Page 8 of Tastes Like Summer

She barely waits for the truck to come to a full stop before jumping out and running into the main building, backpack bouncing as she does, small feet kicking up enough dirt to leave a cloud of dust in her wake.

“Jesus,” I mutter to myself, following at a more reasonable pace. I’ve got a future sprint olympian on my hands, here.

When I make it to the kitchen, Rachel and Lexi are already deeply engrossed in camp talk: “…And, oh my gosh, Lexi, I made you a bracelet!” Rachel squeals, searching manically through her backpack.

I look down at mine and frown, ignoring the sting of my disappointment. I guess I’m not as special as I thought I was.

But there are no hard feelings when it comes to Lexi. On top of being my cousin and business partner, she and her wife are some of my closest friends. They’ve both been an invaluable support during this hectic time.

“Hey, Lex.” I greet my favorite sous-chef with a kiss on the cheek.

“Hey, cus.” She looks up, her dirty-blonde hair tucked into her overalls. “How was pick-up?”

I glance at Rachel, who steadily avoids my gaze. “Eventful. Apparently I can be a bit overprotective.”

“I’m going to play outside,” Rachel says, voice clipped.

Without another word, my kid leaves us alone in the kitchen.

Lexi puffs out a laugh. “Oh, man. What’d you do?”

“What did I do? You know, I’m starting to think there’s no winning in parenting. As a kid, I had the least involved parents in the world and hated them. And I feel like now that I’m the parent and I’m trying to be the complete opposite of my own, I’m still hated.”

“What happened?”

“I made the mistake of giving a shit and telling her about it, apparently.”

Lexi laughs. “She doesn’t hate you, then.”

I exhale deeply, squeezing my eyes shut while pinching the bridge of my nose. “It sure feels that way sometimes.”

“I know you don’t know this because you never had a stable home life⁠—”

“Understatement of the century,” I mutter.

“—but all kids will eventually find their parents annoying, embarrassing, or frustrating on a regular basis. When you’re a kid at that age, you don’t get that caring comes with growing pains. You don’t realize that your parents are trying to protect you by setting boundaries.”

“Not all parents,” I clarify.

She purses her lips and frowns. “No. Not all. Certainly not yours.”

“So what do I do?” I ask, not wanting to think about my childhood. “Because sometimes it feels like I’m doing the right thing. But then other times I lie awake in bed in a panic, praying she doesn’t hate or resent me the way I do my own parents.”

“You know what you have to do. What you’ve been doing so far.”

I shake my head with a grunt. “Today, two different people at Rach’s camp told me I suck as a dad.”

Lexi sighs. “Well, I don’t know the context, but I’m sure they were wrong in saying that. I’ve seen bad parenting and you aren’t it.”

“I didn’t want this in the beginning, though,” I say, the guilt of it all almost knocking me breathless.

“That was before. Almost ten years ago.”

“Still. Maybe those women were right.”

“What the hell do they know, anyhow?”

“Uh, they were both mothers? Granted, one of them was a super snooty-looking mom, but the other seemed more down to earth. Normal.” Hot, too, I think, remembering her angular face, the smooth skin of her exposed thighs in denim cutoff shorts. The large freckle on the right corner of her lip, every single curve of her body. And that sexy accent… Just subtle enough to go by almost unnoticed, but pronounced enough that it made me want to know more about her. But that’s beside the point.