Chapter 35
CHICKENHEART
Heath
Sunday dinner’s a noisy affair with Caro and Ten topping each other by telling stories about their On the Rhodes days. Lav and I are here tonight since the majority of the wedding plans are set, and Caro and Ten are leaving tomorrow morning.
Haven’t seen Cricket alone at all since yesterday. She texted that she was tied up with wedding plans last night, and she disappeared to look into something for most of the day today.
I know she was on the property, but she hasn’t told me where or what she was doing.
And I miss her.
I miss her more than I can ever recall missing another person in my entire life.
And now she’s right there across the table, but we’re still not alone, and I’m about to crawl out of my skin with how much I want to be alone with her.
“Remember when we were at that place in Wyoming and that woman thought you were so cute that she offered you three wishes?” Caro’s saying to Ten.
“She offered him three bitches?” Pip says. “No wonder he’s how he is.”
Pip’s back, and she’s in full Pip form.
No lingering effects of the wine, even if I think Ten’s still feeling it.
Or he had more today.
Guy just has a look like he’s faking it.
Mabel’s found her placid, no-nonsense face again.
None of the twitching that Cricket told me about yesterday.
She does pull Cricket aside as everyone else is clearing the dishes and says something to her that has Cricket snickering and hugging her.
I lift my brows when Cricket smiles at me over Mabel’s shoulders, and she giggles harder, then mouths something that looks like heater to me.
I’m angling toward her when Ten steps between us. “You busy tonight, my dude?”
Yes, I’m busy.
I’m busy getting my daughter to bed so that I can go see Cricket.
That’s the answer.
But it’s not the one I give Ten, because dude looks like he needs something.
“Nope,” I say. “Just Lav and me hanging with our cat.”
“Wicked. Can I come?”
“Sure.”
And that’s how we end up on my porch, Ten with his feet propped on the railing and a baseball hat pulled low over his face, sparkling flavored water in cans beside each of us.
His request.
Lav’s still at the house with Cricket and the ladies.
They’re making more specific wedding plans.
I could help, but handling Ten so Mabel doesn’t have to see him anymore—that’s more my speed tonight.
“Who is that chick?” he asks me. “The one who got me drunk yesterday?”
“Fun Mabel?” I ask.
His shoulder twitches. “Shit. Is she really Mabel too?”
The way I’m tempted to string him along and tell him yes… “No. That’s Cricket.”
“Cricket?”
“Cricket. That’s her name. What everyone called her at dinner. The dinner you were just at.”
He ignores me. “She’s new?”
“Been here about a month. Little longer.”
“Bad viral?”
“Top of the hall of fame.”
“Huh.”
“Touch her and you won’t live to see your sister’s wedding.”
“Which sister? If we’re talking Ginny’s wedding, that’s cool. She’s never getting married.”
“Either sister.”
He quirks a grin without looking at me. “Got it bad, my guy. You’ve got it bad.”
“Speaking of bad—what’d you do to Mabel?”
“Who ever does anything to Mabel?”
“You. Clearly.”
He grunts and takes a swig.
“Don’t pout. You started it.”
“She can be fun,” he says. “I’ve seen it.”
“I live with her. I see her having fun all the time.”
The scowl and the shoulder twitch come back.
I hide a smile behind my own swig, and we both stare out at the rolling vineyard for a few minutes.
“Mike gonna be mad that you didn’t pull your wedding planning weight?” I ask him.
“Nah. He just wants Caro happy.”
“All good with you guys?”
“Yeah. Why wouldn’t it be?”
I shrug. “Family’s often complicated. And he’s not here to help plan his own wedding.”
Ava’s brother hated me as much as their parents did.
Wasn’t good enough for her, she was making a mistake, I’d never make anything of myself, I’d be a shitty husband and father, all of it.
I was fine to hang with until she got pregnant and I proposed, and then I was the enemy.
He, at least, has no interest in raising a little girl, so he’s been out of our lives completely since the funeral.
So it feels natural to wonder if Ten and Mike might have issues now that Mike’s marrying Ten’s sister.
“I introduced Mike to Caro,” Ten says. “Wouldn’t have done it if I didn’t think he was good enough for her.”
“You introduced them? I thought she knew him first.”
“Yeah, Ten never does anything worthwhile or good,” he mutters.
Not touching that. “How’d you meet him?”
“I picked up a job on a movie set he was working.”
I stare at him.
He takes another swig and ignores me.
“Never worked Hollywood,” I say. “Guess I thought it was harder to meet the stars than it is.”
“Heath, my guy, if there’s one thing I can do in life, it’s make friends.”
I choke on my water.
“Except with Mabel,” he adds, full petulant child mode coming out.
“Maybe if you didn’t try to be an ass every time you see her…”
“Maybe if she didn’t have a stick up her own ass…”
Mabel might be reserved, but she’s not a stick up her ass type.
“You ever try something with her?” Ten asks me.
“With Mabel?” I bark out a laugh. “No.”
“She not pretty enough?”
“She’s like my sister.”
“Your sister’s a stick in the mud too?”
“My sister’s a labor and delivery nurse. She’s been around more vaginas than you have.”
He sits straighter. “Wait. Wait. I could be a labor and delivery nurse?”
He wouldn’t last a day. Pretty sure he knows it too. Just being Ten again. Big talk. Hiding how he really feels. “Mabel’s thinking about it too. You two could study together.”
And there’s the scowl again.
I suck in another smile.
We stare at the vineyard some more.
“You know it’s healthy for us dudes to talk it out too, right?” I say eventually.
“Fuck talking.” He straightens. “Oh, shit. How many times did I say fuck in front of your kid?”
