Page 101 of Summer with the Single Dad

“I get that. I like helping people, but I’m also an introvert. I start my day with only so many—”

“Fucks to give about others?”

“I was going to say conversations in my bucket, and if I run out, I kind of just go … quiet.” She rubbed his chest affectionately. “What are they talking about though? Why are you ‘Mr. Serious’?”

He pressed his lips together and opened up his arm to indicate she should slide down and snuggle with him again. She did.

“I … I was Mr. Serious. I mean, I am. Of the five of us, I am the most serious. I always have been. Even though Clint is the oldest, and he is incredibly responsible, I am the one with the head for business and money. They all live in a bit of a pipe dream and I’m the monster who has to crush their dreams. It can get exhausting. But, I know this about myself, and one day I heard Aya say to Emme that ‘Daddy is always so grumpy.’ and it hit me harder than you would believe. So I vowed to try to be better. To smile more. To crack more jokes. To just be happier. We have a good life here. There isn’t much of a reason to be grumpy.”

“That’s … really insightful of you. Very self-aware.”

He snorted. “It was hard at first. I had to fake it, but now … now it’s more of who I am. Or who I want to be for my kids.”

She pressed a kiss to his pec.

He playfully tugged on her braid so she was forced to lift her head and look at him. “I also saw how well things worked out for Clint and Brooke and decided that it was too much work to keep my heart closed off to the possibility of love again. Having it open and relaxed is better. More comfortable.” He drew circles around her hip bone with his other hand. “Also scary as fuck. But … I’m okay with that.”

“Sometimes we need to do scary things for good things to happen,” she said solemnly, looking down at him with those soulful brown eyes he could so easily get lost in … possibly forever.

With emotion causing his throat to get tight he merely nodded.

“My heart is open too.”

As much as he was glad they were in a good place again, and opening up to each other—finally—it took a lot of energy to be so vulnerable. He wanted to get back to when they were laughing about parkour and buttholes.

“Are your legs open too?” he gritted out, rolling on top of her.

She looped her arms around his neck and spread her thighs beneath him. “I think they might be.” She nipped his chin.

“So, tell me again why you’ve never masturbated before today?”

She rolled her eyes and lifted her hips up slightly for a bit of friction. “If that blew your mind, you’re going to lose it completely when I tell you I didn’t have my first orgasm until I was thirty-one.”

His heart nearly stopped, and he stared down at her, slack-jawed. “You’re kidding. How old are you now?”

“Thirty-five.”

“So wait, you’ve been having sex since—”

“I was nineteen.” She rolled her eyes. “I was a late bloomer and there was lots of shame about sex and teen pregnancy in our house. God forbid we become a statistic. God forbid we get a reputation. How would that reflect on our family? On our parents who were very respected in the community? This mostly came from my mother. My dad just goes along with what she says.”

“What about just the safe-sex talk? Trusting your children? Establishing an open, no-secrets house? What about birth control and condoms?”

She shrugged. “Yeah. What about all those things? My mom, even though she’s a doctor, is very proper. Very conservative in a lot of ways. We never spoke of sex, sexuality, or any of that at home. My sisters and I were given a book to read when we were nine about menstruation, then pads and tampons just appeared in the bathroom. But we never spoke of it. I got in big trouble one time for leaving my pad—rolled up in toilet paper—in the bathroom garbage. I was to put all that stuff in a bag in my room, then tie the bag and take it immediately outside to the garbage. We were never allowed to ask questions really, either. I remember one time I heard some boys at school talking about jerking off and I didn’t know what that meant, so I asked my mom and I was told never to bring up such things in the house again.”

“What kind of a doctor is your mother?”

“An oncologist.”

“And your dad?”

She snorted. “A urologist. He’ll talk about bladders, urethras, and penises all day if given the chance—now—but when we were kids, he wasn’t allowed to talk about that stuff in front of us.”

“What about your sisters?”

“Tasha is an orthopedic surgeon and Daniella is doing her residency in obstetrics. I’m sure she’s well aware of masturbation at this point. And it’s not like I didn’t know what it was before now. I just … whenever I tried, I heard my mother’s voice in my head condemning me. Making me feel dirty. So I gave up.”

“Jesus,” he breathed. “I’m pretty sure all five of us spent the majority of our teen years abusing ourselves in the shower. So many crusty tube socks were found in Jagger and Wyatt’s bedrooms.”

---