The-Lucky-List-Rachael-Lippincott

5
The next morning I lumber down the steps, my phone in one hand and my mom’s list in the other. I make
a beeline for the living room couch, plopping down on it and swiping up to unlock the phone screen.
No new notifications.
is shouldn’t surprise me. Why would Matt wake up and send me a text on this random Sunday
after nothing but weeks of radio silence?
I spend hours every day trying to find the right words to say, staring at the keyboard on my phone,
but I can never find them. I want to explain to him why I did what I did, but I just… can’t. How can I
give him an explanation when I can’t even give myself one?
is is one breakup I don’t know how to fix. Especially because he was always the one who found a
way to fix things before, whether it was showing up at my doorstep with flowers or pulling me aside to
talk in between classes.
I don’t know how to fix this on my own. And, maybe, there’s some small part of me that doesn’t
want to.
I burrow down into the couch as the guilt swims over me, washing that thought away, the move
making this additional betrayal of my mom’s wishes feel just that much worse.
“Hey!” my dad’s voice thunders unexpectedly from the kitchen, nearly giving me a heart attack.
He is usually working overtime by the time I get up on Sunday. I wasn’t expecting to see him until
our weekly Hank’s date, gorging ourselves on their Sunday Special.
And… I definitely wasn’t expecting to see him in this.
It takes me a second to fully process what I’m seeing.
“Where’d you get the new outfit?” I ask, and he cranes his neck to look down at himself, a smirk
playing on his lips.
My dad, the six-three, pickup-truck-driving, thick-beard, arm-full-of-tattoos guy, is standing in the
kitchen wearing an ancient pink flowery apron. An ancient, pink, flowery apron I remember my
grandma wearing. But never quite like… this.
I try to shake my head at him, but I am laughing so hard, I can barely breathe. Before he can protest,
I hold up my phone and snap a picture, wiping away the laugh-tears with the back of my hand. “I can
see the caption now. ‘Who wore it best?’ ”