Page 27 of Just My Luck

“Good idea.”

I shot a text to Rick, who quickly responded that he’d meet me there.

Smiling, I leaned back in my chair. Family time was better than trying to hook up with some rando. Right?

Shit. When had I gotten old?

I glanced at my closed office door and frowned. I didn’t want to hook up with some random woman. I wanted Nova back. Hell, I wanted to invite her to watch the game with my family. How many times had she been part of that mix? Too many to count.

A little over an hour later, I walked by Nova’s empty office and, clenching my teeth, forced myself to not immediately call her. Instead, I headed to my parents’ house. Though now, I suppose, it was just my mother’s home.

I thought about that the entire way up the hill. It still hit me at different times that my dad was gone. I thought back to when my grandparents had died. The heartbreak. How, when my father’s dad had suddenly died of an infection, I was forced at a young age to think about my own mortality. I had spent weeks, if not months, crying in bed as an eight-year-old, thinking that someday I would die.

My father had come in one night when I’d been crying a little too loudly and gently talked to me

He’d stroked my hair as he held me. “You know, Jacob, death isn’t something we should waste our tears on.”

“It’s not?” I’d asked.

“No.” He’d sighed.

“Why not?” I’d asked. “Doesn’t it hurt?”

He’d been quiet for a moment before answering. “Do you remember what it was like before you were born?”

I frowned, my tears drying on my cheeks as I thought really hard. My first memory, then and even still now, was of falling off my bike and scraping my knee. My father had been there to pick me up, bandage it, then help me right back on my bike.

“No,” I answered with a hiccup.

“Well, death is like that. At one point, we’ve all been dead before.”

“Where were we?” I asked, shifting in his arms to look up at him. God, he’d been a bear of a man. Strong arms. Chiseled jawline and dark hair that all three of his sons had inherited.

“Well, there are a lot of religions out there with different stories about what it will be like after death. Your grandfather believed in heaven.”

“Do you?”

My dad sighed again. “I’d like to hope there is a golden palace waiting for us all. That your grandfather is up there sipping his favorite bourbon and watching the sun set over some beach.”

I wanted to ask him more, but he shifted my weight and laid me back on my bed.

“For now, that thought comforts me. Along with the fact that he is not in pain anymore.”

I remembered seeing my grandfather for the last time. How he had coughed and how it had made him groan just to sit up and hug my brothers and me.

He’d looked old back then. It dawned on me now that my father was almost ten years older than his father had been when he’d passed.

I parked next to Chris’s Jeep and grabbed the case of beer I’d stopped to grab on the way out of town.

When I walked in, to my surprise, Nova sat on the sofa next to Chris. She was wearing a pair of worn jeans and a Bronco’s jersey, and her hair was up in a ponytail. Both she and Chris were cheering at the television.

My heart did a stupid little skip, then sunk when it dawned on me that this was her “date.” No way in hell was my little brother moving in on my… shit, was I really about to say that Nova was mine?

Thankfully, the two of them were so engrossed in the game playing on the set that I had time to compose myself.

By the time I walked over and set the case of beer down, I was fully back in control.

“Hey,” I said, making it as casual sounding as I could before sitting down next to Nova.