“Daaad.” Dakota pins him with an annoyed glare.
“No, it’s fine. My dad said basically the same thing when I got my first sleeve done.” I stretch out my left arm. “The truth is. Some of them have special meaning; others don’t.”
“Like decorating a house,” Dakota pipes in. “Some items are sentimental, and others you buy because you thought they were pretty.” She places her elbows on the table and looks at Jerry. “Do you still have the pink sofa?”
“In the basement.” He nods.
“Oh, you have to see it.” Dakota reaches out and touches my arm lightly. “The salesperson called it dusty rose, but it’s the color of bubblegum.”
Everything in my parents’ house was white or gray. I think I might like a bubblegum pink couch. Jerry retires to an old recliner in the living room, and Dakota rinses the plates while I finish off the pizza.
“Going downstairs, Dad,” she calls as we start down the creaky stairs.
“Leave the door open,” he yells.
“Oh my gosh. So embarrassing,” she mumbles and flips on a light in the stairway. “Welcome to my teenage hangout. I spent many hours down here watching TV and hanging out with friends.”
“Boy friends?” I ask.
“Sometimes.” She walks straight to the pink couch and sits down. She runs a hand along the fabric cushion as I take in the rest of the space.
My head grazes the ceiling fan in the middle of the living area. The furniture is mismatched as if it’s a collection of old furniture pieces Jerry couldn’t bear to part with. A worn leather armchair, a plaid upholstered love seat, and the pink couch. A flat-screen TV is mounted on the wall, and a bookshelf sits underneath, holding dusty books and games.
“Did you have a basement where you took girls in high school?”
“Kind of.” I take a seat next to her on the couch. It’s hard, not a lot of give, and it sits low to the floor, making my ass sink down below my knees. “I had a pool house.”
“Oh my gosh, of course you did.” She rolls her eyes but smiles.
“This is a great color,” I say and mean it. “Could be more comfortable, though. This thing is hard as a rock.”
I try to bounce on it and then wiggle to get situated, but it’s like sitting on a bleacher seat.
“My mom always wanted a pink couch. I have no idea why. It was a running joke every time we picked out new furniture.” She plays with the hem of her shorts, staring down at the material between her fingers as she continues. “The day she found out her cancer had returned, she went straight from the doctor’s office to the furniture store. I came home from school, and she was sitting on it and just smiling. She died two weeks later.”
“I’m so sorry.” I cover her hand with mine.
She lets out a breath and nods. “It is pretty uncomfortable.”
“The worst,” I admit. “But I dig it. My parents were all whites and grays. I like color.”
She squeezes my fingers. “How come you don’t have any colorful tattoos?”
I scan my arm. I’d never thought about it before. “I guess I’m whites and grays too.”
“Oh no.” She smiles. “You are a pink couch. Not quite right, but all about making people happy.”
Chuckling, I move my hand. “Jerry seems nice.”
“Nice? Really.”
“Okay, he seems like a hard-ass, but he loves you, that much I got.”
“He loved my mom so much. Even if I were a holy terror, because let’s be honest, there were some rough high school years when I was awful, he’d still love me if only because I’m her daughter. She was going through chemo when they met. Can you imagine the kind of love that takes? He had no idea if she’d get better.”
“But she did.”
“Yeah.” Dakota nods. “They had ten amazing years, and I guess that’s more than most people get.”
Dakota grabs two more beers, and we eventually move to sitting in front of the couch. It’s a real bad sign for a piece of furniture when you’d rather sit on the floor than on it, but I’m having a great time.
She rests an elbow on the pink couch and angles toward me. “Tell me about your parents.”
“We’re not close. They were busy building the company when I was a kid. But they gave me a lot.”
“I saw your dad at the Frozen Four celebration party. He seemed proud of you.”
A laugh breaks free. “Sorry, I don’t mean to laugh. He is proud in his own way, but I don’t think he’s ever said the word.”
“He should. You’ve done some amazing things. Were they disappointed that you were quitting college to sign with the Wildcats?”
“Nah, they were all about it.” I shrug. “I was never going to be anything but a hockey player.”
“Don’t sell yourself short, Johnny Maverick. I think you could be anything you want.”
8
Dakota
He lines up the empty beer bottles between us. Upstairs is quiet. Dad must have gone to bed. It feels good to be home. Not a lot has changed in the three years since I moved away to college, but the basement feels smaller with Maverick in it.
He has that way about him, filling up space. Not just physically because he’s a big guy, but his personality is even bigger.
The conversation has bounced from every topic imaginable—from my mom to all the horrifying things guys have said to me on dating apps.
“No way. He didn’t say that.” Mav throws his head back and laughs.
“He did. I would prove it to you, but I deleted the app. I asked him where his favorite place he’d visited was, and he said, the womb. Like, what do I do with that? How do you ever make a guy like that happy? I can’t give that to him. Is he going to have some weird obsession with my womb when I get pregnant? So many questions.”
“Again, this is why I don’t do online dating.”
“You do have a certain charm that might be misunderstood via text.”
“Right?” He laughs and stretches out a long leg in front of him.
Charli is snoring at his side, and he absently runs a hand along her back.
“It’s different now,” I say. “Now that our friends are all coupled up. I see how happy they are. I want that.”
“You know what you need?” he asks.
“Oh my god, I swear if you hit on me right now, I’m going to break one of these beer bottles and beat you over the head with it.”
“First of all, ouch. That’s some crazy bar brawl shit, Kota.”
I laugh. I’ve seen Patrick Swayze in Road House one too many times, admittedly.
“Second, stop trying to force it. Enjoy the weirdos and the cringe stories. Have fun with it. Things will happen when they’re supposed to. Life is a series of events that you can either let push you down or shrug them off and move on. I’m single and making the most of it.”
“Oh, I know. I’ve seen you making the most of it. Two girls at a time. How does one girl compare after that, seriously?”
“You know the great thing about two girls instead of one?”