Happily Never After

“SO WHAT’D YOU do this weekend?” Eli, the mechanical sub on the project who also happened to be my best friend, took the stairs two at a time as we headed for the sixth-floor conference room. He was a former cross-country runner and thought elevators were for lazy asses. “I thought about calling you during the Cubs game but then shit hit the fan in the top of the second, so I shut it off.”

“Good call.” I’d watched a few innings of that travesty with TJ and Sophie at the dive bar. “I went to a wedding Saturday and that was pretty much it.”

“Fun wedding or meh?”

I pictured Soph with the bride in a headlock. “It definitely wasn’t meh.”

I told him the story of a girl objecting and getting attacked by the bride, leaving out our involvement in the whole thing. And by the time we exited the stairwell, Eli was laughing his ass off. “This is unreal and you have to be kidding.”

“I couldn’t have made this up. Seriously.”

“This might be the first time in my life I’ve ever wished I’d been invited to a wedding.”

“Right?”

We entered the conference room, but there were only four people in there so far. We did the quick head-nod thing—they were the electrical guys—before sitting at the other end of the long table.

“Who’d you go with?” he asked quietly, taking his phone out of his pocket and setting it on the table. “Anyone I know?”

“No. She’s a girl I met at another wedding, oddly enough.”

“Are you seeing her?”

I channeled my inner Sophie and said, “Is that seriously your question?”

“Fuck off,” he said in a whisper. “Jane always wants to set you up with her friends, so if you’re seeing someone, I’m off the hook.”

“Makes sense,” I said, picturing Sophie’s red lips. “And I’m not really ‘seeing’ her, I just see her sometimes.”

“Clear as mud,” he muttered, then said, “What’s her name?”

“Nope,” I said, knowing Eli’s propensity for using social media to look up every human he’d ever met. “I don’t need you creeping on her.”

“Then show me a pic at least so I can sound like I know something when I tell Jane.”

I got out my phone, not so much because I needed to show Eli but because I wanted to look at the damn picture again. Sophie had been all over my mind since she’d left me fucking reeling on the corner Saturday night, and I was having trouble shaking her.

I pulled up the shot and held it out to him. “Sophie. That’s all you need to know.”

“Who is this?” I heard from behind me, an interested smile in the man’s voice. “Maxwell Joseph, have you been holding out on your mom and I?”

Shit, shit, shit.

My father leaned down a little, peering at the selfie on my phone. “That’s a nice-looking couple right there.”

I looked at him over my shoulder. “Just a friend, Dad.”

“A friend you went on a date with?” he asked quietly, taking the seat beside me at the head of the table. “It’s about damn time you got back out there.”

I glanced at the other end of the table—for fuck’s sake, Dad—but everyone else was thankfully in their own conversations.

I put my phone back in my pocket as the familiar knot formed in my stomach.

“We went to a wedding together,” I muttered, trying not to attract attention but knowing I needed to get in front of this. “It was no big deal.”

God help me, my dad’s face lit up like sunshine as he said, “That’s how your mom and I met.”

“I know.” I cleared my throat and couldn’t believe I’d been stupid enough to say that. I knew their adorable meet-cute story; what the hell had I been thinking?

“We’re still waiting on a couple people, but let’s just get started since I’ve got to meet the city planner in an hour.” Brody Hart, the project manager leading the LFC buildout, started going through his status update, but since I’d already touched base with him on Friday afternoon, it was redundant information to me.

Which was why I started thinking—yet again—about the almost kiss.

It’d come at me out of nowhere. We’d had a fun, wholly platonic evening (aside from a flirt here and there) that’d been entirely in line with our “partnership.”

So what the fuck had happened at the end of the night?

One minute we’d been taking a selfie, and the next had been all electricity.

It’d felt like we were this close to doing . . . something.

Her eyes on mine, her lips so close.

I was like a fucking middle schooler, daydreaming about almost kissing.

Yes, it’d been a couple years since I’d kissed a woman, but it was pathetic how obsessed I was with what hadn’t happened.

A goddamn near kiss, for God’s sake.

I needed to snap out of it.

My phone buzzed, and when I took it out of my pocket, I saw a text from my mother.

Mom: How long have you been seeing your “friend,” Maxxie? I want to know everything.

Damn it. I glanced over at my dad, wanting to give him my best glare for running to Mom with fake-ass dating news.

But he was listening intently to Brody’s rundown, already having moved on from meddling to business.

Which wasn’t surprising.

My father had always been all business. He’d built Parks Construction from the ground up, and it was a part of him, a part of our family, the same as if it was an uncle or cousin. I’d grown up going with him to jobsites, spending snow days in the offices, and every summer job my sisters and I had during high school was with Parks or one of its subcontractors.

I sometimes thought I loved it as much as—or more than—he did, and I couldn’t wait to step up when he decided to step down.

Which should be now, damn it; the man was more than ready to retire. He and my mom built a house in Florida they’d been “wintering” at for the past three years, and he told me countless times that he was ready to make it a year-round home.

It was obvious he wanted badly to retire and let me take the helm.

So why hadn’t he, you ask?

Because my mother didn’t want to move until “all her babies” were taken care of.

Which meant me.

My two sisters were married, one with a kiddo and the other with one on the way. They had doting husbands and beautiful homes.

I was her youngest, so even though I was fucking great at my job, had a mortgage on my condo and a decent investment portfolio, she apparently considered me the equivalent of a college kid living on Top Ramen and Kraft Dinner.

Because I wasn’t “taken care of” yet.

AKA married or in a serious relationship, things I had no interest in whatsoever.

So my dad and I were basically hosed until I fell in love.

Which would be never.

Welcome to my hell.