“We have healthy discussions about words to explore at home and words that are inappropriate at school and in public.”
“Healthy discussions, blah blah, bullshit,” he mutters.
I reach into the cooler beside me and hand him another water.
And I wait.
And then—
“Why do women take everything so fucking personally when you’re just fooling around and having fun? Like, why isn’t an I’m sorry enough for them? What the fuck do they want from us?”
There it is.
Not specifics, but close enough.
“Generally, a pattern of behavior that suggests we’ve learned from our mistakes and are willing to take responsibility and do better,” I muse.
“Shut the fuck up.”
“What are you, six? Human up, dude.”
“Human up?”
“The women around here man up more than I do. So yeah. Human up. Be a person. Have feelings. Own them. Mean it when you apologize. Make mistakes because that’s what humans do. Learn from them. Do better. Make other mistakes. Wash, rinse, repeat.”
He fiddles with the pull tab on his can. “Easy to say for a guy who didn’t grow up with the world watching your every stupid teenage move.”
“World watched my wife die and had a lot of opinions about it. Not the same, but it’s not so different either.”
He slides me a look.
I shrug at him. “And it sucks. But you can’t change it.”
“Why do I come talk to you?”
“I’m cheaper than therapy.”
“I can fucking afford therapy.”
Ginny’s never said much about what Ten does. Just that he’s worked in Hollywood for a lot of years.
Always assumed that was an easier thing to say than to get into the weeds of all of the various kinds of jobs a person can have in Hollywood.
But now—now that I have more bandwidth, more brain power, more peace in my life—now, I’m wondering what that job is.
“Your lady-friend’s coming,” he says, nodding toward the fields.
I glance out too, spot Cricket and Lav and The Cluckinator, and I smile so big that my cheeks hurt. Couldn’t suppress it even if I wanted to.
“What’s it like living here?” Ten asks. “You get to fool around with all of the—urp. Uncle. Uncle. I take it back! I take it back.”
“Daddy, are you wrestling with Ten?” Lav calls.
“Yeah, we’re having a wrestling party,” I call back as I release my grip on Ten’s hand and let his fingers loose.
“We clear?” I add quieter to him.
He grins at me but still scoots further away. “Just giving you shit. I know you don’t fuck around here. Mabel wouldn’t tolerate it.”
“I wouldn’t tolerate it.”
“But Beetle?”
“Cricket?”
He grins broader. “Too easy, man. Too easy.”
I straighten and lean over the railing. “Hey, Cricket?”
She beams at me. “Yes?”
“Ten wants to drink another couple bottles of wine. Can you run over—”
He shoves me, I lose my balance, and suddenly I’m sprawled on the deck, laughing my ass off.
“You should stop by more often,” I tell Ten.
“Everything okay up there?” Cricket calls.
“Feeling left out,” I reply. “I’m making bad decisions.”
“The fun kind?”
“Yep.”
“Can I make bad decisions, Daddy?” Lav asks.
Oh, my baby girl, no. No, you cannot make bad decisions. “As long as you learn from them and don’t hurt anyone with them.”
Including—hell.
Including the cat, who’s stuck in her cat door, glaring at me.
Still with a little sparkle on her face that you can only see now when the sun hits her just right.
Fuck.
This is the life.
Chaos and unpredictability and imagination and giving friends shit and knowing that in another couple hours, I’ll be sneaking downstairs for grown-up time with Cricket?
Yeah.
It’s the life.
The best life.
“Mabel’s not the problem,” I tell Ten as I straighten myself and get back into my chair. “Mabel goes out of her way to take care of everyone else. You want to make up with her, figure out how to take care of her. Not how you can get her to take care of you too.”
“Pass,” he mutters.
I don’t know Ten super well, but I know him well enough.
And I have a feeling he’s listening.
That he’ll ponder.
That he’ll decide if he wants to be more friendly with his sister’s best friend, or if he wants to keep doing what’s easier.
Don’t know him well enough to know which way he’ll go, but I do believe he’s listening.
“Red wine or white wine, Ten?” Cricket calls up.
“Tequila,” he replies.
“Even better,” Cricket says. “I have a stash of that in my apartment. Be right up.”
“Fuck me,” Ten mutters. Then he grins. “Might as well though. Only get to pretend to be helpful for planning a wedding once. And if I’m hungover in the morning, Caro has to drive to the airport.”
To think I ever considered Cricket to be a mess.
She has nothing on Ten.
Never did.
She and Lav join us on the porch, Lav with flowers that she tells me she’s going to carry for the big wedding, Cricket with a pint-size bottle of tequila in one hand and a jug of margarita mix in the other.
“You gonna fake drinking this too?” Ten asks Cricket.
She grins. “Uh, yeah. Of course.”
I want to pull her into my lap and kiss her and hold her here with me and watch the sunset and talk to her and Lav about wedding plans and birthday party plans and dragons and ponies.
That?
That would be the perfect evening.
But what we have—this is pretty fucking good too.
Better than good.
It’s—fuck.
Shit.
It’s love.
That’s what this is.
I love my daughter.
I love my life.
And I love Cricket.
I smile to myself, knowing that all of my fucks and shits aren’t about being afraid. They’re not about a hard line I’ve drawn for myself about not dating.
They’re about how slow I’ve been to realize how much I’m madly in love with this woman who’s brought fun into my life while also being the friend I didn’t realize I needed.
She offers Ten the tequila bottle with a grin. “As ordered.”
“Fuck me,” he mutters.
“No, thank you,” she replies.
Lav squints at her.
And me?
I snicker, then grin at Cricket.
My Cricket.
My unexpected, gorgeous, funny, smart, big-hearted Cricket.
Yep.
This really is the life.