Chapter Twenty-Three
“He fits in well,” Mom whispered in my ear during lunch at Sage’s Café in Edenvale.
I thought the same thing all through the game as I caught glimpses of him talking to my friends and parents when he wasn’t cheering loudly for Chloe.
I can’t say how attractive that was. He and Henry were also the first ones to congratulate her on the team’s win.
It brought a tear to my eye when Chloe hugged him and thanked him for helping her.
She credited her final spectacular save to his advice.
He’d come down at halftime to tell Chloe to watch number seven on the opposing team.
She always looked the opposite way of where she kicked the ball.
He was right, and had he not mentioned it to Chloe, they might have tied the game up in the last thirty seconds. Instead, it was a sweet victory.
I smiled across the table at Miles and my dad talking about all the geological wonders in the UK. Dad was particularly fascinated with the Seven Sisters in Sussex.
“I’ve been there. I have a friend who owns a holiday home in one of the hamlets nearby. It is quite the sight to see,” Miles graciously replied.
Henry caught my attention next. He had been passed around the table. More like the three tables the restaurant staff had pulled together to accommodate our large group. He was now sitting on Shelby’s lap. Henry had just said, “Mylanta,” forever securing the love of our dearest Southern Belle.
The men, Sawyer, Ryder, Brad, and Bobby Jay, who had joined us for lunch since he lived close by the café were in a heated discussion about who would win tomorrow’s football game.
Sawyer and Brad were team Broncos and Ryder and Bobby Jay, sons of Georgia, were of course rooting for the Atlanta Falcons. Bobby Jay was the loudest of the bunch.
“Y’all can claim home field advantage all you want, but your boys are going down. Ever since your boy Peyton Manning left, you’ve been a hot mess.”
“You don’t know what a Mile High crowd can do,” Brad countered.
“If y’all win tomorrow, you can butter my butt and call me a biscuit,” Bobby Jay replied. He had several of us laughing at the table.
If everyone in the South talked and acted like Bobby Jay and Shelby, I really needed to visit.
Jenna was next to grab Miles’s attention while bouncing Elliott, who was more than ready to be home and napping by the way he was rubbing his eyes, on her lap. “Miles, did Aspen tell you that Brad and I own a comedy club here in Edenvale?”
“She has mentioned that.” Miles swirled his ice water.
Jenna, who was sitting next to me, nudged me with her leg under the table. “You should come with Aspen one night. Maybe you could use it in your book. It could be a research trip.” She nudged me again.
I nudged her leg back, indicating she should be quiet now.
“That’s a great idea. I can babysit the kids,” Mom offered.
I craned my neck toward my mom and tried to convey with my eyes she should also refrain from speaking anymore on the subject.
She didn’t heed the warning in my eyes. “We can even keep them overnight if you want to make a late night of it.”
I rubbed my forehead and grimaced. Before I could say a word, Emma voiced her thoughts.
“That would be a lot of fun. We could all make a night of it together and do dinner afterward.”
“Ooh, yes,” Shelby agreed.
“Miles is busy, and Henry might not feel comfortable spending the night with people he hardly knows,” I hurried to say before anyone else got a word in.
Several fits of laughter erupted as most eyes turned toward Henry, who had no issue with being passed around from person to person enthralling them with his cuteness.
Not once had he complained about being with anyone he didn’t know all that well, even burly Bobby Jay.
It was a lame excuse, but Miles and I weren’t a couple.
We didn’t need to get babysitters to watch our children because there was nothing ours about it.
To top it off, my daughter betrayed me too. “I could always watch him at home.” Did she grin mischievously at me? I was beginning to smell a conspiracy.
“Aspen,” Miles directed my attention to him.
I had been trying hard since our odd conversation on the soccer field to avoid long periods of direct eye contact. But Miles had forced my hand. To be polite I faced him, once again embarrassed because my family and friends were imagining things that would never be.
Miles gave me a warm smile, trying to put me at ease. “Do you think the comedy club is a place Isabella would enjoy?” That was a totally unfair question. By the playfulness in his tone he knew it.
