Chapter Thirteen
Edwin
“What the heck was that?” I grabbed the bridge of my nose and watched through the curtain as I drove away.
Had I just been asked on a date with two men?
Two men I was interested in? It felt like it, but maybe I was reading more into the invitation than there was.
And it wasn’t as if Brax was in a state of mind to be part of any of that conversation, but Cliff had been sober.
No, I was reading it right. They wanted to take me out and get to know me better.
I wanted that too. But it wasn’t that easy. Nothing about my connection to Brax and Cliff was.
Tonight, I’d found myself always aware of where Brax was. It hadn’t been intentional. And yet, with him there, how could I not. He was kind and fun and adorable and hot. It would be so much easier if he wasn’t any of those things.
If I’d realized how drunk Brax was earlier, I’d probably have taken him across the street before we did our fabulous chicken dance.
He wasn’t to the point of getting sick, I didn’t think.
But he was pushing that line. He was in good hands, though.
His daddy was gonna take care of him, make sure he was safe, protected, and warm.
Whereas, I was here at my house…alone and spiraling.
The others weren’t back yet, and the place was eerily quiet. Normally, I didn’t mind. I wasn’t a particularly loud person and chose silence over music 80 percent of the time. But tonight, how I longed for the sound of conversation in the next room or a too-loud television. Anything to distract me.
I ran upstairs to my room and pulled open the drawer that held my little clothes until I found a pair of monster pajamas.
I was going to bed little tonight in the hopes of not staring at the ceiling all night long.
I grabbed my bag of tubbie toys and headed into the bathroom. A soak was going to do me good.
I turned the water on as hot as it could go, threw some bubble bath in, and brushed my teeth as the water level rose.
It wasn’t the fanciest tub, definitely not the deepest, but it would do its job.
I dumped my basket of toys in before climbing inside.
I loved bathtime fun. It was one of the few little activities I didn’t mind doing alone.
I had my boat tunnel through the soap suds, my ducky bounce on the clouds, which were also the soap suds, and a little dog toy climbing the mountain.
Again, the soap suds. I absolutely loved the bubble part of a bubble bath, but I never really got deep into play, my mind wandering back to the question of whether I should go out with them or not.
I’d been very clear I was no unicorn, and there was a flicker of hurt in Cliff’s eyes when I said that.
Or maybe I was reading into it. I wasn’t exactly what one would call sober at the time, but he’d made it clear that’s not what he was looking for.
He wasn’t looking for fun—they weren’t looking for fun.
But if they weren’t looking for fun, did that mean they weren’t looking for this to be a date? That’s where I was confused. One of many places.
And the more I thought about it, the more I forgot the actual words he used.
My mind focused on the way I felt when he said them instead.
I’d gotten exactly nowhere in my decision-making process by the time the bubbles were gone and my bath was over, but at least my muscles were more relaxed.
I was getting too old to be playing these dancing games, or maybe less too old and more too out of shape.
I went back to my room and climbed into bed.
I didn’t even have the covers fully up before my mind raced again.
I barely knew them, and they were filling my headspace so completely that I was going to have to start charging rent soon.
I lifted the hand that had held Brax’s and looked at it by the light of my nightlight.
It had felt so natural having them joined.
“Crap,” I said, and threw the covers off. “I’m not gonna be able to get any sleep like this.”
In the playroom, I set up the craft table. I kept a basket of coloring supplies there as well as in my room. I loved the twisted crayons the best and preferred not coloring without them. I pulled out a unicorn coloring book and started coloring away.
They said I wouldn’t be a unicorn, that they didn’t want that either. And here I was, decking one out using the colors Brax told me he liked and keeping inside the lines the way Cliff had praised. Then I covered it with stickers because, well, stickers.
They’d said for me to think about it, to not feel like I had to come up with an answer right away. But, did I need to? Not for them—they hadn’t pressured me—but for me. I was the type of person who needed to make decisions and then act from there. It was part of the reason I accepted the job here.
Once my unicorn was done, I went over and put it on the whiteboard for the others to see and went back to my room where my phone was. I typed out and deleted far more responses than anyone should before settling on: I accept your offer.
I hit send before I could change my mind for the seventy-seven billionth time. We were going on a date. I couldn’t wait. But also, I was terrified. There were so many reasons this was a horrible idea. They were a couple, and I was a third wheel. How could it possibly work?
But then I remembered all the triads I’d met that night and how happy they seemed. Maybe it could work and this was the bestest idea of all ideas a little had ever come up with. I was going with that.