3. Blake
3
BLAKE
F ortunately, George lasted all day at school today. Their teacher, Ms. Erin, usually split up the kids in smaller groups, so that probably helped keep George away from Brent. If I had been called to come get my son early again, I would’ve lost my mind. Jenny and I had cooked all morning and into the afternoon for the retirement party for Coach Parker. A couple of part-timers were hustling in the kitchen with us too. It was a blessing that Amanda could pick up George from school, babysit him until that little birthday party for a classmate, and then collect him after it was over too.
I would’ve been lost without that teenager babysitting all the time, and today, I felt swamped with gratitude. It had been go, go, go from the moment I woke up.
“Take a breather,” Jenny advised as she tidied up some things in the kitchen area of the bar Coach Parker’s friends had reserved for his retirement celebration.
I nodded, plopping onto a stool. Since everyone was eating, the five of us caterers could sit for a few minutes and relax—until the plates were done and needed to be collected.
Getting my phone out of my pocket, I couldn’t help but scan the room. Jenny was ambitious, but I wouldn’t let her overdo it. She seldom asked for help, and I swore that trait had rubbed off on me in the last five years I’d worked for her.
I’d felt the buzz of texts throughout the evening, but the brief notification on my watch showed that they weren’t emergencies. Sara didn’t equal emergencies. Just gossip.
Sara: Ms. Erin said Brent totally started that fight yesterday.
Sara: She said Brent was teasing George about not having a dad.
I sighed heavily. Her account matched what I assumed and what George had told me.
Blake: Yeah. He says he called him a bastard.
She replied with angry emojis.
Sara: She tried talking crap in the office too. She said that unless George could be ‘nicer’ to her ‘sweet’ son, he shouldn’t even be in the classroom.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” I whispered. The nerve of that woman. I would never understand why Reagan had it out for me. The only reason I could think of was my brother. Kevin had gone to high school with her. When he was a senior, she was a sophomore. He never gave her the time of the day, but it sounded like she’d had a crush on him. It seemed she was giving belated aggravation to me on that point.
Blake: Brent? Sweet?! Maybe in a parallel universe.
I cringed as I sent the text. I was better than this. I could be the bigger person. Talking about a child like that was wrong. My anger was toward his mother.
Sara: Then she yelled at Cole, saying George is a nuisance to the whole class because he’s a wayward boy with absent father issues.
I rolled my eyes. George was not wayward at all. He was quiet and polite.
As if to prove that point, Amanda texted right then with a picture.
Amanda: He’s the sweetest.
The photo was him holding up a painting he’d done at the birthday party, held at a paint studio. Captioned under the image of me and him holding hands was I love my family .
Oh, honey. I loved him more than the world, but I hated myself for depriving him of having a “complete” family.
No.
I sat up straighter.
It’s not my fault.
It wasn’t because of my choices that his dad wasn’t in the picture, and I’d be damned if I thought like that. Dealing with this mom guilt was rough. I worked a lot of hours to afford the house that I maintained after my mom passed away from cancer and my dad’s body gave in to the cruel demands of alcoholism on his liver. I couldn’t be a stay-at-home single mom and still make ends meet. Work sucked up so much of my life, but I wasn’t sure how else I could manage it. Actually, I had a good idea of how I could try. Starting my own business and opening a restaurant and catering service would give me so much more income. Sure, there’d be an investment upfront, but so long as I was limited to Jenny’s work demands and her budget, I’d never be able to dream big and aim for more financial prosperity.
But that wasn’t so simple as deciding to branch out on my own. Jenny—and Amanda—had been the only family I’d had for so long. They’d helped me so much when George was born, and I didn’t have the heart to compete against Jenny in Vernford. George and I would have to move for me to start my own business, but I couldn’t imagine walking away from the only place I’d ever known. This was home, and despite the headache of Reagan and her son, I didn’t want to leave.
“Shoot.” At the realization that I’d forgotten to put that “fancy” pizza purchase from last night into my budgeting app, I opened it up and logged it in. Unlike the basic pie slice of Groceries , this indulgence of a takeout pizza would have to go into Extras . It was already the slimmest slice of my budget, but that was how I’d managed this far. Nitpicking every dollar. Working my fingers to the bone to stay productive without uprooting my son.
