25. Andy
ANDY
Early Saturday morning, my phone rings while I’m packing up a lunch for something that Jedd has planned for us today. He wouldn’t tell me what it is. Instead, he just gave me a packing list and said he had to run to his apartment.
Mr. Rupert.
My heart leaps in my chest. What in the world is he doing calling me on a Saturday? I didn’t even think his office was open this morning.
I swipe to answer the call.
“Andy?”
“Yes,” I say. “Good morning, Mr. Rupert. What can I do for you?”
“Sorry for the weekend call. I meant to reach out yesterday, but the day got away from me.”
“It’s no problem.”
“I have an update. Alex has successfully passed her last two drug tests, and her lawyer requested, in light of the testing results, that she be granted visitation.”
My mind reels.
Alex passed two tests. She can see Piper.
Part of me is relieved that Alex is taking this situation seriously. The more realistic and apprehensive part of me wonders when the other shoe is going to drop.
Because it always drops.
I look over at Piper, who’s coloring in the living room.
God. I’m going to have to talk to her about this.
“Andy, are you there?”
I nod before realizing he can’t see me.
“Yes, of course. Sorry.”
“It’s okay. A lot to process.” He walks me through how the visitations work. Alex has to reach out to me to schedule them, and they’re supervised so she can’t be alone with Piper, which is a relief.
If I’m there, I can play middleman, mitigate anything that might upset her.
I can control this. This is good.
“Okay. When should I expect to hear from her?”
“She’s required to give you notice, so pretty soon if she wants to see Piper this week.”
“Okay. Thank you for letting me know. Is there anything else?”
I need to talk to Piper about this. I need to break it to her gently and set expectations so she’s not disappointed.
God. What if I tell her that Alex can visit, and then she doesn’t show up.
That would destroy the poor girl.
For a minute, I think about not telling her until after Alex reaches out or until the day that we schedule visitation. But her counselor said that transparency is key. We have to keep Piper in the loop so she feels in control—as much as she can be.
“No, nothing else, everything else is still on the previously discussed schedule.”
“Okay, thank you for calling.” I hang up after he says goodbye and just look at my niece.
I hope this doesn’t throw her into another freak out.
I blow out a breath. Won’t know until I talk to her about it.
“Pip. Can I talk to you for a minute?”
She glances up from the cartoon princess she’s focused on shading just before setting down the colored pencil in her hand.
“What happened?”
I try to smile, sure that it looks more like a grimace. “Mr. Rupert just called. He was letting me know that your mom is allowed to come and visit you now.”
She eyes me for a second before saying, “Okay, when is she coming?”
“I’m not sure. She should call or text me.”
Her eyebrows crease. “So she might not come see me.”
Oh god. How to answer that?
“I don’t know. I don’t know what’s going to happen, I just wanted you to know that she can come visit, so you’re not surprised if she does. If she texts or calls me, we’ll talk about it before deciding anything, okay?”
She’s quiet for a minute before she nods. “Okay.”
I watch as she picks up the colored pencil and starts to fill in the crown on the princess’s head.
She took that surprisingly well.
The front door opens and Jedd steps through it, a basket of something in his hand. He looks like a fucking snack in his jeans and open flannel over a black t-shirt.
And he’s all mine.
“Hand over the keys, Mischief.” Jedd holds out his hand after he sets the basket by the front door.
“What?” I’ll have to tell him about the visitation, but that can wait until Piper is out of earshot.
“Gimme your keys.”
I shake my head. “Uh-uh. I don’t think so. Why do you need my keys?”
Piper’s gaze pings between the two of us before she smirks at him. “I think I’ll be allowed to drive before she gives you the keys, Uncle Jedd.”
He mock-glares at her, and I laugh.
Jedd points a finger at Piper. “You pipe down, peanut gallery.” He turns to me. “You don’t know where we’re going, so I’m driving.”
“Or … you could tell me where we’re going, and I could drive us.”
He shakes his head. This standoff between us is as comfortable as a broken in shoe.
“Andy. Just let me fucking drive,” he growls.
I shake my head. “Not a chance, big guy. You don’t even trust me enough to trim your damn beard. What makes you think I should trust you with my baby?”
“This is stupid,” he says.
“I agree. It was almost a decade ago. Your hair grew back just fine, and I have not only the licenses to cut your hair, but a lot more experience.” I lift an eyebrow at him. I don’t even care about cutting his hair anymore. It’s just our thing, and I don’t want to give up any of our things .
