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“A date?! Oh, that’s so great. I’ve just been waiting for him to, you know…move on,” Rye says with a grimace.
“Move on from what?” Ivy asks, looking around the table to any adult who will give her an answer.
“Before you got here, Uncle Trevor had a wife,” Piper explains.
“Not a wife, Piper. A girlfriend. Like Uncle Keifer and Aunt Dara,” Jarred corrects.
“I’m hisfiancée,thank you very much,” Dara further corrects. At the rate they’re moving, I think they’ll have the longest engagement in history.
Dad clears his throat. “Frankly, I’m more interested in Oliver finding someone than Trevor,” he says, looking right at me.
I narrow my eyes. “Thanks, Dad.”
“Oh, of course. First priority,” Rye smiles. “You know, Dara and I have a lot of cute single girls working for us.”
“Not interested in thegirlspart, but thanks,” I say, crossing my arms over my chest.
She rolls her eyes. “Women in their early twenties aren’t girls, Oliver.”
“You called them that first. Besides, the point is I’m not interested in women in their early twenties. How about that?”
“Age is just a number, Oliver,” Dad says with a glance at Rye.
Their seventeen year age gap to my mind is an outlier. “Can we not talk about this?”
“We just think you deserve to be happy,” June says, running her hand over her burgeoning bump. “I know a single mother who’s just a couple years older than you.”
Jarred looks at her bewilderedly. “Who?”
“Holly.”
His eyes widen. “You’re not introducing him to Holly.”
“What’s wrong with Holly?”
I put my hand on the table. “Okay, before this entertaining back and forth becomes an argument, I think I’m gonna head home.”
Everyone tries to object, but their groans and attempts at stopping me are weak and feeble. And I’m out of my league anyway. They can all relate, being at the same stage in life. They have their families that they take home or go home to at the end of the day. They all know what it’s like to be a parent and to have their person. I don’t. Not really. Doesn’t mean I don’t think about it sometimes, or that it’s something I don’t dream about, even if it never goes further than that.
“No, no. Really, I have an early morning. I’ve got a new hire coming in and I have to make sure that everything is on task.”
“Oh, I forgot about that…” Keifer says, not noticing that Danny is trying to reach the spoonful of squash.
“Yeah. Big day. Don’t want to –”You can’t swear, don’t say fuck.“—mess it up. Especially with everything going on lately.”
Dad gives me a thumbs up for my brilliant save, if I do say so myself. He knows what I almost let slip there. For a second, I love my dad even more for that. We may be all grown up and he may have a little one but he is still our dad and is always there to pick us up or cheer us on.
“I think it’ll all work out. Don’t you?” Rye says, posing the question to Dad.
“Yes, but not without a lot of hard work. Although I have no doubt Oliver’s on it.”
I smile. The past three months have been my hardest yet as Chief Security Officer of Hawthorn. We’ve experienced a series of data breaches, one of which unleashed a virus on our systems that cost the company millions of dollars. I’ve been trying to make up for it ever since. This new hire is an expert in a particular new software that will be our first line of defense when it comes to hacks and breaches from now on. I’m cautiously optimistic. “Thanks, Dad.”
“Go home, get your rest. We’ll see you at the office tomorrow.”
I make my exit as fast as I can without having to go around the table and kiss everyone goodbye. I can make up for it with Piper and Ivy next time I see them with some extra love, maybe even a present. I just need to get out of there.
It’s not until I’m on the road home that I can finally breathe.
