Page 10

“And I you, my little flower.”

When he leaves, my gaze lands back on the app. I bet if my dad was on one of these, he’d be a hit. New wrinkles aside, everyone who meets my dad tells him he looks like Pedro Pascal. He’s handsome and the best guy I know. Thoughtful, a good cook, romantic; I mean, he whisked my mom away, dancing whenever she had a tiring case, and filled the house with laughter and compliments nonstop until a smile broke across her face.

Dad would be the best partner because he was the best partner. It seems a waste nobody knows that now.

My heart rate speeds up as I look at the app I downloaded for a bet.

I’d be a lot less worried about leaving Dad if I weren’t leaving him alone.

I shut my eyes as the word boundaries flickers in my head. Today has been a long day, and I already made a few enemies I didn’t anticipate making.

But my dad, no matter what I do or what I’ve done, he’s never been mad at me for more than a couple of hours. A glaring love that steals his ability to form any lasting anger at me for doing anything wrong.

I bet doing something like creating a dating profile for him falls under that evergreen forgiveness.

In a moment, I decide.

I’m going to find my dad a date.

CHAPTER 4

A distant headache pulses at the back of my head despite the double dose of pain medicine I took before Lexie picked me up tonight. Between sorting through hundreds, maybe thousands, of matches over the weekend and chewing on jalapeños to stay up to study, the lack of sleep has caught up to me as she drives me to the restaurant where I arranged to meet the first draft pick for my dad.

Me as my dad, because I haven’t mentioned that I was behind the whole dating profile to the woman I’ve been talking to for a week.

“You have to record the whole thing,” Lexie says as she turns—and bumps over a corner of the sidewalk—onto the next street. “I want to know every detail. I want to hear every word.”

“My battery is at fifteen percent.” I slip it into my jeans pocket.

“Maybe if your brain wasn’t always study, study, study, you’d remember to charge your phone.”

“Maybe if your brain could focus on a single hobby, you wouldn’t be busy tonight and could just sit at a nearby table and eavesdrop.”

Lexie pulls to a full stop under a red light, then faces me. “Listen, what if this is it? What if this is my dream? Are you trying to keep me from discovering my life’s calling?”

Lexie’s newest fixation is scents, and she’s already bought three different perfume-making kits, forcing me to smell all her “signature scents” this morning until I almost passed out. She’s slated to take a perfume-making class in the next hour.

“Alexis, I truly hope this isn’t your dream.” I nudge her as the light turns green. “If I have to smell another mixture you put together, I think it’ll kill me. Seriously. I think you have the potential to make a bomb. You can’t handle that kind of power. You’re too volatile.”

She pulls off. “This coming from the girl who mixed too many cleaning supplies and had to be sent to the emergency room before she died.”

“For the last time, I wasn’t paying attention to the mixture,” I say, referring to what I thought at the time was just floor cleaner and dish soap. “We all make mistakes.”

“I bet you were too busy studying to even read the labels.” She rolls her eyes and I turn up the music. Lexie turns it down. “Aren’t you nervous?”

“A little,” I admit, “but I have several different ways I’ll approach it, depending on her reaction. I mean, I can convince most people to do anything. It’s a skill I’ve been fine-tuning for years.”

“Telling a woman that you’ve been catfishing her pretending to be your dad and asking her to continue the ruse and actually date him seems like a little bit of a stretch.” When I open my mouth to retort, she adds, “But if anyone can do it, it’d be you.”

“Thank you. I was beginning to think you didn’t love me anymore.”

She laughs. “Sorry, okay, I’m just mad you’re doing this without me. I’m too nosy. Actually, why don’t you take my phone and record it? I’m at full charge.”

“What if there’s an emergency? You need your phone.”

Lexie groans as she pulls to a full stop. “So pesticide of you—”

“Pessimistic.”