“Piper, get your shoes on and grab a jacket,” he says before stepping closer to me. She shoots off toward her room, and I can hear her rummaging around in her closet.
“You’re going to let me drive, Mischief.”
“And why would I do that?”
“Because otherwise it would ruin the surprise I’m putting together for y’all.”
“Or I could drive and be surprised now when you tell me where we’re going.”
He rolls his eyes. “Do you have to be so fucking stubborn?”
My eyebrows raise. “Do you?”
“I’m ready!” Piper yells from the hallway. She’s got her backpack on and is bounding toward us with more enthusiasm than I’m capable of on a Saturday morning.
“Piper, can I get a little help here?” Jedd pleads.
She slides a sly smile my way. “It’s a surprise, Aunt Andy. You have to let him drive. If you drive, then you’ll know where we’re going before we get there, and that makes it not a surprise.”
“Traitor,” I tell my niece.
He grins at me, the expression all cocky arrogance. And damn me if it doesn’t look good on him.
Fuck. He’s so goddamn handsome. The resolve to hold my ground weakens.
“Why aren’t we taking your truck?” I ask with a frown. It has about the same level of clearance that my Jeep does, so if he didn’t want me to know where we were going then he could have driven us in it.
“Four-wheel drive,” he says simply, not giving anything away.
I smirk. That’s a solid hint, and I nearly relent. But not quite. “Nope. Not happening. You want to drive my rig, you agree to let me cut your hair.”
Jedd looks at me, now familiar heat jumping into his gaze, and I nod lightly.
I’ll give him a sexy hair cut if that’s what he wants. I’ll give him whatever parts of me he wants because I can trust him with them.
“Fine,” he says on a sigh, like he’s put out at the prospect of me giving him a trim.
I have to stifle the urge to crow, and because I’m no fool, I say. “You promise?” Because far be it from him to find some slippery way out of it after I hand over the keys.
He nods and I turn to Piper. “You heard him. He gets to drive, and I get to cut his hair. If he backs out, then he shall be forever known as the dirty, low-down, yellow-bellied dog.”
Piper giggles at us, and I pass the keys to Jedd. For the first time since bringing Bocephus home, I head toward the passenger side. Piper climbs into the back, lugging her backpack to the seat next to her.
Jedd climbs in and runs his hands appreciatively over the steering wheel. “Hello, beautiful,” he croons to the car, and I want to roll my eyes. In fact, I would if I didn’t also want to do it every time I got in.
My car is a classic. It’s an odd classic, kinda like me, but it’s dependable, and I’ve loved it since I laid eyes on it at sixteen.
“Um. Excuse me. Bocephus is a boy Jeep. So, I think you mean, hello, handsome.”
Jedd shakes his head and adjusts the rearview mirror. With a crank to the ignition, the rolling vibrations of the car move through me and we’re off. Like everything with an engine, Jedd handles the Jeep with ease.
He drives us out of town, taking some of the back roads that lead up to the clearing where he and his family celebrate his mom’s life.
I’ve only been up there once, right after Catherine passed when they were having her memorial service and spreading her ashes on the wind at the top of the mountain, but I still remember the long miserable drive.
It’s a long slow trek, but just as we come to the fork in the trail that we would normally turn right on, he goes left.
I twist toward Jedd and his mouth curls in a smile. “Surprise,” he says lightly, almost laughing at me.
The left fork in the trail leads to a meadow on the other side of the mountain that’s hard to get to but has a gorgeous lake at the bottom. I’ve never driven it myself, because some of the road is hard to traverse and I didn’t trust myself not to get stuck—even with four-wheel drive.
God, I haven’t been up here in years. Too busy with work and life to break away for the drive and day at the lake.
Jedd expertly maneuvers Bocephus over the trail and after another twenty minutes we come to a stop at the makeshift camp sites that are set up on the shoreline.
Piper is out of the car as soon as Jedd puts it in park, grabbing the stuffed pack from the seat and bounding down to the shoreline.
She drops the pack next to a log that’s sitting near a fire pit then heads to the water.
The steep incline of the bank tapers off in this inlet, but the rest of the lake’s perimeter is all pine trees and bushes.
