Chapter 18
Chapter Eighteen
Cup of Jo’s was bustling on a Thursday afternoon. It was like everyone had shared May’s brilliant idea to escape the office for a cold brew. Except in her case, and since she was avoiding caffeine, her afternoon sleepies would have to contend with decaf green tea.
Womp.
May popped the lid off her tea to allow the steam to escape. Across the table from her, Lisa sipped on an Americano that smelled like absolute heaven.
“How’d you snag a corner table?” May asked.
“I texted Elli to tell her we were coming.” They both looked over at the counter at their favorite barista, who was wearing a cute handmade T-shirt and frothing milk in a tiny metal pitcher. She must have felt them looking because next she looked over and grinned.
“She’s darling,” May commented.
“She really is. Okay, I let you have your small talk. Let’s hear it.” Lisa, apparently impervious to pain, slurped her hot coffee, her unblinking eyes locked on May.
May had managed to avoid her friend this week, though she’d texted back that they would talk as soon as she could take a break from work. Thankfully, Lisa had been working until eight o’clock every evening, so she hadn’t pressed the issue.
“All week I have been dying to know how Xavier reacted.” Lisa sent a furtive glance around the coffee shop before whispering, “You know. To the news.”
“Yeah, babe. I know what you’re referring to.” May, her tea halfway to her lips, narrowed her eyes. “I’m surprised you didn’t go to Salty Dog and ask him yourself.”
Lisa curled her upper lip in a guilty grimace.
“You didn’t!”
“He’s my friend too! Anyway, he didn’t say anything. He smiled that sexy Xavier smile and said, ‘You’ll have to talk to May.’”
“God. I love that man.” Leave it to Xavier to—
“Beg your pardon?” Lisa’s eyes were wide with accusation.
“Hyperbole! Calm down.” May took her own advice and ignored her racing heart. She hadn’t thought too deeply about that statement, and doing so now would be ill-advised. “So, I drove to his house after girls’ night—”
“Straight from Lou’s? Do not pass Go? Do not collect two hundred dollars?”
“Yes, straight from Lou’s. I couldn’t risk him hearing the news from anyone but me.”
“So after you dropped the bomb, what happened? Did he pass out? Demand proof? Start crying?”
May chuckled at Lisa’s theatrics. “None of the above. We knew it was a possibility. But we didn’t talk about it. Didn’t plan for it. Not really.”
Lisa’s eyebrows jumped in a quick show of surprise, and maybe a touch of impressed disbelief. “That doesn’t sound like you.”
Didn’t she know it. Ever since Posy’s wedding invitation had arrived, May felt like she was being pulled back to the version of herself who’d lost everything. Her mother had died. Her father had never recovered. One moment, she’d had a family. The next, it was gone.
She hadn’t caused her mother’s death, but guilt had clung to her like smoke. It’d seeped into her pores; she’d tasted it on her tongue. She hadn’t been there at the very end. And her father’s grief had consumed him to the point of leaving…because May wasn’t enough.
That was when she stopped trusting herself. Not just in moments of crisis, but all the time. Her romantic life had been outsourced to Prescott. Her future had been entrusted to the Stantons. She’d stopped relying on her instincts, stopped asking what she wanted.
Lately, she’d been listening to that quiet voice she’d spent years ignoring. Even when it told her things she wasn’t ready to hear…
Like when you blurted out that you loved Xavier, then backpedaled?
Hmm.
“So, what did he say?” Lisa prompted.
“He said the same thing as before. He told me there wasn’t anything we needed to do in the moment and that there was no need to worry.”
“And then what happened?”
“And then…we had sex on his sofa.” May sipped her too-hot tea, mainly to give Lisa a moment to gather her wits. It took her longer than usual. May enjoyed the stark look of shock on her friend’s face before continuing. “Then we moved to the kitchen table. After that, we did it against the counter.”
May was expecting a high five, or at least a quip about pregnancy hormones, but Lisa surprised her. “Let me get this straight. You told him you were with child. His child. And then you proceeded to go at it like bunnies?”
“That sums it up.”
“Where is my best friend, and who are you really?” Lisa narrowed her eyes. “Don’t laugh. I’m not kidding. Are you even the same person who swore her no-hot-men rule would stand the test of time?”
“Hey, three years isn’t bad.”
“The mere suggestion of going out with Xavier used to send you into an overthinking spiral, and now you’re”—she gestured meaningfully at May’s torso—“and barely thinking about it?”
The comment hit May sideways. Because it was true, or because Lisa’s tone was a tad accusatory. “Just because you haven’t talked to me this week doesn’t mean you know what I’m thinking.”