I wished I could be home with George and watch a Christmas movie with him, but I knew he’d have fun with Amanda.
Blake: I love it! I tacked on a couple of heart emojis with it.
Before I could put my phone away, it buzzed again. Another text came in, but unlike the one from Amanda, the sight of this sender’s name had me cringing.
Rory: Hey, bae.
God, I hate that name. It was the most cliché of all endearments, used by a man who wanted to seem cool.
Rory: I thought we were going to try to talk about spending more time together again.
Rory: I miss you.
I didn’t. I’d broken up with him for that very reason. Rory Francis had lasted no more than a few weeks as my boyfriend. If he wasn’t so terrible in bed, maybe I would’ve tried harder. It was a shallow opinion to admit, but it was the truth. The absolute deal breaker for me, though, was his nagging insistence for me to spend all my free time with him. I couldn’t, and I refused to compromise. He, like his cousin Reagan, couldn’t understand the demands of needing to work a lot, and often at night or on the weekends, too. And he’d never come around to the fact that if I had free time, I wanted to devote it to George, not him.
I posed my thumb over the screen, debating whether I could correct the man now. A few days before Thanksgiving, after he’d nagged me and bombarded me with texts and voicemails, I’d told him that I might reconsider getting back together in the future. It was a lie. A loophole. I’d worded it so vaguely that I could put him off forever, and I’d only replied at all so he would shut up.
Maybe Sara’s right. Maybe that is leading him on.
I wasn’t, though. I just didn’t have the time or energy to deal with his protests and continued pitches for why we should be a couple again.
I moved my thumb from the screen, opting out of a reply now. If I told him to forget about it, he’d blow up my phone all night with text after text for a reason. I didn’t need my phone going off all night while I was working. I wanted to be focused, and if I did need to be contacted, it would be for an emergency or something to do with George. Not tied up with the man I hardly wanted in the first place.
I stood, cracking my back. Simply put, I didn’t have time for romance, even a half-ass one with a guy who got on my nerves more than he turned me on. Keeping up with the demands of catering at this holiday time was no joke. Turning down some of the overtime was an option, but I’d cringe if I didn’t take advantage of it.
If I wasn’t saving up to start my own business, I was paying off the lingering remnants of medical debt from my parents before they passed. And if I wasn’t putting a little extra into Christmas gifts for George, I was plunking funds into keeping the old house together.
My phone buzzed again.
Rory: I really miss you.
The lewd emojis he added in another line were laughable.
So sorry, Rory. I’m not in the mood to waste my scarce free time faking it for you.
I shoved my phone back into my pocket.
“Wanna clear the dishes from the front?” Tiffany, a part-timer Jenny hired, asked. “I’ll go near the bar where the handsy ones are.” She rolled her eyes.
I huffed a laugh. “Nah,” I told the gorgeous college student. “I know most of them. They’ll think twice before grabbing my ass.”
“Okay,” she said around laughter. “Thanks. I owe you one.”
Jenny didn’t stand for harassment like that, at all, but sometimes, it happened. And with this party taking place at Vernford’s favorite bar on Main Street, the booze had to be flowing by now.
I grabbed a tray and headed out, collecting and stacking dishes. Like layering a messy Jenga platter, I piled up the dishes, bowls, and utensils in a secure fit. Jenny teased that I tried to get as much as I could in the fewest trips possible because I enjoyed a challenge. It was nothing more than a matter of efficiency.
And, yeah. I supposed it was a trivial little game with myself to see how well I could balance the impossible.
As I turned to take a load back to the kitchen, though, nothing could have prepared me for the difficulty of getting through the room this time.
I spun, keeping the tray hoisted high and secure to prevent a single morsel of food from falling off.
And I saw him .
Zachary West. It wasn’t a dream. His face wasn’t projected from my memories of the hunky guy I’d crushed on when I was a teenager. It wasn’t another fantasy of what he might look like after all this time away.
He was here .
In the bar. Older, more rugged, with a beard.
And staring straight at me, just as stunned.
My breath hitched. I stopped short, skidding on my shoe at the sight of the impossible.
Zach was right here.
Right now.
Before I could correct myself from the stilted stop, I lost my balance. The tray flew up, and with a foreign weightlessness of a burden no longer in my hand, the whole damn array of dirty dishes popped up into the air…
To crash down on me.