“No!” Elise shouted.
My dad covered his eyes. “I can’t watch.”
Elise reached for my dad’s hand. “Tom, we do this together or we don’t do it at all.”
“Right you are,” my dad said.
Was this theTitanicsinking or a reality show? I reached for the popcorn, amused at the two of them.
My dad had decent color tonight, though he was wearing a blanket over his legs that Elise adjusted when it started to slip. She’d also brought him a glass of water when he paused the show and got up to use the bathroom. They acted like they’d known each other for years.
I tipped my chin up at Elise while my dad was in the bathroom. “You decided to stay?”
“Tom got me sucked into this show. I’ve watched four episodes straight. I might stroke out from all the secondhand embarrassment and drama.”
“Is that the reason for the crazed look in your eyes?”
She patted her face, then seemed to come to her senses. “Jackson, this show is addictive. How can you not like it?”
“Oh, I like it. My dad got me hooked on it the last time I was here.” I didn’t mention that I had planned to tell her about the show. “Just curious how you two ended up hanging out for several hours.”
“Well,” she started, “I was hungry, so I grabbed takeout for the two of us. I figured we could eat together and then I’d go home. But then your dad gave me a tour of your old bedroom and photos—”
“Photos?” My voice took on an unusually high pitch. “What photos?”
She smiled devilishly. “You as a naked baby…another after you’d dressed yourself for kindergarten. Then one where you were taking a girl to an eighth-grade dance. What was with the peach fuzz on your lip? Didn’t you think to shave that caterpillar? And was that girl six feet tall? You were, like, a foot shorter.”
I closed my eyes briefly. “My God, he showed you everything.”
“He did. Tom and I are besties now.” She looked up, scrunching her face. “I should introduce him to my mom. Not as a dating thing, but as a parents-who-could-hang kind of thing. I think they’d get along.”
“Wonderful,” I said dryly. “We could bring Kitty and Karl along and make it a parental party.”
“Excellent idea!”
“I was joking.”
Her brow furrowed. “Hasn’t your dad met Max’s parents before?”
I thought back. “Max’s family had a driver who took Max everywhere until we could drive. And my dad worked a lot—so no, I don’t think their paths ever crossed. Max’s parents were busier before they lost most of their fortune.”
She rested her chin on her hand. “Right, all the hoopla about Max’s family fortune being squandered due to poor investing.”
Sophia must have caught Elise up on Max’s family drama.
I shrugged. “They didn’t listen to Max when he told them not to invest.”
“Curious.”
“His parents not listening to him?”
“No, the part about you guys being best friends and your parents never meeting.”
My dad walked in, un-paused the show, and sank into his recliner. The man was so excited, he’d taken the remote into the bathroom with him.
I wasn’t as fastidious as Max in the cleanliness department, but even that curled my nose. “Dad, maybe we should wipe down the remote.”
He waved me off. “I left it on the counter and didn’t touch it until my hands were clean.”
