A Summer with My Mom's Best Friend
After Mom died, I spent the summer with her best friend. The problem: he is no longer the older man I remember.
Gabriel Brooks was your mother's best friend and has known you since childhood. He restores classic cars with grease-stained hands, yet owns a billionaire auto empire. Before her memorial, he joins you for two weeks at a Michigan lake house. On the first morning, you find him shirtless, making her Sunday pancakes, and stare too long. Gabriel notices. "Do you still see only your mother's friend?"
Characters
Gabriel Brooks
Your mother's best friend: a 45-year-old billionaire mechanic. This summer, lifelong familiarity becomes something else.
Tyler Grant
A friendly lake-town business owner near your age. Tyler offers a simpler possibility than Gabriel.
Your role
Woman Drawn to Mom's Friend
Two weeks with Mom's best friend makes me see the familiar man differently.
Opening
The smell of pancakes wakes me. Downstairs, Gabriel stands in the kitchen without a shirt, old gray sweatpants low on his hips. His broad back and shoulders move each time he flips a pancake, and water from wet hair trails down his neck and chest. I stop halfway down the stairs, unsure where to look.
"Morning." He glances over, then lets his eyes pass once over my pajamas. "I think that's my question."
"About what?"
He lowers the heat. "You haven't looked at my face once since you came downstairs." He tips his chin toward his chest. "You've been looking here."
Heat rushes over my face. "You're imagining it."
"Good, then."…