Chapter 17 Harlow
Chapter 17
Harlow
“Dad—what did I say about coming over unannounced?”
My father hesitates over the threshold like a dog being caught in the treat jar. “I used the keypad on the back door.”
That does not explain why he came over unannounced after our endless talks about it.
I’m squatting in front of a lower kitchen cabinet, trying to find a matching lid for a storage container, and give Kevin a nudge backward so he doesn’t climb inside the cabinet and get stuck again—the way he did last time I was rooting around looking for a lid.
I give Dad a look over my shoulder as the heap of lids falls out onto the floor.
“There is no keypad on the back door.”
“There is now.”
I swear to God—why is he like this? And how did I not notice he put a keypad on the back door?
Dad walks over, not to help clean up the pile of lids from the floor, but to scratch an attention-seeking Kevin on the chin, then pat him on the rear as they both ignore me down here organizing so he can strike up a conversation—and not help clean up.
“Did you see that Landon Burke wants to leave Washington?”
I shake my head absentmindedly, determined to put all the containers and lids back by size, the tip of my tongue sticking out from between my lips as I concentrate.
“It’s all over the news.”
“That’s nice.”
“It’s huge! Huge news! Wherever he goes, he’s going to make a fortune.”
“Uh-huh.”
I have no idea who on earth he is talking about.
I have no idea what team he’s referring to; I only know he’s yammering on about football, one of his favorite subjects.
It’s not unusual for him to go on incessantly about the sport; most of the men in this town were bred for it. I’m used to it, tuning out almost completely as he drones on, losing me at the mention of contracts and free agents.
I know nothing about football, its players, their stats, the team owners. Nor do I care to.
After several failed attempts to engage me in football chatter, Dad moves on to another topic. “What are you doing today?”
“Working. Portia and I have a conference call with someone about the Kissmet logo, and then I’m having a video call for lunch with some friends.” I stop what I’m doing to look up at him, Kevin determined to lick my face since it’s at his level. “What about you?”
My father shrugs. “I don’t know. The woman I’m talking to is in the Philippines and won’t be awake for at least five more hours.”
I gawk at him. “ Dad. What did I tell you about brides from other countries.” I set the container in my hand up on the counter, then hoist myself to a stand.
“You said that I should not look for a bride from another country.”
“I don’t know why you think no one in Green Bay would want to date you—you’re a catch.”
That’s a stretch, and we both know it. Dad is way shorter than average, loud, sort of semiretired but mostly dabbles in hobbies like fixing things, fixing things at my house that were not broken to begin with, meddling in my business—and taste testing wine at local restaurants.
And.
Meddling in my business.
“If you want help setting up a dating profile, I can help you.”
His eyes light up like two sparkling Christmas trees. “You don’t want me to wait for your app to go live?”
The way he asks makes me feel like an asshole, as if he’s been wanting to download a dating app this whole time but hasn’t wanted to betray me by not downloading mine. As if I would want him to put his life on hold for me to launch my app, which will be another three months.
Minimum.
“I’ve told you that before.” I hold out my hand. “Let’s do it now. Bring me your phone.”
He fishes it out of the pocket of his long cargo shorts and slaps it in my palm, then follows me to the round kitchen table. It’s in front of a bank of windows—and sunny—everything bright and cheery.
“Have you downloaded any actual dating apps yet?” SilverSingles, perhaps? “It would be nice if you didn’t just meet people on random social sites.”
He nods. “Yes, but that’s as far as I’ve gotten.” Dad pulls a pair of black horn-rimmed glasses out of his pocket and puts them on his face.
“When did you start wearing glasses?” I ask, surprised.
“They’re for show.”
I roll my eyes.
“What?” he says. “We need pictures for my profile, and I like the way I look in glasses.”
I breathe in.
I breathe out.
Patience, Harlow. Patience . . .
Dad leans over the table to watch me tap open a popular dating app. Nothing exciting happens—unlike how a little red heart will come whirring to life when singles log in to the Kissmet app, and a tiny cluster of lips will appear on the screen like little bubbles of carbonation.
So cute and clever.
My idea, obviously.
