I beat Nolan there by fifteen minutes. When Katie happily runs through our front door, she’s squealing with delight to see us there and waiting for us. I scoop her up for a hug and kiss before handing her off to Zoey, who takes her into her room.
Nolan’s wearing a nervous smile when he follows Katie inside a few moments later. Zoey’s already taken Katie to her new room and showing her around.
“Deep breaths, Daddy,” I whisper to him, clapping him on the shoulder.
He nods and heads down the hall to dump his stuff, remembering at the last moment to detour into “his” room to drop his things on his bed, and not in our bedroom.
Hard habit to break.
I stand in the doorway, watching them. As much as I love seeing Katie happy, I’m even happier to see my beautiful wife’s brilliant smile.
It’s been…a while. A long while. Over two years, definitely.
“What do you think?” I ask Katie.
“I love it, Uncle Arlo!” She runs over to hug me again. “Daddy said we’re gonna get a pool!”
“Yep, we sure will.”
Lucas emerges from his room and joins me in the doorway, and Katie squeals again as she runs over to hug him. “Lucas!”
“Hey, squirt,” he teases. “So I hear someone’s going to need some swimming lessons soon, huh?”
She jumps up and down. “Yay, swimming! I can’t wait to tell Mommy!”
I hope I don’t wince. “How about we take care of getting you changed into play clothes first,” I suggest. “And do you have homework?” Hell, she’s in first grade, but the charter school she attends is heavy on STEAM curriculum, and she almost always has at least one assignment to complete every night.
“Oh, yeah!” She opens her backpack and pulls out a word puzzle sheet that shouldn’t take her long to complete. Nolan reads with her every day, and even last year in kindergarten when they tested her they found she was reading at a second-grade level.
Whew. That distraction helped dodge the inevitable for a little while.
“We’ll let you get changed,” I tell her as I nudge Lucas and motion for him to head out first.
“Okay!”
I pull the door closed behind us. “Smooth move,” he softly teases.
* * * *
The new world order remains a secret until Saturday afternoon, when Katie asks to call Jerilyn while we’re all sitting out in the back yard in the shade. Lucas and Caine are there, too. I’d picked up one of those plastic kiddie pools for Katie, and we set up a sprinkler for her to play with, and we’ll be grilling burgers shortly.
Nolan has a personal policy that I agree with in theory but wish he was a little less noble over enforcing—if Katie asks to call her mom, he lets her. Unless it’s a situation like he’s driving and can’t do it, at that time.
It’s also in their divorce decree for that to happen, although it seems like Katie spontaneously calls Nolan less frequently than she calls Jerilyn.
I can’t help but wonder if Jerilyn interferes with Katie calling Nolan, because I wouldn’t put it past the bitch.
The five of us—including Caine—all exchange a nervous look as Katie holds the phone and waits for it to connect.
Katie doesn’t even ease into it. With all the enthusiasm of a six-year-old, she immediately blasts into a greeting and telling her all about them now living with us, and makes our future house sound like it’s going to be a unicorn-filled castle, even though we haven’t even drawn the first rough sketch yet.
After about ten minutes of non-stop chatter, she pauses. “Okay, Mommy. Love you! Here’s Daddy.” She turns to Nolan. “She wants to talk to you.”
“Thank you, sweetie.” Katie runs back to the sprinkler.
He’s looking at me as he answers. “Yeah?” I see him tense up, and realize Zoey’s absolutely right. Whenever he’s got to talk to Jerilyn on the phone, he always gets this tight, pinched look on his face.
“Because it’s been a busy week, and I honestly didn’t think about telling you before now. Yes, our new address is Arlo and Zoey’s. You have that. … Because it’s going to save me a lot of money, and because they’re—” He closes his eyes and pinches the bridge of his nose. “Not your call, Jerilyn,” he says, and I silently cheer as I hear him get testy with her.
