The Starter Boyfriend Read Free Page B

Definitely not because she’d told me to.) Because my father looked so depleted, so vacant, like he’d just come back from a war with post traumatic stress syndrome, and housework was the only way I could think to help.
    Aside from the obvious that I was all he had left—and he was all I had left—I soon discovered focusing on him and the house kept me too busy for other things, like mother rage and self-pity. Plus, I figured it was temporary, that I was building a bridge to whatever came next.
    The thing was, that bridge never connected with new land. My mom stayed away, and my dad and I just kept meandering forward, one step in front of the other. Making me wonder—and then worry— how I was going to be able to leave him and get a life of my own.
    Enter Jennifer, a pharmaceutical rep who made sales calls at his office, and for some God-knows-why reason, asked him out. Before I knew it, my nerdy dad had a girlfriend .
    Flea and the girls initially snubbed Jennifer when my dad brought her to a ballgame, thinking I hated her. Which I’d understood and almost appreciated. They mostly resented their step-parents, and who could argue that Jennifer’s braless boobs cheered as wildly as her big voice, and all that macking on my dad between innings was just plain gross?
    What the girls didn’t see was Jennifer showing up at our place, groceries in hand. Helping me make dinner while asking questions whose answers she seemed to genuinely want to hear. The next thing I’d know, my dad would be leaning against the counter, uncorking a bottle of wine for them, joining in.
    The energy in our house was suddenly crazy good. Jennifer was like a friend to me, and yet, my father’s partner. When they’d announced their engagement, I might have gone a little overboard with excitement. Okay, I know I did. I gave Jennifer high-fives on everything, from lettering style of the wedding invitations to the pigs-in-a-blanket hors d’oeuvres to the maid of honor dress she picked out for me: long and satiny, in pole dancer pink, and with a big-ass bow in the back.
    Whatever.
    I’d thought my enthusiasm was greasing the skids to the altar—only to have her suddenly call the whole thing off for my father’s lack of interest. Which, really, was just my bumbling dad being my bumbling dad. I’d made him get his butt in gear and apologize, and soon they had a new wedding date—two weeks from tomorrow.
    I was trying to keep a lower profile this time, keep out of the way, more determined than ever to see their “I Do’s” happen. Jennifer was not only a godsend for him, but she was my ticket to ride. With her at the helm, I’d be able to untie my apron strings after graduation and fly off to Oregon—or Timbuktu—with a clear conscience that I was leaving him in loving, capable hands. And not feel like the second Walsh female in five years to abandon him.
    Just because half my gene pool came from my mother did not mean I had to act like her daughter.
    “I hope it tastes as good as it smells,” Jennifer replied now in plain old English. “I might have gone a little wild with the garlic and peppers tonight, but you know, you only live once, huh?” She tapped a toe and did a full spin, hands over her head. Which fell short of embarrassing since there was no one else in the room to see.
    I smiled because I knew I should. “Hey, do I have time to take a quick shower?”
    “Quick? So, you’re going out,” she said, arching a dark brow. “Not, I’m guessing, on a hot date?”
    I blew out a laugh. Yeah, right.
    “Believe me, Jennifer, you’ll be the first to know if I ever have a hot date—” Then I cut myself off, before the word again slipped out. Because there was that one time, when she and my dad had first gotten together, that I had thought Adam had meant a pizza invite as a date-date. Only to have him spend the meal griping about how much he hated his parents’ joint custody arrangement. And then expected me to pay