Merry Little Midlife Matchmaker (Heart’s Cove Hotties #11)
1. Lizzie
ONE
LIZZIE
I’d just wrapped a microfiber towel around my hot-oil-treatment-infused hair and slipped into a lavender-scented bubble bath when my phone rang. A long, tired sigh slipped through my lips; I knew who was on the other side of the line. And I knew why he was calling.
Well, not exactly why. But if I closed my eyes and threw a dart at a board with a few options listed, I knew I’d get pretty close. Ex-husbands were like that. You got to know them pretty well in the years you spent hoping they’d turn into the man you pretended they were all along.
Between the first and second ring of my phone, I considered just…not answering. I could finish my bath, paint my nails, slather on a face mask, watch that episode of trash TV I’d saved for three weeks, and pretend I hadn’t heard a thing.
Then the ringtone echoed through the bathroom once more, and a groan rattled up my throat.
I couldn’t miss the call. I couldn’t plead ignorance while I took this precious evening to myself because although it probably wasn’t an emergency, there was always the off chance that this one time, it was . I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if I was giving myself a mud mask instead of rushing to the ER when I was needed. From the moment my eldest had been born, that weight had pressed down on my shoulders. Responsibility. Duty. Motherhood.
There would be no luxurious bath for me tonight; I was almost sure of it.
Water ran down my body in rivulets as I stood, sluicing over the familiar scar just above my pelvis and down the legs that had once been my best feature and still weren’t too shabby, if I did say so myself. The pink terry cloth robe on the back of the door was more than a little worn, but it had seen me through two pregnancies and a decade of motherhood, and I’d kept it around like a security blanket. I wrapped it around my body and wiped my hand on my thigh, then swiped to answer the phone still screaming at me from the bathroom counter.
“Yes?”
“Lizzie,” my ex-husband, Isaac, panted. “Zach is puking.”
I leaned against the vanity and rubbed my forehead. “Okay. How long has this been going on?”
A faucet turned on and off again. I heard my son’s voice in the background, but he was too quiet for me to hear the words. Isaac said, “An hour or two, I guess. After dinner he just—oh God, Lizzie. The smell. There’s vomit everywhere. I might throw up.”
“Has he been able to keep any fluids down?”
“Fluids?” Isaac sounded lost; I could imagine his wide-eyed stare.
“Liquids, Isaac. Water. Juice. Electrolytes. Whatever. Something so he doesn’t get dehydrated.”
“Oh, right. Not much. Have you had any water, buddy?”
Zach mumbled something. A door opened and closed. “He’s had a bit, he says. I’ll get him some more.”
“Does he have a fever?” I asked, glancing forlornly at my steaming bath.
“What?”
“A fever, Isaac. What’s his temperature?”
“How do I find that out?”
I had actually been married to this man. For years. While in my right mind, I’d agreed to tie myself to him legally, emotionally, metaphysically—and it took me six years to figure out that it had been a mistake. Maybe I wasn’t as clever as I thought.
“You should have a thermometer,” I told him, forcing calm into my voice. “June would have stocked your medicine cabinet, I’m sure.”
“June’s visiting her mother in Wyoming. I told her not to go. She knew I couldn’t handle the kids on my own. But she still went,” he wailed, sounding close to panic. As if it were his wife’s fault that his own son got sick. As if it were so outside the realm of possibility that a father would be able to care for his kids for two weekends a month on his own.
Never mind that I did it day in, day out the rest of the time. And there wasn’t a single person that I could call in a panic because my kid decided to puke up his dinner.
Yes, I had been an idiot to marry him. Then again, this useless man had given me two beautiful kids, so on the balance of it, I figured I’d come out ahead.
But I was still annoyed that I wouldn’t get to enjoy my bath. Maybe if I picked the kids up and got Zach settled, I could top the water up when I got home and finish where I left off. As long as Zach wasn’t worse off than it sounded, I’d probably be able to make it there and back before the water went fully cold. And even if it did, I could settle the kids and fill it up again.
I would have a bath tonight. It was going to happen. Tonight was relax-in-the-bath night, and I was not going to give that up. Not this time.
Plan made, I pushed myself off the vanity and shuffled to the bedroom. “I’ll be there in fifteen minutes,” I told him. “Is Hazel okay?”
“I think so. I don’t know. She hasn’t puked. At least, I don’t think so. Hazel, have you puked? No. No, she hasn’t.”
“Fine. I’ll see you soon.”
I hung up and stared at the silent phone in my hand and let out a long sigh. It wasn’t that I resented having to head over to my ex’s house to help with the kids. It’s that it happened so often . Ever since Zach, our eleven-year-old, had been born, I’d been thrown into the role called Mom and hadn’t come up for air. Most of the time, I loved it. I was good at it. Actually, I was great at it. I spun plates and made macaroni necklaces and dealt with tantrums and moodiness, and then I got the smiles and the unexpected hugs and the I-love-yous that made it all worth it. Most of the time, I did it with a smile on my face and a positive attitude, because that’s the face I liked to present to the world.
Once in a while, though, I wondered where the old me had gone. The woman who threw dinner parties for her gaggle of friends, who was the group’s designated photographer, who’d dreamed of shooting for NatGeo, who’d fantasized about sailing around the world for a year with a camera around her neck and a smile on her sun-bronzed face. Sometime over the last decade and a half, with two kids and a divorce on my record, that woman had faded away.
These days I couldn’t even manage an uninterrupted bath.
But I was needed elsewhere, and this was a responsibility I had chosen. One I cherished. My kids needed me. The bath could wait.
I tossed my phone on the bed and grabbed a pair of sweatpants from where they’d been flung over the arm of a chair in the corner of my room. My ratty pink bathrobe took the sweatpants’ place, and I grabbed an old sports bra and a T-shirt from one of the volunteer days at my kids’ school—first one I picked up without any stains on it that passed the sniff test—and caught sight of myself in the mirrored closet doors.
With my hair still wrapped in the microfiber towel and my old clothes hanging off my body, I looked a decade older than my forty-one years. I blinked at myself, gaze snagging on the few spots of discoloration beginning to form on my skin, the ruddy texture of my cheeks the heat of the bath had brought out, and the shape of the body I’d once flaunted.
I was shorter than average, but I’d never been frumpy. The woman who’d thrown dinner parties and dreamed of a richer life had worn figure-hugging dresses that showed off her generous curves. She’d curled her hair and worn lipstick every day. She was a stranger, and I wasn’t quite sure exactly when it had happened.
Shaking my head, I tore my gaze away from my reflection and pulled on some fuzzy pink socks. The hair towel would have to stay, because I didn’t have time to wash out the oil. Besides, what was an extra half hour with oil on my scalp? Maybe I’d end up with luscious, shiny locks and this evening wouldn’t end up being a wash, after all.
See? Positive attitude. Puking kids plus a hopeless ex-husband equaled nicer hair. That was Lizzie Math, and it was the way I liked to live.
I shoved my feet into Crocs and slung my purse over my shoulder, then paused with a hand on my front doorknob. I kicked off the rubber shoes and checked the bathroom medicine cabinet, clicking my tongue when I saw my stock of Pedialyte and ibuprofen was running low. I’d stop at the drugstore on the way to Isaac's house for supplies. When I texted him to let him know, all my ex responded was, “ Hurry .”
Half of me wanted to wring his neck for being so useless. The other half was worried for my kid. So, dressed like a woman who’d stumbled into her dirty laundry basket and then stood up, looked down, shrugged, and said, Eh, that’ll do , I rushed across town and ducked into the nearest drugstore.
That, as it turned out, was a mistake.