Lisa’s mouth went tight, but then she nodded. “You’re right. I’m sorry. I’m just…I guess I’m shocked.”
Or, May reconsidered, the issue wasn’t with Lisa at all. Maybe it was her own nerves, stretched thin from too many sleepless nights and not enough deep breaths.
The intense moment ended as fast as it’d begun. She and Lisa had never been able to stay angry with each other. It wasn’t in either of their best interests.
“I’m shocked too, okay? I didn’t go to his house to hook up. It just happened.”
Lisa nodded, accepting that rationale. “Have you talked to him since?”
“We text every day.”
“Huh.” Lisa took a moment to sip her coffee and digest that information. “I know he’s a calm guy, but this is some Zen master shit.”
“One of us has to remain calm.”
“You’re doing pretty good too.”
“It’s the lack of caffeine. I’m too tired to freak out.”
Lisa’s smile was understanding. “How are you feeling?”
“Eh, this morning I was nauseous. I hadn’t expected it so soon.” May chewed on the inside of her cheek before sharing the other thing that had been bothering her. “The night I went over to his house to tell him, he said he was worried I was going to dump him.”
“Dump him? Are you two together-together? I was under the impression he was cool with casual.”
“So was I.” And May was cool with it too.
“It’s what I like most about him. No worry of being swept away like with Prescott.
I’m not attached to his family, he’s not the source of my emotional stability.
I can exist on my terms and he on his, and we’re good.
” She sighed. “Or at least we were. A baby sort of throws a wrench into the sexy fling I had planned. To your point, who am I, and where is the version of me who was decisive and certain?”
“Give yourself a break, babe. You learned life-altering news less than a week ago. Allow some time to process. Xavier’s not wrong—you have time. I kinda understand why you had sex. What you were worried about happening has happened. Now you can boink all over the place and not worry.”
May laughed at Lisa’s choice of phrase. “Feeling good is better than feeling uncertain.”
“Sex over uncertainty.” Lisa tapped her paper cup carefully against May’s, and then they both drank to that.
Friday night, Xavier left Salty Dog for Ant’s place, relieved to be out of the bar.
Cheyenne had come back from vacation only to put in her notice.
She was working out her final week now. He was grateful she’d given notice, but he didn’t exactly love the idea of losing her.
Tonight, when he’d made the schedule and saw how many holes there were in it, he decided that hiring her replacement was his top priority.
Dammit.
He’d begun working on the app for Jewell and had planned on focusing solely on that. Now that he’d been at Salty more often than not and was dealing with an employee shuffle, he realized how tired he was of management. Owning, yes. The day-to-day, no thanks.
He parked in Ant’s driveway and strolled into the workshop, six-pack of beer in hand.
The shop was separate from the house, a massive space that Ant had transformed from a sawdust-strewn room with a beer fridge and a cluttered desk in the corner to a polished man cave.
The wooden bar top and barstools had been custom-made by Ant himself, and the clunky, loud mini fridge had been replaced with a full-sized glass-doored cooling unit.
Ant was behind the bar uncapping a beer. “Hey, Xav.”
“Hey. I’m the first one here?”
“Second,” came a voice from the showroom.
To his right was the bulk of the showroom where Ant featured his latest pieces for sale. “Oh, hey, Griff. What are you shopping for?”
“New desk, but Ant said he’d do custom. Like the bar.” Griffin knocked on the bar top as he took a seat at the end. “He tell you he made this?”
“Yeah. Like you, he can do just about fucking anything.”
Ant smirked as he uncapped a beer and handed it to Griffin.
Xavier smoothed his hand along the bar top. “Our boy’s growing up. He has a proper man cave with clean floors, a temperature-controlled beer chiller, and his woodshop is organized. This is some married-man shit.”
“Not married yet.” Ant was a man in love and proud of it. His eyes were shadowed by the brim of his fedora, but damn if Xavier couldn’t see the twinkle there anyway. “But soon.”
“You asked.” Xavier nodded.
“I asked. She said yes. They lived happily ever after.” He tipped his own beer bottle to his lips.
“Congrats, man.” Xavier thought of his own news. He hadn’t shared it with his friends yet, but Lou and Elliott knew, so he assumed that Brady and Ant knew too.
Brady was the next to arrive, his own six-pack in hand. “I was going to go to the gym, but beer sounded better than leg day. Hey, guys.”
Xavier and Brady tapped the necks of their beers as Griffin filled Brady in about how Ant was going to build him a desk.
“I don’t want a desk, but I’d love a pair of Adirondack chairs for the dock,” Brady said. “What can’t you make?”