On the other hand, Seth really loves spreadsheets and formulas. Maybe he had fun. I don’t pretend to understand any of my brothers.
“Fine,” I admit, uncrossing my arms, sitting in the chair opposite him.
He leans forward, both elbows on his desk, satisfaction written across his face.
“I lied to a judge,” I start.“All right, kid,” I say into the rear-view mirror. “You got any questions?”
Rusty kicks her booster seat a few times, like she always does when she’s thinking.
“Can I tell people I’m the flower girl?” she asks.
“Sure.”
“What if a police officer asks me whether you’re really engaged?”
I put my car into park, sigh internally, and turn around to face her. It’s the next day, Saturday, and we’re picking Charlie up before we go to RiverFest.
Everyone I know will be at RiverFest. Everyone. It’s the event of the year in Sprucevale.
I’m somewhat apprehensive about it, but it is what it is and there’s no going back now.
“If a police officer asks, tell them the truth,” I say, as seriously as I can muster. I wonder if I’m going to regret telling her that, but on the other hand, I don’t want to be the dad who asks his kid to lie to the police.
Just everyone else she knows, that’s all.
“What about a fire fighter? Or a doctor? Or my principal? Or—”
“Do you think any of them are going to ask you?” I say.
I thought we’d covered this, since I took her out to lunch for burgers and fries today and had a long talk about the fake engagement. She’s surprisingly excited about getting to play pretend for an extended period of time, but she made me promise again and again that Charlie would still like her afterwards, and that we wouldn’t really break up.
As usual, I felt awful. Rusty adores Charlie, and even though I reassured her a thousand times that Charlie’s not going anywhere, I think she’s still a little worried.
“Probably not,” she admits.
“Then how about we talk about that if it happens?” I ask, and she nods.
It’s Saturday afternoon, and we’re parked outside Charlie’s apartment, here to pick her up for our first date.
Sort of. It’s our first public appearance, so I offered to pick her up and she said yes. I’m not sure if it’s a date if my entire family, her family, and my kid are all going to be there with us, but it’ll sure be something.
I get out, get Rusty out of her booster seat, and head up Charlie’s stairs. She shouts to come on in when I knock, so we do.
Rusty goes instantly to her corner of Charlie’s living room that Charlie set up for her and regularly stocks with cool new stuff. I don’t think there’s anything new over there today, but within seconds Rusty is wearing enormous purple sunglasses, sitting on a fuzzy blue pillow, and reading a chapter book with a mermaid on the front.
“Sorry, give me a few,” Charlie calls. “I was about to get into the shower but then my mom called, and she wanted to know what our plans were for tonight, and then she started grilling me again about…”
She keeps explaining herself, but Charlie’s running late because that’s what Charlie does. It’s annoying sometimes, but I learned to deal with it long ago, so I lean to one side and glance at her bedroom door, wondering if it’s okay for me to go in.
It’s open about six inches. I lean more, and then I see her.
It’s not okay for me to go in, because Charlie’s not dressed yet.
Her back is to me. She’s wearing a bra and panties, and I should definitely turn around and look at something else, but I don’t.
In fact, I do absolutely nothing besides stand perfectly still. My mouth might fall open.
Charlie looks good almost naked. Even with her back to me, her body’s feminine and powerful all at once, a combination of curves and muscle that appeals directly to my lizard brain and shuts any higher functioning down completely.
Half a second later she slides something over her head, and then all of a sudden she’s decent, wearing a sleeveless mint-green dress that comes down to her knees, but the image of her undressed is already burned into my mind: the way her muscles flex lightly under her skin as she arranged her dress over her head, the gentle curve of her waist, the way she cocked one hip and then the other.
Furthermore?
The bra and panties matched. They were both black, but even in the half-second I saw them, I could tell they both had the same lace around the edges, and that simple fact makes my heart race like nothing else.
“Hey, Daniel?” she calls.
I take a quick step to the side and jam my hands into my pockets, glancing over at Rusty. She’s completely absorbed in her mermaid book.