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Not happy.
Extremely irritated.
“You would have told me not to say anything,” he began.
“You think?”
He hated sarcasm. Said it was an unnecessary weapon, whatever that meant. “Listen,” he said, the beginnings of his own impatience starting to rear their head. “People are already starting to talk. If I didn’t put the idea out there, by the end of the month there would be more blood in the water than not.”
“You should have told me.”
“Maybe.”
Maybe. Which proved my point. He just didn’t get it. “Because you don’t trust me to make a decision.”
“Of course I do. Why do you think I’m asking you to be VP of the company, Charlee?”
That was a loaded question he didn’t really want me to answer. “Certainly not to make completely independent decisions,” I fired back, the kinder way to say what I was really thinking.
“Charlee. . .”
When he used that tone, it meant we were absolutely going to get into an argument. I was about to say as much when he suddenly seemed to remember something.
“Lucas Warner—”
“Oh no, from the frying pan into the fire.”
“I didn’t realize you two were dating.”
Time to prove Lucas wrong. Leaning into it—knowing we very well might not be by the end of the day once I called Lucas out on his bullshit plan, which I just couldn’t do—I went all in. “We are. Dating.”
For a second, I gloated. My father hardly reacted.
“He’s opening a tattoo parlor on Main Street,” he said, his tone neutral.
“He is.”
“Some people aren’t crazy about the idea.”
Time to really see what Dad was made of. I put out my wrist. “I think it’s pretty cool. An art form.”
He stared at it as if I were showing him that I’d contracted leprosy. “Is that a tattoo?”
In order to avoid all-out war, I did not answer sarcastically. “Lucas did it. He’s extremely talented.”
“Has your mother seen that yet?”
I pulled back my arm. “Dad, I’m not fifteen years old. I’m a grown woman, and no, Mom hasn’t seen it yet.”
“She hates tattoos,” he said.
I couldn’t help it. “Good thing it’s on my wrist and not hers.” If I was acting childish, it was because my father, especially when being all judge-y like this, tended to bring out the inner child in me.
“Charlee, please be careful with him. We don’t know anything about why he’s back.”
“Why he’s back? He lives here.”
“But hasn’t for ten years.”
