Recipe for Romance

Chapter 2-1

Chapter 2

Preston couldn’t remember much about being Abby’s age, except when he had been at eight years old, thirty-two seemed like a mythical number he’d never reach. Yet it had crept up on him slowly, year by year, and some days it still took him by surprise when he looked in the mirror and saw the grown man staring back. What had happened to the roguish kid he used to be, or the handsome teenage heartthrob, or the big man on campus? When had his muscles begun to soften into love handles and his six-pack abs melt into a dad’s belly?

And God, please, somebody tell him when those first strands of gray had crept into his dark brown hair? Not only at his temples, either; he’d spotted the first one on his chin while shaving the other morning, and there were a few in his pubes and on his chest, too, advancing like weeds in an otherwise pristine patch of grass.

Damn, he wasn’t only growing up. He was growing old.

It wasn’t just the reflection staring back at him from the mirror that gave it away, either. It was in his changing tastes, the clothes he wore, the music he listened to, the fact that he watched the news at night when he got home from work, the same way his own father used to when he was younger. Even the guys who caught his eye now were older, like himself. The other day when he was in the grocery store with Abby, a couple of frat boys from State were goofing off in the cereal aisle, and the first thought that came to Preston’s mind wasn’t, Hmm, nice ass, but rather, Watch your language around my daughter.

Face it, Pres, he told himself, you’re one step away from Hawaiian shirts and porch chairs, and yelling at kids to stay off your lawn.

He’d thought of telling Tess about it in an off-hand, joking way, so she wouldn’t think he was in the grip of some sort of midlife crisis. It couldn’t be that, could it? A midlife crisis at thirty-two would mean, logistically, that he had reached the middle of his life, and thus had only another thirty-two years left to go. What had seemed unattainable at eight suddenly seemed all too close, and he didn’t want sixty-four rushing up on him any time soon.

So he kept his mouth shut, and kept his thoughts locked up in the quiet of his own mind, where no one else would be able to hear them. He even went so far as to make a pact with himself—he wouldn’t consider himself old until he pulled his socks up to his knees and wore them with shorts and sandals. Out in public. And yelled at kids on his lawn.

Note to self: let Abby play in the grass whenever she wants, he added silently, for as long as she wants. Tell her to bring over her friends.

If it was true what they said about kids keeping a person young, then Preston had nothing to worry about. The way Abby kept him on his toes, he’d never die.