“I didn’t owe you advanced warning about this. I’m closer to her school, her school hasn’t changed, and she hasn’t even been here a full twenty-four hours yet. Our divorce decree says seventy-two hours. … That’s right, I did talk to my attorney. I was going to let you know later this weekend, and—”
He meets my gaze and I can see him struggling not to throw his damn phone. “Jerilyn,” he says, his tone dropping into a deeper register. “I don’t owe you any explanations about my thought processes. I also don’t report to you about my whereabouts when Katie’s not with me. That’s not your business. I have four witnesses sitting here listening to me tell you Katie’s new official address is Arlo and Zoey’s address. Consider yourself notified. I’ll follow up with an e-mail and text as soon as we end this conversation. Which is about to happen now, unless you have something else?”
Apparently not, because he suddenly looks at his phone, as if checking to see if the call dropped. “Bitch,” he mutters after glancing over his shoulder to make sure Katie’s out of earshot.
“She pissed?” I can’t hold back my grin.
He snorts. “When isn’t she?” He taps out a text, copies it, and sends it, presumably to her. Then he swipes into his e-mail and pastes the same message into it and hits send.
“There,” he mutters when he finishes. “Consider yourself notified, bitch.”
Zoey is practically beaming, and she winks at him. “Good job, you,” she says. “You handled that well and without screaming. I’m proud of you.”
He sighs. “I’m proud of me, too. I really wanted to throw my phone.”
Chapter Eleven
Zoey
Our attorneys put their heads together and come up with a stack of paperwork to create a trust, update our wills, give us all power of attorney over each other—all of that.
This shit is really real now.
When the new debit cards arrive for our joint account, I can’t help grinning when I tuck it into my wallet.
And which woman has two thumbs and stupidly stood there smiling over our new checks, which had all three of our names on them?
Yep. This chick, right here.
Not even going to lie about it.
We’re three days into our third week living together when the first hiccup occurs. Last week was Katie week at our house, but our weekend without Katie got borked because they needed Arlo at work all day Saturday and most of Sunday, thanks to some idiot fucking up their accounting system. He had to help them manually process financial applications old-school style.
So we’re going to have an adults’ night tonight.
And of course the fact that Lucas is spending the evening with Caine over at his house, leaving me and my guys free to plan some fun of our own tonight, means that I wake up already feeling a migraine trying to stomp its way into my brain.
Damnit.
It’s probably due to the weather front that moved into the area overnight, bringing rain and a change in the barometer.
Arlo and Nolan have already left for the morning by the time I roll out of bed and head to the kitchen for coffee. Nolan left at an obscenely early time because he had to drive down to Ft. Myers for meetings, and Arlo left early to hit the gym before work, because a kid-free evening means he’d rather be doing push-ups in bed with us instead of at the gym.
That afternoon, I’m sitting at my desk in the office, where I’m still not quite winning the battle against one hell of a migraine, when my cell phone rings.
It’s Jerilyn.
For a moment, I consider not answering it. Then I remember that the only reason I have her number in my phone is in case there’s an emergency with Katie. Arlo and I are listed as emergency
contacts with Katie’s school, and have been since they first enrolled her in Pre-K. We have permission to pick Katie up if Nolan and Jerilyn can’t.
With my gut tensing, and knowing I’m probably going to regret this, I reach out and answer her call in speaker mode. “Hello?”
She sounds like she’s in a rush. “Zoey, oh my god! Thank you! I need you to do me a huge favor.”
I close my eyes and sit back as I pinch the bridge of my nose with my other hand. “What’s going on?”
“I have to fly out to LA. It’s an emergency. Eh, work. I have to leave for Tampa in forty-five minutes if I’m going to make my flight. I just called Nolan’s cell, but he didn’t answer. Then, when I called his work, they said he’s out of the office, and…”
By the time I get off the phone with Jerilyn five minutes later, I’m feeling pissed off, in addition to battling this damn migraine.
Of course I didn’t let on to her that I’m pissed off.
In fact, I think I should get a cookie for pretending as well as I did.
I get up and walk out front to tell them I’m leaving early for a family emergency, and then hurry to gather my stuff. I’ll have just enough time to meet Jerilyn and get Katie’s things from her, and to make it back down to Katie’s school in time to pick her up.
