Chapter 16
JANIE
Essie
Stop me if you’ve heard this joke before. A cowboy, a Navy SEAL, and a manny walk into a dive bar…
Janie
I take it Jack told you the news.
Essie
I can’t stop laughing.
I was an anxious mess.
I waited on my front porch, my hands wrapped around a steaming mug of coffee.
I paced the length of the house. I sat on the swing and promptly stood up again.
I paced some more. Maya sat on the third step, her knees snuggled to her chest, completely unconcerned that her mother was falling apart at the seams. She liked to give her whole being to whatever activity was at hand.
Waiting, in this case.
In about fifteen minutes, Jack was going to pull into the driveway, and everything would change.
From the moment I’d discovered I was pregnant, it had been me and Maya against the world.
We were a team. My whole life was built around her.
I had no idea how Jack would fit into any of it. Our house, our routines, our lives.
But I was about to find out because Jack’s blue pickup truck was rolling up my driveway ten minutes early. Of course he was early. The man had probably never been late to anything in his life.
He pulled up next to my eight-year-old Subaru and got out.
Suddenly I had a whole new problem to consider.
I gawked as his black work boots emerged first, followed by long legs and thickly muscled thighs encased in faded denim, and an ordinary white t-shirt that must have been made from literal magic because it had that perfect easy fit that somehow still managed to showcase every square of his six-pack.
Black aviators highlighted the way his nose crooked slightly, like it had been broken more than once. As if that wasn’t hot enough, he’d added my own personal kryptonite: a backwards baseball cap, glints of silver peeking out near his ears.
Goddammit.
This man was going to live in my house. Eat, sleep, and shower mere feet from me. I couldn’t even console myself with the comforting lie that men that hot were inevitably selfish in bed because I already knew that didn’t hold true for Jack.
I was fucked.
Jack leaned over the truck bed and hauled two large suitcases over the edge like they weighed nothing. I suspected they weighed at least forty pounds apiece. I pressed my fingertips against my coffee mug like it would keep me from melting into a puddle of goo.
“Morning,” he called.
I gurgled unintelligible babble back at him.
“Good morning,” Maya said.
He made his way up the walk with a loose-limbed gait that reminded me of a lion, all casual strength and one-hundred-percent certainty of his place at the top of the food chain.
“Ready to have some fun?” he asked Maya as he reached the porch steps.
She considered. “Maybe after lunch.”
My stomach clenched as I watched the scene unfold below me. I saw him take in her unsmiling face. There was no hug to greet him, either. I hope he didn’t take that personally. The smiles would come in time.
She was actually excited he was here, but I knew how she looked to people who didn’t know her very well.
I bit my tongue against the urge to tell him that, to smooth their path to friendship and clear the roadblocks of misunderstanding.
They needed to figure these things out for themselves because they would be spending a lot of time together, just the two of them.
I wouldn’t be around to micromanage their relationship.
But Jack didn’t seem to need my interference, anyway. He nodded and kept moving. “Sounds like a plan.”
Two steps from the top, he stopped in front of me, putting us at eye level.
He set the suitcases down on either side of me.
Those full lips quirked as he took my mug from me and lifted it to his mouth.
He took a sip and handed it back to me. “It’s good.
You got any more of that inside for me, Ace? ” he asked.
Why did that sound so dirty? “If you…if you want.” I couldn’t see his eyes behind his sunglasses, and somehow that made me feel vulnerable because he could see everything in mine.
“I want,” he said, his voice a little husky.
“Why do you call her Ace?” Maya asked. She had gotten to her feet and now observed us with curious eyes.
Maya. Jack’s reason for being here. My reason for…everything.
The fog of lust dispersed from my brain at the sound of her voice. I cleared my throat. “We play cards at the bar sometimes. You know how my favorite cards are the aces? That’s why he calls me Ace.”
Jack chuckled softly as he pulled his sunglasses from his face and hooked them over the collar of his T-shirt. “You think so?”
What did he mean by that? I wasn’t a snoop or a crack reporter, and I couldn’t think of another reason he would call me Ace.
“I like nicknames,” Maya said thoughtfully. “Mother calls me ladybug because of my red hair.”
“And because you’re cute as a bug,” I said.
“That’s an opinion. My red hair is a fact.” She looked at me. “Do you have a nickname for Jack?”
