Chapter 42
MELLY
Lindy’s baby shower had been amazing. Bridget and Mallory put it on together, decorating Lindy’s house–the one she’d grown up in with Bridget–in green and yellow since Lindy and Dex decided to be surprised about the sex.
I heard the men were taking bets and since the James brothers were billionaires, new Baby James would probably have college paid for from the winnings alone.
There had been close to twenty women celebrating and showering Lindy with gifts, playing games like guessing Lindy’s baby belly girth and speed diapering. For gift opening, everyone wedged into the living room and wrapping paper was strewn everywhere like Christmas morning.
I knew most of the ladies, although a few were wives of Silvermines hockey players that had come to Hunter Valley for the party. The last had just said their goodbyes and the house was finally quiet.
I was helping Eve and Mallory collect trash and pick up while Bridget was in the kitchen washing cake plates and glasses from the offered appetizers, cake, and non-alcoholic champagne.
“I’m so glad you and Fred came!” Lindy said, waddling up to me and offering me a hug as best she could with her huge belly. Her blonde hair was beautifully styled long. Her makeup was perfect, and she had on an adorable maternity dress in a soft blue.
I hugged her back.
“Wouldn’t have missed it,” I replied. While I’d offered her a quick hello when I arrived, she’d been so busy with all the other women that we hadn’t had a chance to talk until now.
I knew I’d been an add-on to the guest list because of the dinner at Daniel’s the other night so I wanted to ensure she had time to spend with her closest friends at this special event.
I’d brought Fred, not wanting to leave her alone with her being pregnant with Earl’s big-ass babies. She’d happily settled on her little dog bed in the kitchen, content to sleep even with laughing and shouting women filling the house.
Bridget and Lindy’s parents died when Bridget was young. I was a year older than Bridget and I remembered being in middle school and hearing about their accident. I was sure Lindy wished her mom could be here for this occasion.
I cringed at the thought of my mom being at mine. Then I shut that thought down because I wasn’t going to have a baby. No man, no baby. I wasn’t sure if I really wanted one anyway. A baby. Hmm. Yeah, probably not.
A man, though? I thought the answer was no, but a few days with Daniel and I started thinking dangerous thoughts. Something permanent, like what Lindy had with Dex, was something I would never know.
People left me. Those who loved me didn’t stick. All I knew was that relationships were fleeting. Or casual. Or had unhealthy requirements. Or expectations. Love was conditional.
I’ll love you if you do what I think is best.
I love you but my life doesn’t include you.
I’ll love you while I’m in town, but once I go…
“Thank you for the books,” she said, breaking me from my depressing thoughts. “You’re the only one to think of them. A perfect gift.”
Instead of onesies or a tiered cake made of cloth diapers, I gave the new baby some board books. Little ones made of thick cardboard pages with animals and shapes and places to touch that felt soft or rough.
“You’re welcome.”
Based on the stack of new baby things in the other room, it was a good thing the James brothers had a private jet. I couldn’t imagine getting all these presents back to Denver on a commercial flight.
She cocked her head and studied me. “You okay?”
I had a smile on my face. Makeup on. Clothes pressed and presentable. I was… the same. But Lindy was shrewd and observant.
Good thing only I could feel how my pussy was still a little sore from all the sex with Daniel. Or see the little hickey on the inside of my thigh he’d left right before he growled mine.
“Yes. Or I will be.”
She gave me a sad look. “He left?”
She didn’t have to say his name. After the caber tossing dinner we had the other night, she knew all about my interest in Daniel.
And his dick. And the fact that being with him and his talented dick was short lived.
He was casual. He wasn’t permanent. Our three-day relationship was conditional.
That was what a contract did. Made it conditional based on agreed upon bullet points, one of which was an end date.
I nodded, swallowing hard. I’d felt empty knowing his plane had left, like a Star Wars movie where the Force went missing. It was the first time I really wasn’t okay with someone leaving me. That I cared more than I should for someone who walked out of my life.
