Page 9 of Hot Dad Summer

They cheered happily and my heart beat a little harder with care for the three of them. They were good kids and I was going to make sure our summer together was memorable.

I held Hank’s leash with a death grip as we walked down the busy sidewalk towards the marina but Hank was on his best behavior, something I hardly ever witnessed. His nose was wiggling nonstop as he inhaled the same scents that I was inhaling. They were good. They were too good. I was considering putting Wes’ lunch aside to grab a taco.

The marina came into view, though, sitting proudly at the end of a long boardwalk. The building wasn’t huge, big enough to hold a simple restaurant on one side and a supply shop on the other. It was weathered red with white trim and large blue and white strips on the dock leading out to the boatslips. Tyler had mentioned that Wes’ late wife had fought him tooth and nail to get stripes.

The kids saw Wes up ahead, helping someone fuel up their boat, and sprinted towards him. Hazel looked more like a kid than ever as she shouted to him and smiled like seeing him was the best thing in the entire world.

He turned and, seeing her, smiled broadly back at her. I could see their smiles were the same in that moment and seeing them so open with each other made my eyes burn. My relationship with my own father wasn’t exactly warm.

“Hey!” Wes picked Hazel up with one arm and let Poppy and Charlie hang off the other. The muscles in his arm flexed with the effort but I did my best to keep my eyes to myself. It was something I’d been doing for three years, if I was honest. It’d always felt respectful before but without Tyler standing next to me to respect, I realized maybe it was something different. Maybe I’d been afraid of finding something more attractive.

Then Wes looked up and caught me staring. His smile faded, but his eyes didn't leave mine. They moved slowly over me before coming back to my face.

Oh. Maybe I hadn't been the only one trying not to look for the past three years.

7

***Daisy***

Iheld up the lunch and smiled. “We figured you might be hungry.”

Wes called a teenager over and nodded towards the boat he’d been servicing. “Tate, finish up here. Thanks.”

“Dad, you forget everything.” Hazel cupped his face in her hands and squeezed his cheeks. “Are you busy?”

I glanced around the marina and raised my eyebrows. They were more than busy. Their marina had been in their family just as long as the land had. The founding Calloway had somehow known that one day people would pay for the best boat slips like they’d pay for the giant houses on the lake. I’d learned that the closest boat slips were reserved by more of the founding families. They paid an arm and a leg to have their fancy boats sit proudly in front of all others. I didn’t get it.

“Not too busy for my family.” Wes put the kids down and moved towards me, eyes on the bag. “I’m going to inhale whatever’s in this bag and I don’t want to be judged for it.”

I laughed easily and pretended not to notice a family staring at me as they walked past. “If you’re expecting judgement for inhaling food, you’re looking at the wrong woman.”

He pulled out the thick sandwich and shoved an entire corner of it into his mouth. His eyes rolled and he groaned low, low enough that it hit me somewhere deeper than I wanted to admit. “Goddamn. This is amazing.”

I shrugged and rolled the leash up, not even noticing that it should’ve been clipped to Hank but wasn’t. “It’s nothing.”

“Um… Aunt Daisy? Can Hank swim?” Poppy pointed towards the far end of the dock. “Because he’s about to-”

I spotted Hank’s ears flowing in the wind just as he leapt off the end of the dock and into the lake. I looked down at the leash and back at the lake, dumbfounded, before taking off at a sprint down the dock. “Hank!”

A crowd had gathered at the end by the time I got there and I had to push my way through to make sure they weren’t watching my dog drown. Instead of Hank drowning, though, I found him swimming in a happy little circle with a fish in his mouth.

“Oh, my God, Hank. Really? Get up here!” I went down on my knees and leaned forward to grab him. “I cannot believe I paid real money for you, you little demon. You scared the hell out of me. I thought I was going to find you floating ears up and you’re over here practically putting on a show.”

I leaned a little too far forward and I let out a yelp, fully expecting to fall in, but a pair of big hands landed on my hips and pulled me back. Max stared down at me when I looked over my shoulder to see my savior and there was something in his gaze that made my lips part. His facial expression was blank but his eyes were wild, a small sliver of his past life flashing through. For a moment they matched the tattoos that covered his body, dark and moody.

While I was busy noticing for the first time that they weren’t brown, like I’d thought, but actually hazel, one of the teenagers who worked for the Calloways jumped into the lake and grabbed Hank. I looked over at the sound of the splash and when I looked back at Max, he was already walking away, striding back towards the shop.

Before I could overthink the interaction the kids were there, cheering with everyone else for Hank, who’d allowed himself to be rescued like a king, fish still clamped in his mouth. He danced in little circles for his adoring fans and then dropped the fish at my feet.

“Aww, he brought you a fish.” Someone in the crowd noted.

Then, like the little psycho he was, he stared into my eyes as he leaned down and sucked the whole fish down his throat.

“Oh.” That same someone muttered.

Hank burped, shook the water off of his coat, and then farted before trotting back towards the other end of the marina. He left a ton of people staring after him in awe or horror, just the way he seemed to like.

“Should he go to the doctor about the whole fish in his belly? Is it going to have babies in there?” Charlie blinked up at me, his eyes the same vivid blue as his dad’s. “I heard about this when mom took me to church. That fish is going to turn into five hundred and it’s going to feed the school for a month. How do you think we’ll get all those fish out of him?”