Chapter 14
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
“Mom!” Lucas shouted as soon as he opened the car door.
I jumped in my seat and fumbled my phone.
“Goodnight, kid, why are you yelling?” I asked as I reached for my phone hoping I hadn’t accidently sent what I wasn’t done tapping out yet.
“Juni and her dad are going to get ice cream after they pick up her brother from middle school. Can we go?”
I looked beyond Lucas and sure enough, there was Jase standing next to Juni, holding her hand.
Good Lord, he made being a dad look sexy.
Or maybe it was the smirk he was wearing.
“They invited us,” Lucas rushed to tack on. “So, can we go?”
“Sure. Go ask them where they’re going and we’ll meet them there.”
Lucas ran off and I went back to my text. I backed out of the original message I was sending and typed in a new one.
You’re a sly dog not telling me you’d be at school today.
I hit send and went back to watching Lucas talk to Jase and Juni.
Juni looked adorable bopping up and down with excitement.
But my attention was on Jase and the soft smile he was giving my boy.
Lucas had never had a man in his life, so he sure as shit never had a man look at him the way Jase was.
Slow your roll, Rainy, you’re not shopping for a daddy for Lucas.
I watched Lucas nod before he turned around and ran back to the car.
“The Daily Scoop,” Lucas announced as he threw himself into the back seat. A second later and just as loudly he proclaimed, “Buckled.”
My phone dinged.
I opened the screen and read his message.
A man’s gotta keep his woman on her toes.
He ended his text with a few winky faces.
His woman?
Needless to say, my text thread with Jase was no longer empty.
It started Wednesday evening around Lucas’s bedtime when he texted me to ask how bad the pickup line was.
After he had a good laugh at my misery, he asked me more about my work.
And since I decided I was no longer going to be cagey after he’d shared openly and honestly about Shay—and the girl from the bar that I’d not only misread but completely overreacted to—I told him about work.
I talked about how I started my business, built it, and how and why I was selective about the clients I took.
In return, he told me about Juni and Colson and the week-on, week-off custody agreement.
He went on to tell me Shay was getting married and that was happening soon.
Shay’s fiancé’s name was Hunter and by all accounts he seemed like a good guy—my opinion based on the fact that Jase said he was good to the kids and both of them liked him.
And by the by, Hunter was not the man Shay had cheated on him with.
That man was her married boss. According to Jase it got messy for Shay at work and she eventually quit.
Hunter had been cool with Jase from the beginning and that hadn’t stopped.
Jase also told me that Hunter loved Shay and as bad as the divorce had been, she was still the mother of his children and he wanted her happy.
I thought that said a lot about the kind of man Jase was.
Though truth be told, that was not a new revelation.
That was just the Jase I’d always known.
We called it a night when he admitted his shoulder was giving him some pain and he needed a pill.
It was silly but I liked that we texted. I liked sitting in my bed, in my jammies, holding my phone watching the dots bounce while I waited to see what he had to say next.
Thursday our texting marathon continued.
He asked me about Lucas. We talked more about his kids.
Colson loved riding his skateboard and had no fear.
Juni was a girl’s girl and loved all things pink and sparkly and she’d recently gotten into something called diamond art.
Since I had no clue what that was I looked it up on the magic rectangle—popularly known as a cellphone—and found that diamond art looked like fun so I bought a Paint by Diamonds red cardinal kit that would look amazing next to the bright-yellow canary Zoe gave me for my birthday.
Unfortunately, I had to end our texts because I had work to do. Then school pickup and homework and that pesky chore that came around every evening called dinner.
But I did get a text while I was getting ready for bed.
I can’t stop thinking about you.
No lie, I must’ve stared at the screen of my phone for a full three minutes letting that declaration sink in. Letting it clean away some of the regret for the first time since I’d instigated the worst mistake of my life. And finally allowing myself to remember the boy I’d fallen in love with.
That was pure Jase of yore. Even as a teenager, he had been open and honest with me. He’d never withheld his thoughts or feelings, making it easy for me to share mine.
And just with that text he’d torn down another wall.
Which meant I gave him my truth.
I’ve never stopped thinking about you.
I sent that, then followed up with:
And thank you for accepting my apology and being so cool about it.
After I sent that, my stomach did a somersault.
Jase hadn’t actually said he’d accepted my apology.
I had just assumed by the way he’d guided us out of the painful awkwardness that he’d forgiven me.
However, reading that text I realized that was a tad presumptuous.
Not only that, but it was late at night and if he came back with a rebuke or didn’t respond at all, I wouldn’t’ve slept a wink.
Thankfully, he texted back.
We were young. We both made mistakes. It’s done. It’s in the past. Now is now, and straight up, I’m not letting you get away a second time.
I read that text three times. I didn’t know what mistakes he thought he made and it was too late at night to ask. Not to mention, not a conversation to have over text.
So I let that lie.
Sleep well, Jason.
Sweet dreams, baby.
That brought us to today and this morning’s text from him.
Time for lunch today?
My heart sank when I had to decline.
I wish. And I mean that! I wish with all my heart I could,
but I have back-to-back video calls with clients
and two deadlines today.
I’ll be lucky if I finish before I have to pick up Lucas.
His response was immediate.
No worries, Rae. We’ll go another day.
My response was just as quick.
Promise.
I hoped that didn’t sound as desperate as I felt to see Jase again.
Absolutely! Now get your boy to school and go be brilliant. We’ll catch up tonight.