There are some rope swings tied to trees, way too high for me to be comfortable with, and I make a note to discourage Piper from jumping from those if we come back during the summer since it’s way too cold to even think about swimming today.
But this would be an amazing summer day trip for us.
Is Piper going to be with me that long? Or will Alex get custody of her again and then take her away from me?
Uncertainty for the future takes hold, and I have to remind myself to take things one day at a time.
Piper might be with me, she night not, but I know that I’ll still fight like hell to be in her life, so a trip to the lake next summer isn’t out of the question.
“Pip, wait up,” Jedd says and starts down the bank toward where she’s pulling stuff out of her bag.
I banish the negative thoughts as I start to unload the back. Jedd packed a cooler of drinks and snacks. Our fishing gear is next, the poles leaning against the outside of Bocephus until we need them.
When the hell did he put all this in here without me knowing?
I chalk it up to the magic of Jedd. Once I’ve unloaded everything and gotten our little day camp set up, I start toward where my two favorite people are working closer to the shoreline.
Piper’s spread out a bunch of the buckets that we bought on a beach trip two summers ago when her mom was going through treatment.
She’s digging her hands into the sandy silt on the shore, loading it into a bucket. Jedd’s helping her.
“What are we doing?” I ask.
“Building a castle,” she says, eyebrows pinched as she concentrates.
I look at Jedd, and he shrugs. The two of us know that the sandy dirt is pretty wet, but if she wants to try her hand at making a castle, then far be it from us to discourage her. Jedd’s hands are covered in dirt, and he reaches out to swipe a dirty finger over her nose.
She gapes at him for a second before a devious smile covers her mouth. Jedd’s focused on her face and doesn’t see her fingers creeping down to the half full bucket of muck. She grabs a handful of silt and hurls it at him.
With a wet splat, the mud hits him in the chest, a little splattering up his neck.
“I know you didn’t just challenge me?” he says with a bit of offense in his voice. “To a mud fight, no less.”
She stands, dusting her dirty hands down her legs. Quick as a shot, she takes off down the shore, and like a runner off the mark, Jedd follows her. The sound of her laughter trails behind them.
“You better run faster than that, Pipsqueak,” Jedd calls after her, and she shouts.
She doesn’t even make it to the tree line before he scoops her up, and she laughs like a loon, sending multiple birds out of the trees and up over the horizon.
“Aunt Andy! Save me.” Piper screeches from where Jedd has her pinned to his chest.
“You think she can save you? Muahahaha. Think again tiny terror,” he teases as she cackles manically.
I head their way, not quite running, but not walking. Jedd is squishing Piper to his chest, where the majority of her well-aimed mud shot landed, and rubbing her against him.
That’s gonna be a mess. I really hope he packed some spare clothes for them.
Once I reach them, I wrap my hands around Jedd’s hips and dig my fingers in.
It’s a throwback to when we were kids—the only spot on Jedd that was ticklish was his hip bones. I remember trying to walk behind him as much as I could in middle school so that I could ambush him at my leisure.
“Hey,” Jedd yelps, and carefully but quickly drops Piper to her feet. “You’re supposed to be on my side.” Once his hands are free, he reaches down and gathers my fingers in his, holding them captive as he turns to face me.
Wicked intent dances in his eyes and I tug, trying to get free because I know that he’s going to retaliate. And unlike him, I am extremely ticklish.
“Oh, ho. No you don’t,” he crows when he realizes I’m trying to break free of him. Fastening both of my wrists into one of his hands, his other comes up to my collar bone.
“Jedd. No,” I shout trying to angle my body away.
“Unhand my aunt, you villain,” Piper yells, and with an impressive as fuck vertical jump, attaches herself to Jedd’s back like a spider monkey.
Jedd drops my hands, reaching behind him to support Piper as she hangs from his shoulders. I take the chance to reach forward and dig my fingers into his hip bones again.
“Ack,” he yells. “Not fair! It’s two against one.”
But he’s laughing and smiling. Best of all, the tension that’s been around his eyes recently is long gone as we goof off.
Our life got heavy over the last month, and I’m so glad that he had the idea to come up here today, to get away from everything.
The dust isn’t completely settled yet, but we’re getting closer to being back to normal, and I realize how much I crave that. How much I want to find the new normal with Jedd in this new dynamic.
I just have to keep all these balls juggling smoothly until we reach the other side.
And hope that visitation with Alex doesn’t throw a wrench into those plans.