows raised over his dark eyes. “Do I sense some, dare Isay it, interest? And here I was, starting to think you’re one of them asexual types.”
“You don’t know what asexual means.”
“You don’t know what I know. There’s a kid at the condo complex in Florida, they’re teaching me all about this stuff. Now, you interested in this girl?”
Was there interest? Obviously. I could still taste her on my tongue.
But that was sex. Totally different from what my dad meant byinterest. He wanted to see hearts in my eyes and settling down. He wanted grand babies.