Bossy!
You have no idea. But you’ll learn.
That text gave me a shiver because I knew what he was implying.
Jase was my first sexual partner. I was not his.
We’d fumbled our way through intimacy, but with Jase leading we didn’t fumble for long.
And the reason we didn’t is because Jase knew what he liked, took great pains to learn my body, then exploited both extremely well.
I knew this because I had friends who had never had an orgasm, and I had.
Jase saw to it. And he did it being bossy, leading me where he wanted, and by doing so didn’t allow me to feel shy, timid, or ashamed of my reactions to him.
So, yeah, I knew what that text meant.
But I left it there and didn’t push the boundaries of our new friend.
Mainly because I didn’t know how to sexy text, or flirt, or make innuendos.
And I didn’t because the last person I’d flirted with was Mark. That was eleven years ago, and I didn’t really flirt with him—he came on to me, and that was pretty much that.
Before that, it was Jase. And I was fourteen at the time. I didn’t think adult flirting included flipping my hair and batting my eyelashes.
Just those two. No one before or after.
I was at a disadvantage, so before I made a fool out of myself I decided no response was the way to go.
Now was now and I was staring at my phone.
A man’s gotta keep his woman on her toes.
While I was thinking up a reply, another text came in.
You got cars behind you, baby.
My gaze shot up from my phone and I looked in front of me, before I checked my rearview.
Sure enough, the car in front of me had pulled away and there was a line behind me.
I glanced over and found Jase still standing there holding his daughter’s hand.
Vaguely I wondered how he could text one-handed.
Then I took in his smirk.
He knew he’d rendered me immobile with the ‘his woman’ comment.
Whatever.
I shook my head, eased on the gas, and asked my son, “How was your day?”
“A-plus on my spelling test and I got the three extra credit answers right.”
“Way to go, kid. And math?”
“Ninety percent,” he mumbled.
I felt his pain. Math was stupid.
I didn’t tell him that.
“Ninety percent is an A. You studied hard. Celebrate the win.”
“Does that mean I get two scoops since we’re celebrating and all?”
Damn, I loved my son.
I don’t know what I did right in my life to be blessed with such an amazing creature.
“Sure.”
“Score! Does this mean every Friday after my spelling tests and math quizzes if I get ninety and above we’ll stop for ice cream to celebrate?”
I didn’t need to think about my answer.
Zoe had taught me well.
“Yes.”
“Bomb-diggity-dog!” Lucas cried.
One day I would miss his youthful exuberance and shouting. But today was not that day.
“Turn down the volume, kid, and tell me about your day.”
“We had an assembly,” Lucas told me in a much softer voice. “One of the teachers, Miss Monroe, died.”
I felt my mental gears grind at the sudden change in topic. “Oh no. That’s horrible. Did you know her?”
“No, but everyone was saying that she was real nice. The principal had her class sit up front and all the kids who were in her class last year. Most of them got up to talk about how great she was. Then after, the principal asked us to write two letters, one to her mom and dad and one to one of the students in her class. It’s not an assignment and we don’t have to do it, but he said it would be a nice thing to do. ”
The principal wasn’t wrong.
“Do you want to write a letter?” I asked, making sure my tone didn’t give away I hoped my son was the kind of kid who would want to show strangers empathy.
“Oh, yeah. I already wrote my letter to a second-grader in her class. Mrs. Ashberry put a box on her desk for us to drop them in when we were done.”
“I’m proud of you, Lucas.” That time I couldn’t hide the hitch in my voice.
“We know,” he whispered.
Shit. I was going to start bawling.
“Yeah, we know.”
I didn’t know how much time Jase needed to pick up Colson before he met us at the Daily Scoop. So I decided to take the long way, playing double duty to waste time and give me and Lucas time to compose ourselves.
“Maybe I should write Mama Trish and Pop Dave a letter.”
Yeah, I was going to start bawling at the mention of Zoe’s parents.
“They would love that,” I croaked. “But they always love hearing from their p’tit loup.”
I butchered the pronunciation, but Lucas didn’t care.
“Your French is horrible!”
So he didn’t care but he still liked to give me stick about it.
“It’s not French,” I noted.
Then at the same time we both said, “It’s Louisiana French.”
Zoe’s parents were born and bred Creole. They both speak Creole and switch between Cajun, Creole, and English mid-sentence. It’s a trip listening to them argue. However, Zoe only spoke Louisiana French and very little of it, seeing as right before she was born David and Trisha moved to Michigan.
Lucas’s laughter was music to my soul and exactly what I needed to pull my shit together as I pulled into the parking lot of the ice cream shop.
“We’re here,” I told Lucas. “But before we go in, is there anything about today’s assembly you want to talk to me about?”
“No. Everyone was really sad. The second graders in her class were crying and most of the third graders who had her. They stayed after it was over with the guidance counselors and the principal said that if anyone wanted to talk, they could go to the office to call their parents. I’m just sad for her mom and dad. ”
I glanced in the rearview mirror. He looked a little sad but mostly reflective.
“Okay. But later, if you change your mind, you know you can talk to me about it, right?”
“Of course I do.”
Of course he did.
I don’t know how I did it, but somehow in the midst of fumbling my way through parenthood I’d managed to raise a really great kid. I figured it had a lot to do with Zoe’s hand in helping shape him and my mom’s guidance.
I was grateful to both.
And I really missed Zoe.