Page 42 of Irresistible

Chapter 20

Scarlet pulled into her driveway and took a few deep breaths. Her conversation with Richard had given her entirely too much to think about. Her life felt incredibly complicated at the moment, and she had no idea how she should proceed. She spent a few minutes making a pros and cons list before eating dinner.

"Let's see. Pro, he's handsome. Con, every woman in the world is going to want him. Pro, he actually cares about what I have to say. Con, other women are sending him nudes. Pro, he's rich and dedicated to his career. Con, he works all the time and there may come a day where he doesn't have enough time for me. Pro, he's actually able to be vulnerable with me, which most men I know seem to be incapable of doing. Con, he hasn't really demonstrated the ability to commit to anyone, resulting in him becoming something of a serial dater."

Scarlet continued on and on like this for several more minutes before deciding to give up the task entirely. As she stared at her legal pad that had a long line drawn down the middle in permanent marker, she realized that the task was futile. None of her cons were truly cons, at least not to the degree that the pros were pros. The pro column constituted what most people would consider to be the perfect man. The con column was made up of the natural side-effects of all those good qualities. You really couldn't have one column without the other.

She decided to make herself dinner. Ordinarily, she would go to Charlie's for a banana split and fries when she was this stressed out, but she couldn't quite bring herself to do it. Charlie and Rebecca were waiting with bated breath to find out what happened between Richard and Scarlet. Since Scarlet had no answers to their questions, she didn't feel up to talking with them.

Bacon sizzled in her frying pan as she made herself breakfast for dinner, one of her favorite meals. She made two fried eggs, three strips of bacon, and a heaping helping of hash browns. It was just the sort of greasy meal that would allow her to drown her feelings. Turning the bacon over in the pan, Scarlet had a strange thought, one that had never cropped up in her mind before. She wanted to call her dad. She had no idea why, and she honestly didn't think that it would do any good. But Scarlet generally followed her instincts. They very rarely let her down.

After eating her scrumptious dinner, she sat down and embraced the oncoming food coma. But before letting herself wander off into what would almost certainly be at least an hour-long nap, she decided to call her dad. With each ring, she pondered hanging up and explaining that it was a butt dial. Nonetheless, she decided to see it through.

"Scarlet? Is everything okay?" The two talked so infrequently that her dad thought that something must be wrong if she called.

"Yeah, dad. I just wanted to talk to you about something."

"This isn't a set up, is it? Like we talked about before, Scarlet, I don't think I have the sort of connection to my emotions that you always wanted me to have. You know you can talk to me about anything, but I don't know that I can give you what you want."

Scarlet was on the brink of tears. He really was trying, but she always wanted him to be something that he wasn't, rather than adapting to his personality.

"No, no. I'm sorry, Dad. I know I haven't always been reasonable. I think I was just trying to get some meaning out of our conversations rather than just trying to get results. I should have engaged you the way you want to be engaged rather than just relying on you to read my mind. That was really unfair."

"It's not all on you. I could've tried harder, too. You know I had something of an old-school upbringing. Men were always taught not to engage with their feelings. We were always told that was something that women did. To my parents, men worked and kept a stiff upper lip and women stayed home and served as the emotional base of the family. But it's not that simple, and it never has been. So, I'm sorry, too."

The line remained silent for a moment as each of them realized that they had made greater strides in a few short minutes than they had over the past decade. Pressure forces results, and they expedited their healing process due to the extenuating circumstances.

"Anyway. Go ahead. Tell me what's on your mind. I'll give you my honest thoughts, and I'll shut up if you need me to. I'm here for you," Scarlet's dad said reassuringly.

She had never heard the words "I'm here for you" from her dad before. It was a surreal moment.

"Well, there's this guy. He's really great, but I'm not sure if I can make it work with him. I know you probably don't want to hear this, but we've been together physically. Another woman is interested in him, but he insists he's not interested in her. He really likes me and I really like him. But I'm on the fence here, and I just wanted to run it past someone who will listen."

Scarlet cringed at the amount of word vomit that had just come out of her mouth. That string of thoughts was exactly the sort of thing that her dad couldn't process due to his upbringing. Whatever ability that people have to wade through incoherent thoughts, glean a kernel of truth, and respond accordingly was beaten out of him by a generation of people who thought that men should not have those kinds of conversations. It was like someone taking a part out of a computer and then asking it to do all the things it was once able to do. It wasn't a reasonable expectation.

The line remained silent for a minute. Scarlet realized this was a bad idea, but she was glad that she was able to reconnect with her dad a little bit.

"Do you love him?" her dad asked softly.

"I think I do, Dad," Scarlet said, holding back tears.

"You're such a strong person. You never let things like this hold you back. If you want to be with him, you should be with him. But I can't help but sense an air of hesitation in your voice. It sounds like you're not giving me the whole story here."

In a few short sentences, Scarlet's father had engaged more with her emotionally than he had over the course of her entire life.

"Well, you're right. There is kind of a caveat here. It turns out he's the CEO of Local Citizens Bank. He was in town to visit the branch and wound up having to stay here to take care of some accounting issue that came up. We ended up getting really close and, well, here we are."

"He's the CEO of the bank you work at?"

"Yeah. I know, this is stupid. You always criticized people who got into relationships at work, and I know you probably don't approve of this. But this time feels different. I've never felt this way about anyone else. I feel optimistic about it, but I know how bad it looks on paper, and I know that there are insane downsides if things don't work out. All of that seems worth it, but I'm still going back and forth."

"So, you understand that you could lose your job and get blacklisted, worst-case scenario?" her dad asked calmly.

"Yeah. I do. I'm still young. I think I could get started in another industry if I really needed to."

"You're okay uprooting like that, just to take a chance on this guy?"

"I think I am. I know it's a risk, but it seems like one to take if I choose to go that way."