Page 58 of The Accidental Dating Experiment

I study him curiously. “Why are you saying that? So I’ll be rested for you to ruin my integrity?”

“Yes. Also, I feel bad for leaving you to do all this. I’d rather do it tomorrow, so you don’t have to.”

“Aww, you do have feelings,” I tease.

He brings a finger to his lips. “Don’t tell a soul. Also, send me dirty pictures of you naked in the tub or something?”

I snort. “I’ll take things that’ll never happen for five hundred dollars.”

He shrugs happily. “It was worth a try.”

When he leaves, I dip the roller in the pan and work on the next wall. I’m determined to finish before he returns—a surprise for the man who’s maybe not so impervious after all.

I slide the paint up the wall, returning to the conversation with my mother from earlier today. She said she wasn’t in love with my dad most of the time, nor was he with her. And yet they seemed happy enough. They were good parents, they showed up for us, and they supported us. I never sensed they weren’t each other’s big love.

I stop mid-roll. As a kid, would I have even known what a big love looks like?

I finish rolling to the ceiling, dip the brush in the paint, and then stroke against the wall again, answering in my head. No, I don’t suppose I would have known that then. Now, though, I wonder—did their arm’s length, friendly love inform how I approach romance?

I furrow my brow, trying to make sense of the past and my present as I paint and paint, until my head starts to spin from the fumes and I stagger from the room.

21

UNDER PAR

Monroe

With an effortless flick of the club, my dad sinks the golf ball, plink, right in the hole. “Huh. Would you look at that?” he says as if it’s been ages since he birdied and not just three holes ago.

“Impressive,” I say, trying not to sound begrudging. Of course he’s beating me. He always beat me at Scrabble too.

He scoops the ball out of the hole, tossing it proudly like it’s a pair of keys to a Rolls. Only two more holes, and we’re done. Two more holes till I can peel out of here and hit the gas pedal.

The image of Juliet naked in the tub, luxuriating in bubbles, keeps me going. Shame she hasn’t sent a selfie, but there’s still time. Don’t even know if there’s bubble bath stuff at the house. But my dirty mind has decided there is.

“Good game so far. Your golf game is better than I expected,” Dad says.

Hello, backhanded compliment.

I bite back all the comebacks forming. Like, because you thought I’d fail at that too? If I were my own shrink, I’d give me a slow clap for saying evenly, “I play in the city.”

Ha. How’s that for a placid response?

“Nice. You get out to the links often, I imagine?” he asks as we stroll up the hill to the second-to-last hole.

The implication. Dear god, the implication. “Just enough,” I say tightly.

Don’t take the bait.

I peer ahead, then behind, hoping someone will spot him again, and hoist the conversational burden from me. Everyone here at the Duck Falls Golf Course knows him since this place is frequented by co-workers from the university where he teaches and the hospital where he’s performed life-saving surgeries.

We’ve played the back nine as the afternoon melts into evening, and he’s been stopped a few times along the way, by friends and colleagues in golf carts or walking the course, wishing him well. He’s made sure they all know about his retirement party this weekend, and that they’re all coming.

No surprise, they all are.

But would it kill someone, anyone—a shop owner, a nurse, the barista who serves him his green tea every day since tea is better for the brain—to magically appear right now?

I peer around. No such luck.