Page 9 of The Love Playbook

“Scrooge,” he hisses back.

Pursing my lips, I paste on a happy face as if to prove him wrong. “And what do you do for a living, Barb? Other than pop out children,” I joke.

Barbie laughs good-naturedly. “I’m an ER nurse.”

“Wow,” I say, admittedly impressed. “That must be tough hours with kids.”

“Barbistough,” Dad pipes up. “Worked cleaning houses and babysitting after her husband died while she took classes at night to get her degree, all while her kids were young.”

I glance over at Chris, who seems unfazed by my father’s statement. I hadn’t known his father died when he was a child. I guess I just assumed his parents were divorced, same as mine.

For some reason, this makes me look at him in a new light.

He catches me staring again and winks.

“It was nothing.” Barb flushes while she smiles over at my father with a look of adoration. “I just did what I had to.”

“You didn’thaveto do anything,” Dad supplies, and I think about my mother’s shoddy work ethic, wondering if this was a dig at her.

I fiddle with my fork while they make eyes at each other, feeling like a spectator to a sport I know nothing about.

As much as I hate to admit it, I can understand what my father sees in her. Not only is Barb beautiful, but she’s independent and hardworking. She took the shit life threw at her in her stride only to turn it around and make a better life for herself and her children. She proverbially turned lemons into lemonade.

It’s the complete opposite of how my mother lives her life.

“To answer your question”?Barb turns her attention back to me?“the hours can be tough, but they actually work out well with the kids. I usually work three twelve-hour shifts and then I get three days off. Navigating holidays can be tough, though. Luckily, I got Thanksgiving off this year, but I’ll finish up a shift midmorning on Christmas, which means I’ll be a zombie while the kids open their gifts, but the pay is great and I love the work, so it’s worth it.”

“The hardest part will be holding the rugrats off while we wait on Mom to get home,” Chris says with a grin.

“Yes, but you’re so good at that.” Barb laughs at her son, and I glance over at him. For a moment I see him in a new light?as the man who lost his father as a child, helps his mother, values family, and is exceptionally close to his siblings. But then he catches my eye and smirks like he knows what I’m thinking, and he’s the same old Chris again.

I roll my eyes, cheeks burning as I turn back toward his mother.

I so badly want to find some kind of fault in her, some reason to dislike Barbie Collins, but so far, I’m coming up empty-handed, which makes the imminent demise of her relationship with my father kind of sad.

“Where do you guys live?” I ask.

Knowing Chris’s family is close to AAU, I wonder if he and I ever met prior to this in passing?at a high school football game or a local festival, perhaps. It’s weird to think about.

“Just outside Traverse City in Garfield Township,” she answers.

“Best place around,” Chris pipes up.

I can’t disagree. Living in a suburb outside Traverse City would be ideal. It’s one of the most picturesque cities I’ve been to. At the head of the east and west of , a thirty-two-mile-long bay of that includes the gorgeous , they have access to the water as well as everything city life has to offer. Lockport is a thirty-minute drive with far less to occupy residents other than hanging at the gossip well.

“And how did you two meet?” I ask, patting myself on the back for being such a good sport.

Look at me, daughter of the year, a delightful young woman and the opposite of rude.

I shoot Chris a dirty look as if to prove my point, feeling pretty smug about myself when my father launches into the unnecessarily long story of how they met, at the local coffee shopsituated between the hospital and my father’s architectural firm, because the coffee pot in his office was broken.

“Cute,” I mutter, turning my attention back on my plate, only to discover I’ve lost my appetite.

By the time dinner ends, I’m running on fumes. Playing nice is, apparently, exhausting.

We move into the living room for dessert where I take one of the leather armchairs by the large stone fireplace, soaking in the warmth of the crackling fire while Chris settles into the one opposite mine. We glare at each other in a silent staring war no one wins until Barb bustles into the room with a tray of cheesecake, and Chris’s eyes light up, homing in on the dessert.

My father follows behind, a tray with four steaming mugs in his hands which he sets down on the coffee table while Barb slices and doles out the dessert. It’s oddly domestic, and it strikes me once more how different my father seems around her. He’s calmer, content in a way I haven’t seen since I was a child.