Chapter 30
RACHEL
“The Puffle Yum Momster poisoned you?” Molly said… well…really, she shrieked the statement. She punctuated this shriek by smacking two hands on the table in front of her.
Rachel shushed her. “The boys will hear you. And, no, she didn’t actually poison me, but she thinks she did. Thus, she’s now being super awesome.”
So far, Evelyn had not brought up Gavin plus Rachel equals true love since they’d been back. She also offered to take the boys for an evening so Travis and Rachel could have some time alone. More than that, she’d added Rachel to the family text chain.
This last one was both a blessing and a curse. Turned out, Evelyn texted her kids a lot.
“I’m confused,” Kaiya said.
Turned out she sold the hell out of skin care products. Who knew?
And she needed a whole lot of Rachel’s help. During working hours.
Kaiya had no problems with boundaries and set her own firm office hours. It made for an excellent working relationship.
She also paid on time and provided all the free lavender skin cream Rachel could ever need.
This get-together was taking place in Rachel’s backyard. All the kids were bouncing on the trampoline, April poured margaritas, and Sadie served cookies she’d brought along from Heather’s Cookie Co.—the good kind with extra icing she got because she was friendly with the owner.
“What are you confused about?” April asked, topping off Kaiya’s glass.
“So Evelyn is just okay with everything because she thinks she accidentally gave you guys food poisoning?” Kaiya confirmed. “That seems unlike her, from what you’ve said.”
She was right, it did seem unlike her. But it wasn’t about food poisoning. It was about Evelyn realizing things might just be okay anyway, even if she didn’t get her way.
“That’s her excuse,” Rachel said with a sly smile. “But I think she came around because she realized her sons aren’t going to beat the crap out of each other over the situation between Travis and me.”
“How do you feel about it all?” Sadie asked.
“I have Travis. So things are pretty great.” Rachel settled back against her chair, gripping the cocktail with two hands. On the scale of great, things were magnificent. He’d found her toothbrush three times just that morning before she kicked him out before the boys woke up.
He ate dinner with them every night in the week they’d been back—except two nights he had corporate dinners. On those nights, he stopped by afterward to say goodnight and give Rachel what he referred to as “a proper goodnight.”
To be clear, there wasn’t much proper about the way he said goodnight. Hence the, ahem, magnificent.
Even the thought made her cheeks heat and her heart flutter like it always had when a relationship was brand-new. The thing was, this relationship still had the flutter, but it was definitely not new.
In truth, they’d been working toward it for years. She just hadn’t realized. For the record, the bedroom activities weren’t the only thing she adored about Travis. They were a definite perk, for sure, but more than that, he fit seamlessly into her life.
Like he was always meant to be there. Like the splintered pieces of the life she’d planned all pointed straight to this place. To him, and to her boys, and to her family.
“Well, I don’t know about the rest of you, but I for one am really ticked off that you didn’t even try the produce thing,” Molly said with a huff.
“What’s the produce thing?” Kaiya asked.
“Don’t ask.” April held up her hand. “Trust me, it is not something any of us should entertain.”
“Okay, what about this?” Molly shifted and faced April. “Car seat fittings.”
“What?” April asked.
Rachel pressed her tongue against her teeth so she wouldn’t ask questions. Asking questions when Molly had ideas was not a good choice.
“We all love firefighters, right?” Molly asked. “I mean, did you see the calendar they did this year to raise money?” She fanned herself. “Do you know where a girl would go to meet a firefighter?”
“I have no idea,” Kaiya said. “Where do you go?”
Total mistake with all the questions.
“To the firehouse. But you can’t just walk on in there unless something is on fire. Unless”—Molly held up her finger like she’d just had a brilliant idea—“there is a car seat fitting.”
“You know what?” Kaiya said. “I went to one of those once and the guy who installed the seat was really cute and sweet. He even asked about special hand soap to get the gunk off his hands after he went on a call.”
“What else did he ask about?” Molly zeroed in on Kaiya. “Did he ask for your number?”
“Uh.” Kaiya looked from Rachel to April to Sadie. “Just so he could buy soap. He liked the idea of all-natural hand soap.”
“Hon,” Molly sat forward, elbows on her knees. She set her margarita on the table. “When a man asks about hand soap, he probably wants your number.”
“Here we go again,” Rachel said dramatically.
“Just stop, Molly!” April laughed. “Next you’ll be telling her to go skydiving with Kent.”
“Is he still doing that?” Molly asked.
“All the freaking time.” April let out a long breath. “It’s just a midlife-crisis thing. He’ll get over it soon enough.”
Rachel shivered. Jumping out of a perfectly good aircraft was not her idea of a “midlife-phase” anything.