She eyed me closely. Bridget and Mallory had given me hugs and not said a word. But Lindy? She might be pregnant with her first child, but she’d raised Bridget. And pretty much Mallory, too. Since I was their age, she lumped me in with her big-kid crew. She was a pseudo-mom for all of us.
“Yes,” I added. “He’s probably driven on the wrong side of the road and eaten a filled sheep’s stomach by now.”
“It’s okay to have a fling,” she said after she was done grimacing.
“So says my mother,” I replied.
Lindy pulled me into the kitchen and practically pushed me into a chair. Bridget turned at the sink to see what was up, pushing her glasses up with a soapy finger.
“I heard she’s in town,” she said. My mom was fifteen years older than Lindy, but I was sure they knew each other, at least in passing. Everyone over the age of thirty had to know about the mayor fiasco.
“News travels,” I said, then panicked. “Wait, she didn’t sleep with someone this trip she wasn’t supposed to and have them fired, did she?”
Lindy grinned, then bit her lip to stifle it. “Not that I heard. I’m guessing your mom has very different relationship views than you do.”
I laughed dryly. “I think this is the perfect time to say duh.”
“You like Daniel,” she said, taking my hand.
“Again, duh. I wouldn’t have… you know, if I didn’t.” I blushed and couldn’t say sex even after everything Daniel and I did together.
“That’s the difference between you and your mother,” she said. “You need to care for someone for there to be any kind of relationship. She doesn’t.”
“Yes, that’s true, but with Daniel, it wasn’t a relationship.”
“A relationship can be short,” she clarified. “You connected and you grew to like him.”
I sighed, feeling ashamed that I couldn’t even do a short relationship right. I was supposed to have sex and just… let him go. “I did. He’s ridiculously bossy and he doesn’t enter a room, he invades. I didn’t know it was possible for a man to growl as much as he does.”
A smile spread across her face, seemingly pleased to hear about how unique Daniel was. “Yet he’s sweet to you.”
Bridget turned off the faucet and wiped her hands on a dish towel. “Not that sweet based on that blush.”
“When he comes back, you can pick up where you left off,” Lindy said.
I shook my head. “He’s not coming back.”
“He can’t move away forever. His life’s here,” Lindy countered.
“Maybe he’ll come back to visit, but he made it very, very clear his life here is done,” I said to Lindy, but also as a verbal reminder to myself that it was over.
Lindy waved her hand. “He has a son and brothers here. A business.”
“He sold it,” Bridget added, coming over and dropping into a chair. I’d never seen her in a dress before, but she was wearing one now. It was green to match her eyes.
“The last thing a man wants is a clinging woman,” I reminded. “Me pining after him and then showing up on his doorstep when he comes back to town is the epitome of clingy.”
They looked at each other, then me.
I leaned forward, set my forearms on their kitchen table. It was very eighties and I imagined it had been the same one from when their parents were alive.
“Look, we made a deal,” I told them, laying out what he and I had agreed on.
“An arrangement. He did everything I wanted to feel safe with him. Fine, it was a fling, if that’s the definition you want to give it, but remember, a fling is temporary.
If it was anything else, it wouldn’t be called a fling. ”
I had them there and they knew it. It didn’t matter.
A relationship was impossible with an ocean between us.
It wasn’t like we got to know each other much.
I barely knew anything about him other than how he liked to dirty talk and what his cum tasted like.
Sure, there was something between us. An amazing connection.
A foundation, perhaps, but all we had right now was the same thing my mom had with her flings.
Sex. Not much conversation. A goodbye.
What I had on my own was sadness and a little heartache that he was gone.
I liked Daniel Pearson and I wanted to like him even more.
I stood to leave because we could analyze my thing with Daniel for hours and nothing would change. I turned to the corner of the kitchen where I put Fred’s dog bed and where I left her at the beginning of the shower. “Where’s Fred?”
Eve and Mallory joined us in searching the lower floor, even searching in the bushes out front in case she slipped out at the end of the party.
It was Bridget who found her in the pantry where she had pulled an apron off a hook and was using her paws to make a bed.
“Nesting. I think she might be having babies at a baby shower,” Bridget said.