Dammit.” I grit my teeth and toss the bottle of lube into my kitchen trash. It lands at the bottom with a thunk and I sink my face into my hands. How was I supposed to know that the lube was going to be crappy? Maybe the sleazy label should have been a clue, but I would have been willing to overlook that if the product itself was good.

I stare in dismay at the pile of bottles on my kitchen table. I need to find the best possible lube from my competitors, so I can see if that manufacturer will make me my own version. So far, though, each version has sucked.

My heart lurches as the next lube makes my hands tingle, but not in a good way. More like a slow, uncomfortable burn. Do people really put this on their junk?

I lift the offending bottle and heave it in the trash as well. So much money, down the drain. Trying to find a quality product is starting to feel like an exercise in frustration, but there’s no way I’m going to start a business and put out a terrible lube.

The third bottle in the trash adds insult to injury, and I lean back in my chair. If I don’t take a break I’m going to go crazy. Or, crazier.

Five minutes later I knock on my dad’s front door and step back to wait for an answer. It feels funny to stand on the porch when we’re practically living together, but I’ve been away too long to just barge in. I miss the standing dates we used to have in Boston, the way I could look forward to each Thursday knowing that we’d meet in the dining hall on Boston University’s campus to grab lunch between my dad’s classes. The food wasn’t that great and being on campus after I’d dropped out still made my chest prickle, but hearing my dad talk about the latest exhibit at the Boston Public Library or explain String Theory or whatever more than made up for it. In some ways, it feels like I’ve seen him even less since I’ve been home. I wonder if he’s disappointed in the fact that I’m here at all. After all, he’s the parent here to witness the disaster that is my life. While my mom is sympathetic to my breakup and return to Swan’s Hollow, she also lives in Florida. She doesn’t have a daily reminder of how much I’ve screwed up.

Gayle opens the front door and waits for me to speak first. It’s not that Gayle is a bitch, I tell myself. It’s that we don’t know each other yet. My dad met her on his morning train ride into Boston a few years ago. She worked in advertising and he trekked into the city to teach art history to bored undergrads a few times a week. I guess things got interesting over talk of visual communication in advertising and he invited her to be a guest speaker in one of his classes. “It’s about a practical application of creative skills!” my dad had said when he told me about Gayle’s lecture. I don’t know if she wowed the class but he sure was hooked. It was all over from there.

My dad told me he was getting married my first semester of college. He’d suggested a fancy meal at the Ritz, which should have been a sign that something was wrong. Surrounded by the tinkling of silverware and the murmurs of business deals being conducted he’d dropped the bomb that, yep, he really was over my mom and moving on.

“Ok,” I’d said around a mouthful of lobster roll. What else was I going to say? It wasn’t until afterward that I realized he had been worried about my reaction. The whole overpriced lunch had been a front.

Truth be told, it was weird to have my dad falling in love when I was feeling adrift in school. Back then Jackson and I still spoke every week, and his voice was the only thing keeping me tethered to the present. Even still, I hadn't come home when my dad moved out of the house next door to Jackson’s parents and into the place he and Gayle live now. I’d let him go through my things and pack them up for me, so there’s still a box of my yearbooks up in his attic somewhere.

Before I moved into her guesthouse, the longest Gayle and I spent together was probably the few days before their wedding in Philadelphia, where Gayle’s family is from. I saw my dad every week anyway; I didn’t need to swing by Swan’s Hollow for old time’s sake.

It’s not my stepmom’s fault I never came home to visit, and even though my mom doesn’t have great things to say about her replacement when we talk on the phone, I need to give Gayle a chance. After all, my dad is happy with her and that means a lot.

I hold up a bag of pastries as a peace offering. Maybe blueberry muffins and cinnamon donuts will crack her. “Is Dad still here?” It’s only fair that if my dad could surprise me by hanging out on his front porch with Jackson last night then I can surprise him by showing up before breakfast for a little friendly interrogation.

Gayle opens the door wider and I follow her inside. “He hasn’t left for work yet.”

My dad sits at the breakfast bar in the sprawling white kitchen, a newspaper spread in front of him. He shuffles it into a neat stack to make room for me. “Hey Natalie.”

I set the bag of pastries on the counter next to a photograph of Gayle and her granddaughter before climbing onto a barstool. I wait until my dad has a donut in his hands before I speak. “You didn’t tell me you were friendly with Jackson.” I cringe. That wasn’t supposed to sound so defensive.

My dad raises his eyebrows in amusement. “I didn’t know I needed to. After all, I lived next to him for two years. See him around town from time to time.”

Oh yeah. So many times I think of Jackson as mine, but I forget that he belongs to other people too. People who aren’t me. People who didn’t skip town and hide.

“He’s a nice young man,” Gayle says, taking the blueberry muffin my dad offers her. “A real sense of duty.”

I flinch. I don’t know if she’s making a dig at the fact that I never came to visit, but it still cuts. Another one of my failings, no matter how justified my motives might have been.

It feels strange that Jackson probably knows Gayle better than I do. She seems to like him better than me, anyway, despite the fresh muffins.

“He’s something all right.” I shove a bite of muffin into my mouth before I can say anything rude, savoring the tang of blueberries and lemon. Still, curiosity wins out. “What did you guys talk about last night? Before I showed up?”

“Ansel Adams,” my dad says.

I almost choke on my muffin. “Ansel Adams?”

“Sure. You know he shot a lot of images in California, up in Monterey and Carmel.”

God, Jackson’s good, going straight for my dad’s weak spots. “Uh huh.”

“Speaking of which, did you know Clint Eastwood used to be the mayor of Carmel?”

“Another bit of trivia from Jackson?”

My dad bobs his head.

I sigh, setting down my muffin. “I guess he’s just a fountain of knowledge.”

Gayle snags a wayward blueberry off my plate and pops it in her mouth. “You could invite him over for dinner, you know. One night next week, maybe.”

“Gayle makes a mean roast,” my dad chimes in. He rubs a hand over his stomach and smiles. “Part of the reason I married her.”

She blushes. “I thought it was my brains and my beauty.”

“Well, that too.” My dad turns back to me. “So what do you say? Will we be seeing more of Jackson?”

“I don’t know.” I stare at the counter and think of the bottles of lube in my trash, unused and unhelpful. If I’m losing money on stupid mistakes now, what’s it going to be like when there’s even more money at stake? Every penny counts and as much as I hate to admit it, maybe Jackson knows some secret business-school tricks to avoid these kinds of blunders. Maybe partnering up would actually be a good thing for me, a crash course in learning business without actually crashing.

Then again, saying yes to being partners could mean starting down a slippery slope. I think of Jackson’s infuriating grin, his irrefutably hot body. Adding Jackson to the mix might be the biggest mistake of all.