Page 17 of Most Likely to Match (The Matchbooks #2)

DEAN

S he follows me up the stairs, careful to avoid the loudest steps when I point them out to her. Every footfall sounds loud to me, but I get her into my room without even a break in my father’s snores. I find a t-shirt for her while she closes the pocket door of the shared bathroom behind her.

As a kid, I always wished for a sibling to share the bathroom with. Instead, the room on the other side has always been a combination rarely used office and spare bedroom. Pretty happy I don’t have one now, though.

I knock on the door when I hear the water running in the sink. “Where are your keys?” I ask in my loudest whisper.

The water shuts off, and a few moments later, the door slides open. “In my bag.” She points to the tote bag sitting precariously on the edge of my bed. “Why?”

“I’m going to move your car onto the street. Just so my parents don’t ask too many questions.”

She laughs, sort of awkwardly.

“There’s a t-shirt on the bed.” I jerk my thumb over my shoulder. “For you to sleep in. If you want.”

She nods again, her eyes set on that spot over my shoulder instead of anywhere on me. I slip out of the bedroom before I do something I might regret later. Like ask her why she’s suddenly so overwhelmed.

I don’t have to adjust Chloe’s car seat much to back it out of my driveway and park it under the branches of a birch tree that reach into the street.

She won’t get a ticket for parking on the street here, but she will get local teens rummaging through her glove compartment for the thrill of it, so I make sure to lock it and then check the locks just in case.

I let myself back into the house through the side door at the kitchen and stop, my feet frozen to the mat when I find my dad sitting at the table, a mug of steaming coffee in front of him.

Maybe I wasn’t as sneaky as I thought.

“Hey,” I say quietly, searching for something to say to him that isn’t an explanation he didn’t ask for or an admission of guilt for something that I’ve technically been allowed to do for over a decade.

He pats the table, an invitation for me to sit that I can’t really decline. “Woke up. Couldn’t fall back to sleep,” he says, gruff.

“Yeah. I’m always antsy before a travel day.”

Dad grunts. He won’t admit it, but Dad is more excited about this trip than Mom, even if she’s the one who pitched him the idea and planned every minute of their voyage.

Our family vacations when I was a kid were all camping and RV trips to Algonquin Park or multi-day drives to Peggy’s Cove.

He went to BC once for work, and Regina— even if it’s an odd place for an economist to go.

But Dad’s never had an international stamp on his passport.

When Matty, Ricky, and I took an uninspiring backpacking trip across Europe with mandatory stops in Amsterdam and Ibiza after graduating from university, Dad was always the first to like and comment on my posts.

I’m excited for him.

“I wanted to go over some house rules before we leave.” Dad’s voice rumbles, his version of a whisper.

Well, shit.

“Listen,” I say, holding my hand out to forestall any awkward and far too belated birds and bees discussion. “The thing with my friend— ”

“Nope,” he says, definitive in force if not volume. “I don’t need to know…that is, whatever you were… whom ever.” And then, again, “Nope.”

He takes a long draught of his coffee, a fortifying sip.

“You’re an adult, Dean,” Dad says, serious; he’s always been excellent at eye contact, in a way that made it hard to lie but easy to feel safe enough to tell the truth.

“I’m not worried about you throwing a rager,” he says sarcastically.

“Or burning the house down. I’ve left instructions for pool maintenance.

” He taps the pad of paper I’ve only just noticed next to his elbow.

“Anything else, I trust you to figure out. The rules are more for you. Specifically.”

He takes another sip of coffee and looks down into the dark depths of his mug as he continues. “Your mother and I are very proud of you. Of the man you’ve become. Things were, uh, rough there for a bit.” He lets that hang for a moment.

It’s funny, in that way that isn’t very funny at all, how the ripples of something that happened fifteen years ago can disturb the stillness that is my gruff and emotionless father.

I want to interject, assure him that whatever worry he may have about me, I am fine . Becoming a therapist has helped me learn, though, when I should speak and when I should shut the fuck up.

“Coming home seems like it was the right choice for you. But being back here can make it easy to…” He squints at his coffee, like it’s whispering words to him, a paternal and over-caffeinated Cyrano de Bergerac. “Fall back into bad— or old— habits.”

Dad looks up at me, expectant.

“Um” is all I’m able to produce at first. Did he see Chloe?

