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“You know you’re hot. My mom knows you’re hot. Everyone knows you’re hot.”
I lean my elbows on the kitchen table and crowd her space. “I don’t care about everyone. I care about you. And you think I’m hot.”
Lacey rolls her eyes, but her cheeks turn pink. “Yes, you’re hot. Now tell me your secret for being such a nice guy.”
“I don’t know.” I sit back in my chair and move the eggs around my plate. “It’s not a secret. I just think we should treat everyone the right way and do a little good if we can. I’m still figuring out my own shit, but I can at least be nice to people along the way.”
“You’re going to be husband of the year when you settle down. Dad of the year. Human of the year. Can you teach a seminar on how to not be a dick to the rest of the male population? Because you’re way, way,wayabove the standard.”
“Doing the bare minimum shouldn’t be the standard, Lace. You gotta stop settling for dudes who have a vendetta against stadium camera people. There are better things out there. A whole world of men who are justwaitingto hold a door open for you.”
“I know that now. You hold the door open for me.”
“I do.”
“Would you—” her throat bobs as she swallows. She looks away and focuses her attention on the salt and pepper shakers instead of my face. “Do you think you could keep holding the door open for me?”
It’s ambiguous. Open-ended and with a thousand different meanings. I know what she’s asking, though, and I know what my answer is.
“Yeah,” I say. “I’ll hold it open for you as long as you’d like. Would that be okay with you?”
Her fingers rip up the napkin in her hands. She opens her mouth, but before she can answer, I hear my dad’s booming voice as he rounds the corner into the kitchen.
“Is that coffee I smell?” he asks. “Morning, you two. How’d you sleep? Was it warm enough up there for you?”
“Morning.” I stand up and collect our plates. “We slept great. I think we’re both tired from a long couple of weeks at work. It was nice to wake up and not have to think about anything.”
It was also nice to wake up with Lacey naked in my arms.
“Let me eat some food and grab a cup of coffee, and we can get going,” my dad says.
“Where are all the presents?” Lacey asks. “I haven’t seen any besides the ones under the tree in your living room, and that’s not nearly enough for three hundred families.”
“In a storage unit,” I explain. “Dad starts collecting them in early October, and we keep them locked up until today. We change places every year so people don’t pick up on what we’re doing and try to steal the gifts.”
“Are they wrapped?”
“Wrapped and labeled and organized. I wish I was able to get up here and help more, but this season has been extra busy.”
“We can handle it just fine,” my dad says. “It gives your mother and I something to look forward to now that we’re not working anymore. I can only do so many crossword puzzles.”
“You’re awfully sharp for a man approaching seventy,” I answer. “Lace, we use my dad’s truck for the gifts. There’s a trailer we attach and we load it up. It takes about an hour to get everything ready, so if you want to stay here, we can swing back by and—”
“No,” she interrupts me. She shakes her head and sits up in her chair. “No. I want to do every step with you. I don’t care about manual labor. I can do some heavy lifting.”
My dad’s eyes meet mine over the rim of his mug, and he gives me a thumbs up.
Yeah, Dad. I think she’s pretty fucking great, too.
THIRTY-EIGHT
LACEY
Shawn isn’t real.
He’s something made of dreams and wishes, because I cannot believe this man is just walking around the world and existing in this frustratingly nice and obscenely hot way.
I always thought he was generous; a good tipper (sixty-five percent, always). A door holder (even when someone is twenty paces away and he has to wait). Apleaseandthank youuser (every time, all the time).