I could feel everyone staring at me. I wanted to lie, but that lie would hurt one of my best friends.
Jenna prided herself on her club. As she should.
It had been one of my only sources of entertainment since I always got in for free.
I didn’t only love it for that. The place had honestly given me a reprieve from the difficult circumstances of my life.
Laughing really was medicine for the soul.
I believed it would do the same for Isabella. You know, if she were real.
Mom squeezed my leg after what I was sure she considered too long of a pause.
“Yes,” I blurted, “she would.”
Miles looked between my parents. “Cindy and Russ, we would love to take you up on your offer. I’ll let Aspen choose when.”
“We?” Jenna said not so quietly under her breath.
I would have smacked her arm if Miles wasn’t still staring at me, drumming his fingers against the table, knowing exactly what he had just done.
The question was why? Why was he willing to let everyone believe we were more than we would ever be?
Why did he want to push the bounds of our friendship?
Or was this how friends of the opposite sex behaved?
Maybe he treated all his female friends this way.
All the blood drained out of Chloe’s face. “Mom,” she yelped, transfixed on the entrance.
I whipped my head in that direction and my worst nightmare walked in with his douche bag friend and supposed new boss, Mike.
I jumped up, not sure what I was going to do, but knowing I needed to act. “Chloe, stay here, honey.”
My parents’ heads darted toward the entrance too. Red anger flooded each of their faces.
Miles too was alerted and stood immediately.
Chloe, who was sitting next to my dad, buried her head into his chest. My dad securely wrapped her up in his arms.
By now, everyone at our table saw Leland. For those who didn’t know who he was, Brad filled them in.
I knew I had to go talk to him, intercept him from causing further damage to our daughter, but my feet didn’t want to move.
“Do you want me to go with you, love?” Miles asked.
If I was being honest the answer was yes, I wanted him to hold my hand through this, but I knew that would make the situation worse. If Leland felt threatened, he would retaliate.
“I’ve got this.” Sort of. “Stay on standby.”
“I’ll be watching.” Miles lasered in on my jerk ex-husband.
Mom squeezed my hand before I walked away while all my friends gave me sympathetic looks. Brad, though, was on his feet and ready to join Miles if he needed to. Not sure what they would do, maybe brawl by the looks of it.
Thankfully, Leland didn’t notice me until I was almost to the hostess desk.
It was the first time I was glad there was an attractive female around to distract him.
Leland and Mike looked as if they had come from his auto body shop.
They were in blue coveralls, each with a smudge or two of grease on their hands.
Mike the slick, as we used to call him on account of his slicked back brown hair that he was still wearing, saw me first. He tapped Leland and pointed my way.
Leland stopped trying to impress the much younger woman and sneered my way.
I didn’t let his dirty looks stop me. “Can I speak to you outside?” I needed to get him as far away from Chloe as I could.
“Looking good, Aspen.” Mike eyed me up and down. “Still single?” He licked his lips.
I didn’t even bother to respond to him other than wrinkling my nose.
I walked toward the door hoping Leland would follow.
He did, which might very well be the first thing he had ever done right by me.
We stood outside the café in the cool autumn air, the sun bearing down on us to keep away the shivers.
Leland stood there with his left hip cocked and arms folded. “What do you want?” he growled.
So many things, but it could all be summed up in one sentence. “I want you to be a good person.”
His nostrils flared. “How do you know I’m not?”
“For starters, you’re cheating on your wife . . . again.”
“What do you know about it? We’re separated.”
“Right. Let me guess, because you were cheating on her?”
“Get to your point, Aspen,” he snapped.
“My point is, our daughter is in the café—”
His head jerked in the direction of the café window. What we both found there warmed my heart. Miles and Brad stood in menacing poses watching over me.
“You brought your boyfriend and that pansy Brad with you, I see.”
“Brad is more of a man than you’ll ever be, so lay off him.” He was never very nice to him growing up. That should have said something to me. Sure, Brad was somewhat of a nerd, but he was our nerd and I loved him. I should have been better at showing that. “And Miles isn’t my boyfriend.”