No one needed to jump out of any moving transportation, as far as she was concerned. Not with the kids laughing in the background, fresh margaritas in the pitcher, and good friends to spend time with.
Rachel felt an expansion in her chest. She closed her eyes, soaking it all in.
“You know what?” Kaiya said finally. “I think Evelyn did get her way.”
If there was one thing that could ruin the goodness soak, it was the mention of Evelyn.
Rachel peeled one eye open.
“I’m not quite sure how you got from A to B on this one,” Sadie said, popping a bit of cookie into her mouth. “But I want to hear it because it doesn’t involve skydiving, produce, or car seat fittings.”
“Okay, hear me out. When you have a person who consistently acts in a certain way—always—and then all of a sudden they seem out of character, there’s something up.
In this case, if we drill down Evelyn’s main plan, it wasn’t to keep Rachel and Travis apart, was it?
It was to ensure that Travis and Gavin were happy, right? ”
This made sense. Rachel nodded.
“I’m following you so far,” Sadie said.
“Despite everything that happened, that end result has happened. So Evelyn did get what she wanted, just not in the way that we expected.”
Huh. Rachel stared at Kaiya. She was totally right. And that was whacked.
“What did you do before you sold skin cream?” Sadie asked.
“I was head of pharmaceutical sales for a large medical supply company.” Kaiya licked at the margarita salt along the rim of her cup.
“My ex always said I was a drug dealer. But that’s not really accurate, because I didn’t have access to the medications myself.
I think he just thought it was funny. He was an ass, though, so his sense of humor was iffy. ”
The things you learned about a girl over margaritas and sugar cookies.
“Hello, ladies.” Travis strode out the door, stopping to kiss Rachel on her temple. “Can I crash your party?”
“You can always crash my parties.” Rachel glanced up at him.
“Isn’t that good to know?” He nodded to the margaritas. “Are those for anyone?”
“No,” Molly said. “They’re only for people we like. Therefore, you are welcome to one.”
“Rach.” Gavin stepped out onto the patio. “Thought I’d pick up the boys a little early so this lug could take you to dinner. I didn’t realize they had friends over.”
“For example,” Molly said to Travis. “They aren’t for your brother.”
Travis shook his head. “He’ll grow on you, Ms. Molly.”
“Not likely.” She shook her head, brown curls bouncing against her shoulders.
“Mom,” Brady screeched. “Kellan spilled slime all over the trampoline.”
“It’s in my hair,” Ollie squealed. He didn’t sound too torn up about that fact.
Molly rolled her eyes and stood to go investigate. “They’ve been alone for like only sixty seconds.”
Gavin followed her, as did April and Kaiya.
Sadie said her goodbyes and headed toward the front door.
“You two have a good night,” she hollered behind as she pulled the door closed.
Rachel took in Travis. He was grinning a goofy smile. “Where’d they get slime?”
“They kept it from their birthday party.” She shrugged. The stuff was water-based. A good dose of the hose, and the slime would come right off.
Only a month ago, she would’ve lost her utter shit over the slime situation. But it didn’t seem to matter as much these days. Not with the lightness she felt all the time.
The happy.
Oh, for sure, things were still a bit of a mess, but she was making do.
She’d dipped into her emergency fund to make the mortgage payment, but James was looking to increase her hours—during regular business hours, of course—and things seemed promising with Kaiya. Even Sadie and April had asked if she could do some side jobs for them.
Most of all, though, she’d been getting an appropriate amount of sleep at night. Therefore, the weight of her world didn’t feel quite so heavy.
She stared at Travis. He wasn’t looking at her, though—he was watching the chaos happening at the trampoline.
There was literally slime everywhere.
Where the hell had they gotten so much of it?
“I love you, Rach,” he said, out of the blue, but like he’d been trying to figure out how to say that for forever.
Rachel’s heart seemed to stop beating for a moment, encapsulated in the feeling that she’d been alone, and now she wasn’t. Everything seemed to be all right in her extremely imperfect world.
“Took you long enough,” she replied, finally catching his gaze and holding it. She savored the moment, because it was definitely a moment worth savoring.
All the moments with Travis were. Then she stood, and kissed him.
“I love you, too,” she said against his lips.
She hoped, really hoped, this would be enough to get them through whatever the future tossed their way, because she had no doubt their story was only beginning. The last chapter ended for her, but it wasn’t the end. It simply led to the next part.
There would be fractures, and splinters, and she’d probably want to invest in poisoned toaster tarts at some point.
But, then again, that was the funny thing about perfection being measured by degrees. The imperfection—the ugly and dirty and messy parts—those are the bits and pieces that brought meaning to her life.
She understood that now.
The ugly parts were the ones that made the goodness shine extra bright.