her toes to kiss his cheek. “And I want you to text me when Kelly gets here, okay? Promise.”
Rob rolls his eyes and hooks his thumb toward her. “Do you see what she’s been putting me through?” he asks.
“She’s relentless,” I say.
“You got that right,” Rob says, like they are partners in crime. “I’ll text when Kelly arrives, I promise. Have fun you two.”
“Thanks, Daddy,” Jo says.
“Goodnight, Mr. Warner.”
“Oh, so it’s Rob when you’re working, but tonight it’s Mr. Warner?” he says, nodding. “This must be more serious than I thought.”
Jo groans and pulls the door closed, leaving the two of us alone on the front porch.
“Ignore him,” she says.
I laugh. “Well, I am taking his daughter out,” I say. “It’s his fatherly right to heckle.”
“He was heckling me more than you, trust me,” she says. “He’s just happy to see me going out for a change.”
I lead her toward the truck and open the passenger door so she can climb inside. I go around and get in, grateful when the old thing starts right up. I’ve had this truck for five years, and it already had a hundred thousand miles on it when I bought it. It still runs most of the time, but I’ve had a few problems with it lately.
Luckily, it looks like it’s going to cooperate tonight.
“So should we call this our first official date?” I ask. “I mean, technically this is the first time I’ve taken you out.”
“I think the fishing trip counts as a date,” she says. “I might rather do that again, instead.”
“Definitely a day to remember,” I say.
She laughs and scoots a little closer on the seat. I grab her hand, and it’s ice cold.
“If you don’t want to go, we can turn around,” I say. “I just want to be with you.”
She shakes her head. “I want to go,” she says. “It’ll be fun to meet your friends.”
But she doesn’t sound so sure. She’s always so confident at the bar that it seems strange she would be nervous about going to a simple party. I make a mental note to stick by her side so that she’s comfortable and having a good time. Greg assured me it was going to be a small, low-key kind of crowd tonight, so hopefully it will be fun.
When we get to the beach house, though, there are so many cars parked along the street that it’s obvious this is a little more than low-key. I open the door for Jo and take her hand to help her down.
“Who all is going to be here tonight?” she asks. “That’s a lot of cars.”
“I’m not entirely sure,” I say. “Greg told me it would be the band and a handful of old friends from high school. I wasn’t expecting so many people. He made it sound like a small gathering.”
“Maybe this is small for them these days,” she says.
“True,” I say. Either that or word got out that they were hosting friends and the whole damn town showed up.
The music booming through the trees makes me think this won’t exactly be the kind of gathering where people are quietly sitting around talking about old times.
Seeing the beach house again brings back some strong memories. It used to belong to Greg’s dad, but when he passed away a few years ago, he left it to him. I imagine it mostly goes unused throughout the year with the band touring so much lately, but it’s definitely getting some use tonight.
“Man, I haven’t been back here in years,” I say. “I used to spend nearly every weekend of my life camped out on that back porch.”
“I didn’t realize you guys were so close,” she says. “It must have been tough when he left.”
“He was my best friend,” I say. “Plus, it was nice to get away from the estrogen in my house. It wasn’t exactly a picnic to be the only boy in a house full of girls.”
“I imagine this was a pretty cool place to hang out,” she says. “It’s gorgeous out here. Was it hard for you when he left to go to college?”
“In some ways,” I say. “But in other ways it was good for me.”
“How so?”
“Greg’s parents were divorced, and his mom was pretty strict with him, but his dad was another story altogether,” I say. “He was out of town on business a lot, so when we used to come out here, we had free reign of the place. Things got out of hand a