“So why is he with you?”
“Not that it’s any of your business, but I work for him and he came to see Chloe’s game today.”
Leland faced me and smirked. “You’re sleeping with your boss? Didn’t know you had it in you. But I thought you said his name is Taron.”
I was surprised he remembered that tidbit. “It’s his pen name and we’re not sleeping together.”
“Since it’s you, I believe you. Always so uptight,” he said, trying to rattle me.
It was working. I know a lot of people thought Leland and I were having sex in high school.
After all, Leland had a reputation, so it was no surprise to them when I turned up pregnant my freshman year of college.
But we got pregnant my first time. He’d begged me at least a dozen times before that, but I’d always said no.
I stupidly thought if I finally gave him what he wanted, he would give me what I always wanted, his whole heart.
I hated that I ever gave him the honor. That he made it something so cheap.
That I was so easy to discard. Most of all, I hated that I never knew what it was like to be cherished.
For a man to love me soul and body. Someone to be gentle with me and never compare me.
I clasped my hands together and breathed.
I refused to be the abandoned girl anymore.
“Leland, keep talking like that and you will never see Chloe. I’ll hire the best lawyer money can buy. That’s a promise, not a threat.”
That wiped the smirk off his face. “I just want to see our daughter.”
“Why?”
He stared at me blankly like I’d asked him a difficult question.
“Is this just to spite me?” I finally asked when he couldn’t answer.
He shoved his hands in his pockets. “I know I screwed up. I wasn’t ready to be a dad when we had Chloe. I didn’t want to marry you, but my dad told me that’s what a real man would do.”
I grabbed my heart and held back tears. I wasn’t under some delusion that deep down Leland had wanted to marry me, but his words still cut because the girl inside me wanted to believe that he loved me in his way, and that she was at least wanted by the boy she gave everything to.
“You can quit reminding me that you didn’t want me. I got the message loud and clear.”
“I did want you,” he scoffed, “but not the way you wanted me to. I wanted to have fun and you always had expectations. Like my wife,” he said quietly.
“I thought she was the one,” I mocked him.
He ran his hands through his hair and paced. “She doesn’t have any idea, just like you didn’t, about the pressure.”
“What pressure?”
“To provide for a family. I didn’t get to finish college, so it’s hard to find good paying jobs.” He cast me an accusatory look.
I found it rich he didn’t think I knew how hard it was to provide for a family.
What did he think I had been doing for the past twelve years in his absence?
“Don’t blame me for that decision. Your dad offered to pay for you to keep going and I supported that.
I even offered to work two jobs so you could finish.
You’re the one who dropped out, insisting it was a waste of time. ”
He threw his hands up in the air because he knew I was right.
“Leland, I don’t know what’s going on between you and your wife, but think about this before you decide if you really want to see Chloe.
She has expectations of you. Those include you being all the way in.
So, if you’re not ready to be present and involved, don’t continue to hurt her.
She doesn’t deserve it.” I pointed toward the café.
“She’s in there right now scared to see you because she so badly wants you to love her,” I choked out, “but she’s afraid you won’t. ”
“I do love her.” It was the first time I ever heard any real emotion in his voice.
“Then prove it to her. Even if that means leaving her alone.”
He stared at me with bulging eyes. His lips parted several times to speak but he never did. He eventually walked off without another word.
I bent over and tried to catch my breath.
Miles came rushing out. “Are you all right?”
I stood up and inhaled and exhaled deeply. “I think I’m going to be.”
Miles opened his arms.
All I had to do was nod my acknowledgment and acceptance of what he was silently offering, and like oppositely charged magnets, the force drawing us together was too hard to fight. I found I didn’t want to. In his arms, I felt empowered and safe.
I sank into him, letting go of all the tension in my body. “You’re the best boss ever,” I laughed against his chest.
He didn’t laugh with me. Instead, he rested his chin on my head. “We may need to do something about that.”