Page 62 of Hot Dad Summer

“I came here because I’m your brother and I have nothing left.” Tyler let that sit, then played what he clearly thought was a card. “And because you deserve to know the truth about Flynn. Brooke told me this morning. About her and Flynn. They hooked up, last time she was here visiting Daisy. She said now that she’s back, they’re picking it right up again. Your precious little arrangement has a hole in it, boys.”

“No.” Wes didn’t even take a breath first.

“Flynn wouldn’t touch a fake like her,” Max said.

“Believe what you want. Ask him where he is right now. Ask where she is.“ Tyler’s voice slid into something satisfied, and I hated how well I knew that sound. “But fine, forget Brooke. Let’s talk about the real question. What exactly do you two think you’re doing with Daisy?”

A chair scraped. Someone crossed the room, and the door settled into its frame with a soft click, and the voices dropped to a rumble I couldn’t read anymore. I caught my own name twice. I caught Max’s voice saying something like not after September, and then a long stretch of nothing I could use. Did they just say they weren’t planning on being with me after September?

Fragments are a mirror test and my fear filled them in ways I could not stomach. I stood there for one more second, assembling stories out of syllables like a crazy person, and then I made myself stop, because assembling stories out of syllables is how you ruin perfectly good relationships. Clarity is what I needed.

The Flynn thing couldn’t be true. There was no version of reality in which it was true. The source was Brooke by way of Tyler, a Russian doll of liars, and I knew better.

But I was done letting other people narrate my life. If I wanted the truth, I was going to get it from the only person who’d actually been in the room, and he was at the marina, and the golf cart had a full charge.

I went out the back door before the office opened, and I was halfway down the lake road before I caught myself in the little side mirror. Yesterday’s dress, mascara in places mascara should never be, hair that looked like Hank had personally slept in it. The old Daisy would have turned the cart around and lost an hour to a shower and an outfit and make-up. I checked the mirror once, decided the truth didn’t care what my hair looked like, and drove faster.

The marina came up through the trees and I pulled in next to Flynn’s truck, rehearsing the question as I started down the hill. Then I saw him. And suddenly I wanted to vomit and hit somebody with a stale baguette.

48

***Flynn***

I’d been staring at the same outboard motor for twenty minutes and couldn’t have told you one thing about it. That was new for me. I didn’t do distracted. Life had thrown enough at me that I’d learned to let it roll through and keep my hands busy, but every time I picked up a wrench this morning I was back at Daisy’s door, listening to her breathe on the other side of it, making myself walk away because she’d asked me to. Respecting that boundary was the hardest thing I’d done in years, and I’d once watched Wes try to assemble a trampoline.

The plan was simple. Give her the morning. Show up at lunch with sandwiches and jokes and whatever else she’d take, and remind her that Tyler had always been a liar with good hair. Then a car door slammed in my parking lot, perfume arrived a full three seconds before its owner, and my morning got worse.

Brooke came down the dock in her cheap tourist-shop clothes, hips working overtime, and I knew the whole play before she opened her mouth. Tyler’s money was probably gone, which meant she was shopping for the next Calloway, and she’d picked me because my reputation said I was the easy one.

“Flynn.” She said my name like it tasted good. “There you are.”

“Here I am.” I went back to the motor. “Marina opens at 11. Gift shop’s up the hill if you need a shirt that says Lake Hair Don’t Care.”

She laughed like I’d said something charming instead of telling her to leave. Then she started the tour. Leaning on things. She leaned on the rail, then a piling, then the gunwale of a boat I was actively working on, arranging herself against each one like the marina was a series of backdrops.

“I forgot how good you look when you’re all greasy and focused.”

“Everyone does. It’s a burden.”

“You know, I always felt like you were the only one who really saw me.”

“I see you right now. You’re leaning on wet paint.”

She was not, unfortunately, leaning on wet paint, but watching her check was the best part of my morning so far. Down the dock, Danny, my sixteen-year-old dock hand, had given up all pretense of coiling rope and was watching us like we were on reality television. I pointed at him to get back to work. He coiled one loop of rope and stopped again.

Brooke regrouped and went sultry. “I’ve been thinking about you. This whole trip, honestly. Europe was so lonely.”

“You were with your boyfriend.”

“Tyler doesn’t count.”

“Finally, something we agree on.”

“You’re funny.” She drifted closer, trailing a finger along the boat’s rail. “You were a lot friendlier before you weren’t, you know. Or should I remind you how you talked to me the last time I was here?”

She was pulling out the ridiculous card she’d flashed in the kitchen last night, the one I hadn’t dignified in front of Daisy because dignifying it meant explaining it, and explaining it meant giving it weight it never earned.

Two summers ago, she’d tagged along on one of Tyler and Daisy’s holiday visits and stayed the week. Tyler and Daisy were inside making dinner, and Brooke found me alone out on the dock, put her hand flat on my chest, and told me what she thought we should do about the tension between us. I told her there was no tension, there was no us, and that she wasn’t my type and never would be. She left the lake two days early and told everyone the mosquitoes were unbearable. That was the entire secret history she was trying to sell.