Hear her? I won’t even entertain the possibility that he heard us .

“If you’re worried I won’t do any of my dishes and we’ll get mice”— a common concern of my mother’s when she’d find piles of dirty dishes in my room when I was a teenager— “I do those now.”

“Your friend,” Dad says, clearing away any doubt I could have pretended to maintain.

My stomach, sinking slowly since this conversation started, falls to the floor beneath my seat, but not because I know that he knows. It would be embarrassing, of course, if he knew what we were doing downstairs, but not something I need to keep a secret.

He hasn’t said her name, but he knows I was doing it with her . That scares me. Having to tell him, admit to my parents that the girl who once hurt me is the woman I’m now…

I won’t finish that thought because it requires me to define something that I neither want to define nor think I can.

“I guess, what I’m trying to tell you is.” He sighs. Shrugs, as if he’s realizing the futility of this talk. “Be careful, Dean.” He puts his hand over mine; it’s still bigger, like when I was a child.

I say the only thing I can think of, the thing he and I both know is only meant to appease; because how many parents have warned their children off a bad idea only to watch them do it anyway?

“I will be.”

I don’t get to bed until four a.m. I sat with Dad while he drank his coffee and let him tell me about the exact route he’ll be taking to the airport, which parking garage he’ll leave his truck in, the terminal they’ll be in, and how he’s concerned about the size and weight of his carry-on despite measuring and weighing the bag twice.

Dad designed a new wedding ring for Mom. He showed me photos on his phone since it’s already tucked away safely in a secret compartment in his toiletry case. He’s going to give it to her at the Eiffel Tower, an early anniversary present.

Mom got up in a flurry, stomping and talking loud enough that I had to stop myself once or twice from asking her to keep it down for Chloe.

Dad says nothing of “my friend” to Mom. But at the door as I say goodbye to them, he squeezes my shoulder in his too big palm.

He nods at me and grunts a rumbling miss you .

Mom kisses every inch of my face, and I let her, even though I am objectively too old for this.

When I slide into bed next to Chloe, early light creeps under the blinds, and when I wake from a restless sleep a few hours later, the daylight is strong enough for me to know that with the right adjustments to my smart phone settings, I could get a photo of her.

So I do it.

I’ve already stolen her panties. Might as well lean into it. And besides, if we’re keeping a record of compromising photos, this is nothing in comparison to what her friends did to me.

I take a photo of her, asleep, in my bed.

The gold in her hair fading into shadows, faint wrinkles along her cheek from the pillow, her wrists folded under her chin like an adorable pangolin.

I tell myself that’s why I’m taking the photo, to tease her later about the curl of her arms beneath her. To assure her of their cuteness.

But really, despite all the firsts I’ve had with Chloe— first kiss, first blow job, first fuck, first heartbreak— this is the first time I’ve seen her sleep.

By the time I get out of the shower, she’s up, wearing the t-shirt she slept in overtop of the dress she wore last night. “Is this okay?” she asks, tugging at the cotton. “I’ll wash it and give it back.”

I don’t answer her until I’ve scurried into my small walk-in closet in nothing but the towel around my waist. “It’s fine,” I say.

I don’t offer to return the favor and give her underwear back, and she doesn’t ask.

The answering silence is deafening as I pull on my underwear that immediately gets damp, then my t-shirt, which instantly clings to my back.

Dad’s warning and her sudden distance last night are heavier this morning.

Or maybe now that I’m out from under the cloud of sex-induced brain fog, I’m realizing what a bad idea all of this is.

I hop from one foot to the other into a pair of loose fitting jeans, and when I turn, she’s standing in the doorway of my closet.

I jump back, hangers clanking against each other. “Shit, you scared me.”

“Sorry.” She stares at the floor, like the violation was my state of undress and not an emotional turmoil of my own making.

She holds up her phone, the screen blank, still staring at the floor.

“We did something right last night. I woke up to a ton of notifications; a bunch of people filled in the interest form. ”

“Hey.” I close the foot of distance between us, rub my thumb along the inside of her upheld wrist. “That’s great.”

“Do you want to grab brunch?” she asks, my belly now her focus of attention since it’s in her line of sight. “We can discuss onboarding them and scheduling their sessions with you.” Finally, she blinks up at me, but then away again. “My treat?”