How (Not) to Fall in Love by Lisa Brown Roberts Read Free Book Online Page A

background like arrange Dad’s speaking schedule and produce the DVDs. Dad called it “administrivia” so I had the impression it was grunt work anybody could have done, but my dad had picked his oldest friend. Sort of did him a favor.
    I closed my laptop. “Mom, can we not talk about this for a while? I feel like I’m going to throw up.”
    Mom turned the TV to the classic movie channel. We watched Katharine Hepburn, Cary Grant, and a baby leopard while overdosing on Cheetos and peanut M&M’s. I slugged down soda and Mom slugged down wine.
    To each her own poison.
    Sometime around nine o’clock, the reporters gave up and left. Toby collapsed in his dog bed, exhausted from his front door vigil.
    “Do you think they’re gone for good?” I asked hopefully.
    “Let’s hope so.” She refilled her wineglass, which wasn’t even empty. “Damned reporters.”
    “Maybe Brad and Angelina’s secret quadruplets will be revealed and take the news focus off Dad. I hear they were born with Brangelina tattoos.” I waited for her laugh.
    “You can save the vulgar humor for your friends.” Her eyes were slits. Back to non-swearing proper mom, just like that.
    “Mom, I think our Downton Abbey days are over. Our lives are turning to crap. We’ve got to laugh at something.”
    She ignored me, flipping the channel from Cary Grant back to the local news. A perky reporter chirped into the camera. “No signs of life today at the Covington residence. If Tyler Covington is there, he’s not coming out to talk to us.”
    Cut to shot of reporter on our front porch, ringing the bell. Toby’s muffled bark sounded in the background.
    “Now can I make jokes about celebrity offspring? And their tats?” I asked.
    Mom rose creakily from the couch and tossed the remote at me. “Knock yourself out. I’m going to bed.”
    Whatever, Mom. Just go ahead and check out. Dad did; you might as well, too.

    A fter Mom went to bed, I opened my laptop with Toby curled next to me. After watching a few puppy videos that made me almost smile, I typed in a new search.
    There he was. My dad, sort of blurry and poor audio quality, but that was definitely him. He paced the stage, lit by spotlights. I wasn’t sure which arena he was in, but it was a big one. The camera cut to the audience where thousands of people hung on his every word. A picture of my old pink bicycle flashed on the screen behind him.
    Dad told the audience how J.J. had taught me to ride a bike when I was six years old. My dad couldn’t do it because he’d been very ill. So sick he almost died. This was the famous brush-with-death speech. He told the audience how his illness made him see what was important in life, how it inspired him to follow his dreams, and to teach others how to do the same.
    I kind of remembered my sixth summer. J.J. visited often, and one day he brought me a Barbie bike with pink and white handlebar streamers. He ran behind me for days, holding onto the back of the bicycle seat until I mastered the sidewalk on my own.
    “No training wheels,” he’d insisted to my worried mother. “They’re a crutch. She needs to learn to trust herself.” That was part of Dad’s spiel, too, how J.J. reminded him that we rely too much on training wheels in life, that we need to learn to balance on our own.
    The camera panned the audience for close-ups. Most of the women and a few of the men were in tears, picturing me on my bike, my dad on his deathbed, J.J. reassuring my overwhelmed mother.
    When I was younger, Dad dragged Mom and me along during his summer tours, and this was the point when he made me join him on stage. Unlike Dad, I looked petrified, and more than once I reached around to pull my underwear out of my butt crack. Those videos had done wonders for my social life. Not.
    I stopped the video and leaned against a pillow. It was quite a story, at least the way my dad told it. I closed my eyes and remembered how proud I’d felt watching him from backstage.
    What