Friendly Dating - Kira

Chapter 21 - Hanging with Daddy

Daddy is taking the cottage pie from the oven while I finish making a simple salad of tomatoes, lettuce and cucumber.

I am very happy to have him home in time for dinner; I sorely need a big dose of normalcy, and I can see that he is rather tired. He is working way too hard and needs to unwind. He loves his job and tends to lose himself in it, which is one of the reasons why I've decided to go to the university in Silverview, the closest city to home, next year. I want to be able to keep an eye on him. Without me around, he'll forget to come home, eat, and sleep.

A couple of years ago, I returned from a two-week holiday with the Fletchers to find my father in a semi-dehydrated, unhygienic, sleepwalking state because he'd filled the lonely hours with more work and slipped into a bubble where he forgot to live. Since then, I always make sure to have plenty of friends and neighbours look in on him when I join the Fletchers on any outing lasting longer than a weekend. We also have a video call once a day, usually while he is having his dinner.

I think that complete descent into unhealthy regions of self-neglect scared him as much as it scared me, which left him willing to take part in any type of activity I come up with to take care of him remotely.

Fortunately, the university in Silverview is pretty good; most of the Corbin High students will be going there next year, Dell and Ethan included. Honestly, there is no other university I'd rather go to.

"Thank you, Pumpkin, you made my favourite!" my father exclaims happily when he extracts the casserole dish from the oven and is met by the full aroma.

"You're welcome, Daddy," I smile, turning to grab the lemonade from the refrigerator while he puts the steaming dish on the mat on the table. We're about to take our seats when the kitchen door opens, and there is Ethan, carrying a couple of console game cases in one hand, looking healthy and fresh in one of his favourite t-shirts, sporting the very wise warning: "Never leave me unsupervised."

As usual, his blond hair is cheekily doing its own thing, and his dimples are making his smile seem even brighter.

Suddenly, I'm no longer sure whether I made the cottage pie because it is Daddy's favourite or because it's Ethan's. They both love it. I'm transported back to this afternoon when I was standing at that very door experiencing the most gentle, sweetest kiss I've ever had, and now the air is too thick to enter my lungs.

Earlier, I went into my bedroom and saw Ethan entering his room from his bathroom, wearing only a towel. I wanted to run and close my curtains, the way I always do, but I also wanted to reverse back into the hallway and run away, head for the hills, become a hermit, perpetually banging my head against rock formations, trying to come to my senses.

This is Ethan, for crying out loud! My heart should not have been skipping beats then, and it definitely shouldn't be skipping beats now, either.

I was still torn between my two options when he was suddenly standing at his window, taking the one panel of his curtains in his hand and drawing it across, closing half of his window. He gestured at it and made a huge production of drawing the other one as well. I moved to my window during his performance, and when I shouted a thank you at him, he shoved a hand between the two curtain sections and gave me a thumbs up.

He only opened the curtains again once he was completely dressed. Wow!

"Am I too early?" he asks after his initial hello, and to my surprise, he is looking uncertain.

"If you came for dinner," Daddy grins, "you're right on time, Buddy."

Ethan smiles at my father and closes the door behind him, but he is still giving me less-than-confident looks even though I have already laid an extra place at the table just for him. What is wrong with him? He often has a first or second dinner at our place; we don't mind. I always make enough to keep him in leftovers if he doesn't show up. Some days Delia joins us too, but she can usually only handle one dinner per day.