Chapter 30 Ever After
Ever After
I also enrolled Jake in the local high school.
Isaiah was fascinated by Jake, his mind spinning all kinds of scenarios as he tried to make sense of how they might be related.
He eventually settled on brothers seeing as they both called me mom.
Jake was taking a bit longer to settle, of course he was. Luckily, Aaron had taken him under his wing and was training him to work in the pool house at The Sage Ridge Resort.
I went from striking out on my own to being a mother of two, a stepmother, and a grandmother-to-be all at once. I had friends who were more like family, and a family that was all mine.
Susie cried when I drove her out to my new house and showed her the kitchen Kian built for me behind the house.
Fishing a tissue out of her purse, she blew her nose. “Tell me, please, you’re quitting the diner.”
I nodded. “I’ll give you time to find someone else.”
She shook her head. “No need. I’m selling it. I was just waiting for you.”
Once Kian gave his family the news of our engagement, he couldn’t hold them off any longer.
The entire family landed in Sage Ridge en masse, booking themselves an entire floor at Harley’s resort for a week where we had nightly bonfires.
They embraced Aaron and Nadine as I knew they would.
I’d never seen Aaron laugh as much or as hard as he did when surrounded by his motley crew of aunts and uncles.
Especially Finn.
And Kian’s sisters got on like a house on fire with my girls.
Things went back to normal, or as normal as things got in Sage Ridge, when they left.
Me and my girls spent an inordinate amount of time hanging out in my kitchen. With all of us taking turns holding Cami, Harley bounced back to her regular feisty self in no time.
Noelle, however, was ready to burst, and burst she did, going into labor one afternoon in early November while we were making chocolate for the Christmas season.
“Don’t call Hawk yet,” she ordered, giggling over the chocolate she’d just poured into the tray of penis molds she ordered. “I want to see how these turn out.”
“No fucking way,” Harley declared. “I’m not forfeiting my life over a bag of chocolate dicks.”
Hawkley barreled in fifteen minutes later, wrapping Noelle up in her coat, growling as she puttered around saying bye to everybody.
But when the first sharp pain hit, she gasped and doubled over.
“That’s it, Noelle. We’re leaving. Right now,” he demanded, his eyebrows crashing down. “You’re running up a tally it’s going to take a solid year to pay off.”
Noelle shimmied her shoulders, giving a soft cheer, “Woo Hoo!”
Harley pretended to stick her finger down the back of her throat.
Shaking his head, Hawkley steered her toward the door. Twisting around, Noelle looked back over her shoulder, yelling, “Bring my bag of dicks to the hospital, okay?”
“Now, there’s a sentence I never thought I’d hear,” Wren muttered.
Shae laughed, scooping her four-year-old daughter, Dylan, into her arms.
“I have a baggadicks too, Mama?”
Wren cast her eyes to the ceiling. “Oh my God.”
Two weeks later, we were back again, this time with Noelle’s tiny daughter, Christy, in tow.
At the counter, I stood checking my kettles. A surprising number of orders were coming in from the good people of Sage Ridge. Not enough to make a living, but a decent start.
I was considering offering classes here in my kitchen. Kian was looking into licensing. Jake joined the band at school, and his new guitar took up most of his spare time.
When my kitchen became our unofficial gathering place, Kian moved a circle of comfortable chairs into the corner as well as a wood stove. We were cozy, the five of us all together with all the babies.
Today was Noelle’s first time out of the house since she’d had Christy. “I’m going to need more help at work,” she blurted out of the blue.
I peeked over my shoulder in time to see Harley eying me.
“I was thinking the same,” she said.
Wren dipped her chin and picked at a pill on her sweater.
They were up to something.
Smiling and prepared to wait them out, I turned back to my kettles.
“I want to keep the bridezillas,” Noelle stated.
“How you enjoy them, I have no idea,” Harley mused.
“Stay on track,” Noelle murmured.
My shoulders began to shake.
Shae sat in her chair, bent near double over her embroidery.
The four of them were the polar opposite of smooth.
I wandered over. “I can help.”
Harley feigned surprise. “Really? What are you thinking?”
“We were thinking you could take over all the event planning and I’d be the go-between wedding consult--” Noelle cut herself off mid syllable.
Harley slowly turned to face her. “You are such a bucket mouth.”
Shae snorted. “I wouldn’t talk. Your acting skills need a lot of work before you take your gig on the road.”
“Excuse me,” Harley countered. “You two are bent nearly double like a couple of arthritic geriatrics trying to hide your faces. You’re not pulling off casual the way you think you are.”
“Oh my God,” Wren laughed, pulling her crochet project out of her bag.
Grumbling, Harley turned to me. “What do you say? Take over the event planning with Noelle heading up weddings. I’ll draw up a contract to put your chocolates in every room, just name your price.
We’ll leave forms for the guests to place orders, and have you cater all the treat boxes for our events.
We’ll be famous for carrying Cocoa Loco chocolates.
We’ll also help you branch out to other businesses in the area if you want. Mom knows everybody.”
“I don’t know, Harley,” I mused. “I’d like to try to get on my feet on my own.”
Wren leaned forward. “Sometimes you need to accept help.”
Harley snorted. “Says you.”
Wren rolled her eyes up to the ceiling.
“And stop rolling your eyes,” Harley grumbled. “Your fucking eyeballs are going to get stuck up there.”
Shae giggled, turning the new baby blanket she was working on over in her hands. “Are you going to do it, Bridge?”
“Can I take some time to think about it? I want to make sure I’m not taking too much time away from my boys.”
Harley narrowed her eyes. “We’ll talk.”
The girls weren’t the only ones who hung out with me in my enormous kitchen. Aaron was a regular visitor. Sometimes he brought Nadine with him, most of the time he came by himself.
We didn’t get into the deep stuff every time.
“You know, you don’t have to wait for me to bring stuff up,” I told him. “If you need to talk, jump right in.”
“I know.” He stood up and dropped a quick kiss on my cheek as he made his way out. At the door, he stopped and turned around. “Sometimes I just need to be around someone who knows what I’m going through and believes in me anyway.”
It took a long time before I was ready to go back up to the house after he left.