“Not really,” I hedged, not wanting the light of my life to discover what a petty brat her mother was. My cheeks felt hot.
Jack’s assessing gaze swept over my face. “She calls me soldier.”
“Because you’re a soldier?” Maya guessed.
“Nope.” He shook his head. “I’m not a soldier.”
“Maybe she doesn’t know that.”
Jack’s eyes crinkled in amusement. “Oh, she knows.” He lowered his voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “I think that might be why she does it. Just to fu—uh, just to annoy me. She thinks it’s fun to tease me.”
Maya gasped. She hated being teased. She spun to me with an appalled expression. “That’s not what nicknames are for, Mother,” she chastised me.
My face felt beet red.
“But I like it,” Jack said, his eyes on me.
“That’s silly,” Maya said. “No one likes to be annoyed.”
Jack shrugged. “What can I say? I’m a silly guy,” said the least silly man ever to walk the earth.
I pressed my lips together and he winked at me.
“Grab your bags,” I said. “I’ll show you your room.”
I had spent the last week agonizing over the details of moving Jack into our yellow, three-bedroom Craftsman bungalow with as little disruption to Maya as possible.
My bedroom was right next to Maya’s; Jack would be down the hallway from us both.
I moved Maya’s stuff into my ensuite so that he could have the hallway bathroom all to himself.
I even cleared a shelf off in the pantry so he could have his own snacks and not feel like he had to share with us, although of course he could help himself to whatever we had available.
Maya was particular about food and went through phases where she’d only eat two or three different things before she’d move on to something else, so I made sure he understood the system we had in place that ensured we never ran out of anything, because whew.
An autistic meltdown was one thing. An autistic meltdown when Maya was hangry was something I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy.
“This is great. You have a really nice home,” Jack said, and I could see the question in his eyes.
How did a single mom afford a three-bedroom house with a backyard view of the mountains on bartender tips?
He probably assumed my parents paid the mortgage. But he would be wrong.
“Thanks,” I said. “I’ll leave you to settle in and unpack while I make lunch. Grilled cheese and tomato soup okay?”
“Sure. Sounds great.”
I eyeballed him, feeling unsure. How much did a man his size eat? If I got half a sandwich and three bites of soup into Maya, I considered that a win. I had the feeling Jack required a little more sustenance. “Like…one sandwich? Two?”
He laughed. “One is fine. I ate a big breakfast.” He swung a suitcase onto the bed and flipped it open. He glanced up and found me still watching him. “Don’t worry, Ace. I’m an adult. I know how to feed myself.”
For some reason, I found that hilarious.
Maybe because so many of the adult men I had known had no idea how to feed themselves.
I doubted my father even knew where the pantry or refrigerator were—although that was partly because they looked exactly like every other cabinet in the kitchen—and it was a safe bet he’d need a map to find the grocery store, too.
“Okay. Are you going to help me, Maya?” I asked.
“No, thank you.” She clambered onto the bed and sat cross-legged, her wide gaze glued to Jack like he was a fascinating new species of amphibian.
I lingered in the doorway. Maybe I should insist she come with me. Maybe Jack didn’t want company while he got settled in. He rolled his eyes at me and flicked his wrist in a shooing motion. I got the message and headed for the kitchen.
The last thing I heard was Jack say, “If you tell me your favorite frog, I’ll tell you mine.”
“Fuck,” I muttered.
Maya was going to love him.
I sat on the porch swing with an iced tea and a deliciously smutty romance book Hannah had recommended to me, listening to my favorite sound in the world: Maya’s happy voice.
It was slightly higher pitched than her usual tone, and the cadence was faster.
When she was really happy, it was hard to get a word in edgewise.
Jack seemed to be holding his own, though, and I had to admit his deeper baritone still made me a little giddy.
Maya had insisted on taking Jack all over the yard after lunch.
She showed him her favorite rock and the tree she liked to climb.
He had seemed a little surprised at that, but in most ways Maya was a regular kid who liked to do regular kid stuff, even if some of that kid stuff was kind of a struggle for her.
She saw a physical therapist twice a month for low muscle tone, and that helped.
I made a mental note to mention that to Jack later.
There was so much he didn’t know. Autism had been a part of our lives for so long that it was second nature now—even before her diagnosis, Maya had been Maya—and I didn’t know how to adequately prepare him. It was trial by fire.