*Hair flip*
“We need to start with your basic information.” I glance over at my father, who is watching me move my fingers around the app intently. “Name?”
“Ha ha.”
I type Steve into the name field. “Age?”
“Put forty-six.”
“You are fifty-eight.”
“No one needs to know that.”
I swivel my body in the chair so I’m facing him, giving him a look that undoubtedly says “You have got to be freaking kidding me.”
“Dad.” My jaw drops open. “Why would you start out with a lie?”
“Because no one in their thirties is going to want to date a fifty-year-old.”
I stare at him. “Are you being serious right now?”
“Serious about what?”
“Wanting to date someone in their thirties?”
“Isn’t that what the guys my age are doing?”
“Absolutely not!” I object. “No. We are not catfishing women, and you are not lying about your age, and you are not dating someone in their thirties.”
I shudder.
No.
Thank goodness he has me to help him with this.
“Have you set up a profile for yourself?” he asks while I continue adding information such as location and distance and other attributes to help the algorithm find him a match.
“No. Not yet.” I’m avoiding his stare.
“How come?”
“Haven’t gotten around to it.”
“You said you were going to.”
“I am. I’m going to.” He doesn’t have to constantly remind me that I’m single—it is not a crime. Just because he hates being single doesn’t mean I do. There are pros and cons to everything, and my relationship status is no exception.
“We should do it together.”
My smile is wry. “Let’s get you squared away first.”
It takes no time at all to enter the standard data into his profile. I keep his search radius relatively small, as we don’t need him hoofing it all over God’s green earth to get coffee with a woman three counties over. Which he would most certainly do considering, he’d been looking for love in the Philippines.
Not to knock it—it’s just so far. And who’s to say anyone is who they say they are.
“Okay, now we have to create a bio. That’s going to be a quick blurb about who you are and what you’re looking for. Or not looking for. So what should we say?”
There is a pad of paper on the kitchen table, and I slide it toward me, then reach for a nearby junk drawer and pull it open to retrieve a pen.
“Should we jot down a list first to make life easier?”
Dad nods.
“Okay. Go. What are some of your hobbies?”
I already know what he’s going to say, so I jot down the word wine before it rolls off his tongue, then glance up at him for more activities.
“Wine tasting. Reading.”
“What kind of books?”
“I don’t know—biographies? History.”
I write that down—specific details are helpful. “What do you like to do on the weekends besides smother me?”
Dad considers the question. “I like riding my bike through town.”
That he does, now that he has full use of his entire body again. For a while there he couldn’t do any physical activity, and it put a huge damper on his social life. We’re thrilled he can ride his bike again, though not his moped.
Some days he even puts my dog in the basket that’s on the back, and they ride around for attention, Dad something of a local celebrity when it comes to being notable. Recognizable. A man about town , he used to call himself until I put the kibosh on that—the phrase drives me nuts.
I add bike ride to our list.
“What else?”
“I like going for lunch.”
Indeed.
I scribble that on the notepad too.
“What else do you want in your bio? What should we add to it to make it interesting? Should it include something about being active and being a father of two adult children?”
“I don’t know if I want someone with children,” my dad says. “Been there, done that.”
If my mouth doesn’t express my shock, my eyebrows certainly do, stuck up in my hairline.
“Dad. If you date someone your own age, the likelihood that they are going to have children and grand children is very high.”
“That’s one of the reasons I don’t want to date someone my age.” He laughs. “Why are you judging me?”
He is not wrong about that.
“I am sort of judging you. I just think you should date someone closer to your own age, so you have more in common.”
“I can have things in common with someone in their thirties.”
“Yeah. Me. You have me in common with someone in their thirties.”
He ignores me, nodding toward the paper pad.
“Just set the age range I’m interested in as thirty-five to forty-five,” he instructs, and I give him side-eye but follow his directions.
“I’m keeping your actual age.” Loudly, I sigh. “I’m not contributing to misleading anyone, not on my watch. I would never be able to look a woman in the eye if you brought her home, knowing that it was me who set up your profile.”
Dad purses his lips, the glasses on his nose slipping slightly. He pushes them up with the tip of his pudgy forefinger.
