What A Kiss Is

Chapter Seventeen

Seventeen

Dad’s ferociously typing when I stumble out of bed in the morning.

“So, you and Amber?” Dad asks. “You’re still being careful?” His fingers don’t even slow down.

“I don’t know. I keep fuc…messing it up.” I slump to sitting at the egg-table.

“Well knock it off.” He stops typing to smile and slugs my arm.

“Yeah. Trying.”

I sit and watch him type. I wonder if I get that absorbed. The stack of mail has grown, but Dad hasn’t mentioned anything else about it.

“What’s up with you and Lynn?”

“Hmm?” The rhythm of his typing falters as he tries to keep working.

“You heard me.” I’m kind of getting a kick out of his obvious desire to not talk about this.

He stops and looks over his laptop. His glasses come off and he rubs his nose a few times. “I love her, but anytime I even slightly mention sharing a boat…”

I smile at that. “Move in” means sharing a boat.

“She sort of closes off, and then I don’t see her for a while.”

“But our week in the San Juan’s.”

“Yep, and then we get home, and she’ll want some extra space again. I don’t get it.”

“Well, Amber…I don’t know. I know she likes me, but it’s like every time we talk I come off sounding like some spoiled jerk, and she’s afraid to be around me.”

“Maybe you’re pushing things too far, too fast.” Dad rests his arms on the table. “I mean, I know you’ve…” He chokes like he can’t find the words.

“Dad, you’re way late on the sex talk. Yes, I have. No, she has not. And I didn’t think I was pushing anything too far.”

“Well, it doesn’t really matter what you think, does it?”

“What?”    

“It matters what she thinks.”

It’s so obvious, and it somehow still got lost. “Yeah.”

“Also, do you want the car to pick up Hélèna? She’s coming in tonight, right?”

“What?”

“I got an email that said she’d emailed you tons of times. She found me on my author site, so she dropped me a line saying she was coming to visit. I assumed you knew.” Dad sits back, and I can’t believe he’s holding his tongue on my lack of email checking finally biting me in the ass.

Dread starts to seep in. How will I explain Hélèna to Amber or Amber to Hélèna? “It’s pronounced Ellen-ah, Dad. She’s French.” It’s all I can say right now.

“Well, I would’ve said something sooner if I thought you didn’t know.”

Hélèna. In a Prius. And me without a decent haircut since I got here. Also, I’ve totally let myself go, wearing nothing but t-shirts and jeans. It’s just…in Podunk, Washington, what the hell else am I supposed to do? “You know what her flight info is?” I ask.

“Check your email, son.” Dad smiles and then continues typing away. Guess that’s my dad’s version of an ‘I told you so.’

My email’s a mess. I have over a thousand unread messages. I do a search for Hélèna’s address and come up with the letters from her. I don’t look at what she wrote—just scan until I see her flight info. Shit. I have three hours to get ready and make the hour and a half drive to pick her up.