Page 17 of My Best Friend's Dad

If that ever happened, I would die a thousand deaths. If I went to any clinic in this city, my mom would probably find out, and then she’d be up in my business, and it would be an endless barrage ofI told you that asshole was bad newslooks for months.Months.

A fresh torrent of rage rips through me, swamping my body in a sticky, overheated sweat. I grasp my coffee and use it to distract me and to help me chill the fuck out.

I hadn’t considered how long Kevin had been cheating, but Mika was right. It probably wasn’t just last night.

On second thought, a bus is too kind.

“You’re the best woman I know. You’re exactly the kind of person my dad should fall in love with.” Mika gives me wobbly lips along with her sad puppy eyes.

“You do realize that most best friends would be slamming the brakes on this so hard, not greenlighting father fornication.” I sip my coffee. There’s no way it’s strong enough for this. “He’s so much older than me. Even if we found some weird kind of attraction that resulted in happiness, it could only ever be temporary.”

“You don’t know that.”

Don’t I? Right now, I’m not going to give Mika a list of reasons why my getting with her dad would never work. “I know this is going to be an unmitigated disaster.”

“Not if we pull it off in spectacular fashion. And I don’t know about theunmitigatedpart.” She wiggles her slashy eyebrows. “It might just be a regular disaster, but at least we would have tried, and that counts for something.”

“It counts for making everything worse and your dad mad at us for life.”

“He’s not going to get hurt. Everything will work out, even if he gets mildly annoyed at the start. He won’t know we’re best friends. He’ll never fall for you if he knows. We’ll have to break him into the idea later when you’re both so enthralled with each other that you’ll both have to find a way to make it all come out right.”

Ugh, to say I’m worried is weak sauce. This is going to start out tepid and heat up into the hottest of hot messes.

“Does your silence mean you’re not saying no?”

I sigh exasperatedly. “How can I?”

“That’s right.” Mika’s grin is absolutely entering into shit-eating territory. She knows I’d do anything for her the same way she’d risk life and limb for me. We’re best friends. I can’t just leave her alone in this. “You can’t.”

Chapter five

Rowleigh

Idon’t know why I agreed to this.

No, I suppose that’s not true.

It was because Mika, with tears shimmering in her eyes in all her goth queen glory,beggedme to do this right if I couldn’t be swayed from doing it. Despite her professing to reject most social norms, Mika is a romantic at heart. She wants to believe this can all work out for me. That I’ll have one of those marriages on paper that ends up turning into something more, where we both fall madly in love with each other.

But that’s not going to happen, mainly because Geneiva has already found her person. She’s madly in love with him, and he’s madly in love with the mob. They might appear to be a strange match, but the one time I met and talked to her in person, I could tell she believed her feelings were the real deal.

I’m walking into a quaint little brick building on a busy touristy street simply because my daughter asked me to go for coffee earlier. She’s never done that before. It’s amazing that Ihave any sort of relationship with her at all. I’ve tried over the years and been stonewalled. My ex-wife convinced me that my being around wasn’t good for Mika because if I couldn’t be there properly, I shouldn’t be there at all.

I resist the urge to roll my eyes at the glamourous, over-the-top wedding dress in the far window. It’s sparkly, and it glitters as the sun hits the crystals. The other windows all boast decor and photographs of destination places, elegant tables, flower-strewn arches, and a happy-looking couple clutching each other and smiling on a beach.

Their smiles are so bleached, and their pose is so awkward that I have to believe it’s staged. They’re probably little more than hired models. Is anything in this place real?

It looks small from the outside, but inside, the open layout gives the illusion of more space. The huge windows let in good natural light, spilling over the displays of faux wedding cakes in the corner, the gold gilt frames on the gallery wall displaying more venues, enchanted forests, rocky mountain escapes, and happy couples. The settee and chairs are antique replicas, but with their red velvet upholstery, golden carved legs, and sweeping backs, they’re impressive enough.Glitz and glamour, the building screams,but trust us not to fuck up your low-key weddings too.

A bank of glassed-in offices line the far side.

There’s no one currently behind the front desk with the stone façade creeping halfway up and the backlit mood lighting behind it. I sweep my eyes around, feeling distinctly as though I’m stepping into a trap, though I can’t say why.

Right. Marriage of convenience. I did this to myself.

Mika begged me not to go through with it. My daughter, whom my ex-wife shielded from me, the girl who grew into a teenager and was too busy for me no matter how badly I wanted to be there, and the woman I have no idea how to relate to. She hadcoffee with me and cut through all the years and bullshit and straight upbeggedme to reconsider.

When I couldn’t do that, she swallowed her devastation and her tears and sent me a link to this place, encouraging me to plan a wedding I could be proud of because I deserved the best.