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“James,” my mom hissed the same time I said, “Dad, he’s not that old.”
My dad was unaffected by both my mom and I, still staring at Brett like he was the only one in the room. “I’m sorry, I am, but the more I think about it, the more I wonder why you can’t find anybody closer to your own age to date. You’re at two different stages of your lives. You’ve lived a decade longer! That’s—”
My cheeks flamed with embarrassment, and as I struggled internally to think of something to placate him, Brett was the one who spoke first, “Sir, I understand where you’re coming from. I do. I am a lot older than your daughter. I’m not denying that. Do I think she’s young enough to be my daughter? Not really. That’s an exaggeration if I ever heard one, but I get it.”
Brett glanced at me, and he went to take my hand in his, squeezing it gently for both my parents to see. “You take one look at Charlie and you just… you want to protect her. She’s your youngest. She’s the baby of the family. I don’t have kids, so I can’t imagine what that’s like, but I know that’s what this is about. You want to protect her. I do, too. I’m not with your daughter because she’s nineteen. I’m with her because she’s—”
His eyes were on me once again, and his voice lowered to a bare whisper as he finished, “Because she’s Charlie.” His hand squeezed mine again, harder this time. “Believe me, this wasn’t the plan. I wasn’t expecting this to happen. I didn’t go out looking for anyone. I had a lot of stuff going on in my life, and I didn’t think… well, the last thing I expected was to fall for your daughter.”
If my cheeks were on fire before, they were literally steaming now. My mouth fell open at that. I couldn’t tell if he was just trying to say what he thought my parents wanted to hear, or if he really meant it.
Wasn’t that something best shared in private first and not, you know, to your girlfriend’s parents? Who, I might add, you were both lying through your teeth to?
My dad didn’t say anything, but my mom did, “Well, I think I speak for both James and I when I say we’re glad to hear that. I can see how much you care for Charlie. We look forward to getting to know you better, Ian.”
Right when my dad was opening his mouth to say his two cents, the doorbell rang, and my mom tossed me a look. “Will you get that, dear? I’m sure it’s Claire and Tyler. They were supposed to be here ten minutes ago, but they might’ve gotten caught up in the storm.”
My parents probably just wanted me to go so they could ream into Brett some more, but the man could handle my parents quite well. He wasn’t awkward about it, and everything he said sounded genuine.
No wonder he’d gotten away with so much for so long. The guy was charming when he wanted to be.
I got up, slipping through the living room as I went toward the hall. Voices rose in the living room, and I tried to overhear what they were saying, but the rain had started outside. Bright white flashes of light illuminated the windows, followed shortly by thunder, which drowned out anything I might’ve heard.
My hand went for the door, and I didn’t even think it’d be weird for Claire and Tyler to be standing out in the rain instead of coming inside. The door was unlocked, after all. There was a front porch with a small overhang, but sometimes the rain came in sideways and drenched the whole thing.
I gave up trying to eavesdrop as my hand wrapped around the doorknob. Pulling open the door, I was seconds from stating that the door had been unlocked when I saw the person standing on the porch.
It wasn’t Claire. It wasn’t Tyler, either. No, in fact, it was the one person I never wanted to see again. The person who I used to adore more than my parents, the one who had flipped a switch and made me learn what it meant to hate being alive.
His dark eyes fixated on me the moment I opened the door. His brown hair was a little longer than I remembered it being, and his stubble crossed the line into beard territory. Eight years younger than my dad, I used to think they looked alike, but now that I was older, all I could see were the differences.
The way his brown eyes weren’t kind. How they traveled along my body in ways they shouldn’t. How his closed-lip smile was more sly than welcoming. His jaw was more square, his face more angular than my dad’s.
Behind him, rain poured, the sky letting loose all the water it held onto. Another bolt of lightning flashed in the sky—this one I could see in the distance, way beyond the houses on the opposite side of the street. A few seconds later, thunder.
His car sat in the driveway, right behind mine. There’d be no getting out of this, no running—not that I could. Brett was here. I couldn’t leave him with my parents, and I definitely couldn’t leave him with Uncle Dave.
I could barely get the words out, “Uncle Dave.” My eyes were glued to his face. Water from the rain coursed down his skin and on his long stubble, dripping onto his shirt. From the short walk from his car, he’d gotten drenched.
“Charlie, kiddo, is that you?” The smile that spread on his face gave me chills, but no one ever seemed to react to his smiles the same way. I was alone in what I felt, so utterly alone in everything when it came to this man… I didn’t know if that was a blessing in disguise or a curse. “You’ve grown.”
Smalltalk, and a lie at that. It’d been over a year since I’d last seen him, at Christmas. The first Christmas after I’d broken up with Zak.
Claire and Tyler had just got here. They wore matching ugly Christmas sweaters, and they couldn’t stop laughing as they talked about picking out a set. Mom giggled along with them, imagining all the hideous sweaters they’d perused, while my dad sat in his recliner and sipped eggnog.
The house was done up, decorated to the extreme. Christmas was the one holiday my mom went all out for—she didn’t bother with Halloween or Easter or anything else. Christmas was it.
I’d locked myself up in my room, not wanting to celebrate anything right now, but when my sister and her fiancé arrived, my mom dragged me down. That’s when I saw that Uncle Dave was already here.
He still didn’t have a family of his own, but he had his own car repair shop that kept him from visiting as often as he used to years ago. I was grateful for that, but it didn’t change the way my stomach lurched when I came down the stairs and found him in the living room, sitting on the left corner of the sectional, away from Claire and Tyler.
And, of course, there was only been one place to sit: directly beside him.
I wasn’t crying, so I knew my face wasn’t puffy or red. It took everything in me to smile at him when I saw him, and as I walked through the living room to sit near him, I barely resisted my urge to throw up.
“Dave,” my mom spoke off-handedly, “do you want anything to drink?”
“Some eggnog would be great,” he answered with a smile. His jaw was clean-shaven. It made him look younger. A handsome guy. Any outsider would look at him and wonder why he didn’t have a family of his own. No wife, no kids, not even a girlfriend. He was funny, easy to talk to, and everyone seemed to love him.
