I grunt. “Where’s your love-muffin?”
He beams. “Chicago. Got a special invitation to a big show. And don’t think for a minute that me pulling out my phone to show you pictures means you’re off the hook and I’m forgetting about this conversation.”
“Sure.”
“Also, your landlady and I jointly ordered, like, six cords of wood, and she mentioned making sure her tenant had enough, since you’re ridiculous and insist on renting a place heated only with a woodburning stove all winter like we live in the Dark Ages. So you can rest easy that you won’t need to stock up on her behalf. Oooh, look. Have I shown you this outfit yet? He spent forty-six days tweaking it and driving me up the wall, but how awesome are those sequins?”
I pick up my beer and pretend I’m drinking it while Kory flips through photos.
I get it.
I hear him.
The problem with me and Maisey? It’s me. It’s all in my head. And the part that isn’t me isn’t something I can fix.
She’s not wrong to put June first.
She’s not wrong to put herself first.
So I’ll pull my head out of my ass, accept that I have the world’s largest crush on the world’s most unavailable woman, and that if I still feel the same way about her in two years that I do today, then maybe I’ll act on it.
But not a day before.
If I survive that long.
Chapter 18
Maisey
The day I decided to divorce Dean, I also decided I would never, ever, ever let another man into my head, my heart, or my vagina.
The day my mom was arrested, I realized just how much I needed to straighten out my priorities with Junie too.
So dealing with Flint Jackson and his constant presence in my life, in my head, and in my dirty fantasies is not convenient. He’s not my top priority. He’s not even in my top dozen priorities.
So I’m keeping him at arm’s length for Junie, and it’s a sacrifice I’ll happily make. Especially knowing it’s probably best for me long term anyway.
Even if it’s completely wearing me down to be back here, at the edge of the soccer field on a cold Saturday morning, watching as he huddles with the group of kids during a time-out in a very tight first playoff game in late October.
“How’s the dog situation?” I ask Charlotte, who’s beside me with a steaming coffee tumbler.
She huffs. “As expected, my ex thinks the dog’s better at my house, which means I now have five children to manage. But the kids love her. They really do. So it’s . . . just one more thing that one day will pay off when they spend all of their holidays with me instead of him.”
I lift a brow.
“I’m so tired, Maisey,” she whispers. “So fucking tired.”
I loop an arm through hers. “If you ever need to drop the pup off for doggy day care, I have this giant fenced-in part of my yard and enough cow patties left over that it won’t matter if there’s a pile of dog poo in the midst of it.”
“Do you know what I want?” she says.
“A week-long spa trip where you come home to a housekeeper and a chef?”
She laughs, but it’s strained. “I want to ride a horse. Just for, like, fifteen minutes. Until my thighs get chapped and I remember why I gave it up. But book club the other day? When Libby was talking about learning how to refinish her cabinets to freshen everything up once her twins leave for college? And Opal saying she’d always wanted to learn to play the flute? And Regina saying she could soak all day in the bathtub doing logic puzzles, because she’s a freak but we love her?”
“Mm-hmm,” I say.
“I want to ride a freaking horse.”
“I’ll call Kory next door to me. I’m positive he’d let you ride a horse.”
“But then I’d owe him a favor.”
“One, I doubt it. And two, he can cash it in with me.”
“I wish—” She stops herself, shaking her head.
“You wish?” I prompt.
Her nose wrinkles, and then she makes a face that I’m starting to recognize after hours and hours working with her on PTA things and soccer-team things and book club.
Discussion closed.
“I hate playing this team,” she says, sealing that we’re moving on. “It was Coach Jackson’s high school before he came back here a few years ago.”
“Isn’t your oldest a freshman?” I reply.
Far easier to deflect than to discuss Flint.
“Yes, but my niece graduated last year after four years of soccer, and my kids loved to watch her.” She wrinkles her nose. “Just look at them. Half of them are making eyes at him, and the other half look like they want to murder him.”
I peer across the soccer field to the area where the parents for the other team are standing.
And I think I can see what she’s talking about. “Why?” I ask before I can help myself.
I want to know.
God help me, I want to know. And I hope it’s bad so that he can go permanently on the bad guy list in my head, and then I can forget that he kisses like he invented kissing, and that his body feels like it was made to mold against mine, and that he spent an entire day cleaning out my uncle’s sex-toy collection before my daughter could find it.
And she did find the root cellar.
Yesterday, in fact.
Thank God she came running to tell me. When I was her age, running to tell my mom I’d found the perfect spot for a secret clubhouse would not have crossed my mind.
Charlotte takes an audible sip of her coffee, then sighs happily. “He left after a bad breakup with the PTA president.”
“What?”
“Mm-hmm. He noticed her son was falling asleep all the time in class, so he did what he does: reached out, tried to solve it, found out the mom had just quietly signed divorce papers, did that thing where he tells her he only screws around, but then found out . . . things . . . about her ex, got worried, but did that thing he does where he says he’s not getting involved, even though he clearly was, and things got ugly.”
I gape at her.
“The husband was into some illegal things,” she whispers. “I know nothing. Nothing at all.”
“You know everything.”
“It’s really not an interesting story.”
“Charlotte.”
“Wow, you’re really interested in small-town gossip.”
I take a gulp of my own coffee, which is way too hot, and scald everything from my tongue to the back of my throat. I rasp out a cough, my eyes watering.
Charlotte smirks over her own delicate sip.
“If there’s reason to be concerned about my tenant—” I start.
“No one’s buying that. And I saw how he looked at you when you pulled up with June.”
“I’m not dating.”
“And he doesn’t date students’ parents. Anymore.”
“That’s completely irrelevant.”
“You brought it up.”
“So we’re in enemy territory, even though we’re at home,” I say, desperately trying to get this train back on a track where I can find out everything I want to know without actually asking.
And that I don’t want to know.