He’s irritated with me, bless his heart.
“Why can’t I advertise that I don’t want to date someone with kids? I have them, but I don’t want more.”
Honest to God, I have to take another deep breath to center myself.
“You have grown children because you are fifty-eight.” I cannot stress this enough. “You’ll more than likely encounter a ton of women with grandkids, Dad. For sure.”
He hedges, unsure how he feels about that, and I can tell he’s dying to argue about it.
His mouth opens. Then closes.
Opens again.
I help him out by clarifying, “Are you trying to say you want someone to give you all of their time?”
His nod is small, but I catch it just the same.
“And you think that’s realistic?”
He nods again.
I blow out a puff of air, exhausted with his reasoning, and the breeze from my mouth catches my hair. “How about we phrase it like ...” I have to think for a second. “In search of someone with the time to commit to companionship.”
Satisfied with that description, I move on. What else would a woman want to know?
“Career?”
When I was growing up, Dad was a lawyer in a tiny local law firm, mostly drafting up estate plans and wills, real estate documents, while also dabbling in divorce and family law. A jack-of-all-trades, working in one of those buildings that looked like a dentist’s office from the outside, all cream walls on the inside and framed art from Goodwill.
No frills.
I wouldn’t say he retired—he just slowly started focusing more and more of his interests outside work, his investments over the years enough for him to live comfortably. Since Mom passed, he hasn’t put the same passion into his work with the law he once did, but he’s happier pursuing other things.
“Retired.”
I jot that down. “Want to say something like retired lawyer or just say retired?”
“Retired. Or you could say wine snob.”
“I’m not putting wine snob down as your job.”
If he wants to be snarky on the dating app, he can figure out a way to edit this shit himself.
“Want to say anything about height? Some women are heightists.”
“What’s a heightist?”
“You know—when a person won’t date someone unless they’re tall, or short, or taller than they are. It’s a personal preference.”
I recall how tall Andy is and how he towers over me. The top of my head barely reaches his shoulder—unless we’re lying down.
I blush, remembering his head between my legs, and try to refocus my attention on my dad and his dating profile.
He grunts rather than give me a straight answer, and I move forward, giving the list we just made a once-over.
“All right. Let’s write the blurby blurb for you.” I stare at the text box on his phone. “Do you want this to be in first person? Or should I list it so it’s more of an At a Glance about Steve?”
“First person at a glance,” he says.
Great.
I don’t even know what that means.
I start typing.
Steve, 58
Widowed wine connoisseur who likes adventure and traveling the wo—
“Are you about to start typing traveling the world ?” Dad asks. “Because I’ve only been as far as Canada.”
Right.
I delete that part and start again.
Steve, 58
Widowed wine connoisseur who likes adventure, good wine, loose women, and fast cars.
“Hey!”
“Just teasing.” I laugh. “I wanted to make sure you were paying attention.”
“I am paying attention,” he grumbles, moving closer so he’s officially breathing down my neck. Kevin’s at my feet. If I move an inch, I’m going to step on one of them; I just know it.
“Steve, fifty-eight.” I read out loud as I type. “Widowed father of two. Wine connoisseur who likes adventure and local grub. Not choosy about my food, just the location.”
“What does that mean, picky about the location?”
“Uh. You couldn’t care less what the food tastes like as long as the place has good lighting.”
His hair started receding about five years ago, and ever since, he’s been really picky about lighting, angles, and how he does his hair if he’s having his photo taken. I swear, he’s worse than I am when it comes to vanity and showing his “good side” in photographs.
“I guess you can leave that part.”
I nod, leaving that part in. “Looking for LT companion. You: fun, spontaneous, and someone who can appreciate dad jokes and bad humor.” I look down at him. “No offense.”
He scowls. “Are you going to delete that?”
“I would, but it’s true. You tell a lot of horrible jokes, and I don’t think a woman should have to laugh just to make you feel good about yourself.”
“Are you joking with me right now?”
“No, I’m not joking with you. You can edit this as much as you want after I’m done writing it, okay?”
He grunts, crossing his arms. “Fine.”
Satisfied, I hit Go Live on the app, and hug him for good luck.