So much for our evening alone tonight without Lucas.
Then again, with my headache, it probably would have meant me watching my two guys having fun while I laid there and tried not to puke.
As it is, driving under a tight deadline is going to be…interesting.
When I pull into the parking lot of the Target, where we’re meeting, Jerilyn immediately jumps out of her car and heads to her trunk as soon as she sees me, before I even get parked next to her.
Then she’s practically throwing Katie’s things at me. “Thanks for this!”
“Wait, how long are you going to be gone?” There’s way more here than for just a couple of nights. I mean, we’ve got quite a bit at our place, but there’s a large suitcase and several plastic grocery bags full of clothes, toys, a few favorite stuffed animals, and other items.
“I don’t know. At least a week, maybe two.”
“Must be something bad, huh?”
“What? Oh, yeah. It’s a clusterfuck.” She grabs another suitcase from her trunk and hands it over.
“What if we need something for her from your place while you’re gone? Does someone have a key to let us in?”
She winces. “Good point. Here.”
And she starts removing her key from her keyring and hands that to me.
I force myself to take it. The last thing I want is a key to our boyfriend’s ex-wife’s condo.
Not that she knows he’s our boyfriend. That’s totally beside the point. Life is, in fact, infinitely easier for all of us if she doesn’t know he’s our boyfriend.
“Thanks!” she says. Then, with a hug I’m still trying to process, she practically dives into her car and heads out.
Well, shit.
In all the years I’ve been forced to interact with Jerilyn, I think I can count on both hands with fingers to spare the number of times she’s hugged me.
I take a moment to rearrange everything in my car. Then I move my car, parking closer to the store, and go inside. I’m going to need caffeine and Excedrin to help knock this headache back into functioning range. I grab a bag of cheese sticks, too, hoping the protein will help keep my stomach settled so I don’t have to pull over and puke.
I make it to Katie’s school on time, fortunately, but I’m nowhere near the front of the pick-up line. She spots me immediately and runs to my car, yanking the back passenger-side door open. “Hi Aunt Zoey!”
“Hello, sweetheart. Surprise.”
She leans over the back of my seat to hug me before buckling her seat belt. “Why are you picking me up today?”
“Your mom had to go out of town for work suddenly.” I hand her my cell phone, with her mom’s phone number already queued and ready to go. “Here, you can call her.”
After a five-minute call, Katie returns my phone and settles in. “When will Daddy get home?”
“I don’t know for sure, honey. He had to drive down to Ft. Myers for work stuff.”
We’re almost home when my phone rings from Nolan’s number. I almost hand the phone over to Katie, but then I remember Nolan won’t necessarily realize it’s Katie answering and not me, and he’s the king of X-rated greetings with us.
“Hey,” I say. “Talk to Katie.” I hand the phone back to her and she starts excitedly chattering away at him about this unexpected change of plans.
I don’t need to see Nolan’s face to know he’s now likely feeling as mixed about this as I am.
Yay, Katie time.
Boo, bye-bye adult time.
I mean, maybe I shouldn’t be greedy. We finally get to live together. We get to go to sleep next to each other every night now. That’s more than I ever thought would happen.
Katie finishes talking to him and taps me on the shoulder with my phone. “He wants to talk to you, Aunt Zoey.”
I take the phone back. “So,” I start. “Change of plans for tonight.”
He sighs. “Sorry, sweetheart. I’ll make it up to you. I’ll wrap things up as soon as I can and head home.”
I glance in the rearview mirror at my passenger. “We’re okay. I need to get rid of this headache. I’ve been fighting a migraine all day, so tonight likely would’ve been borked for me, regardless.” At least Katie sleeps like the dead. Once she’s down for the night, we’ll get to power cuddle. Or…something.
Well, Nolan and Arlo will, for sure.
“Yikes. I really owe you, don’t I?”
I make the final turn onto our street. “I earned cookies.”
He chuckles. “I’ll hit the store before I come home.”
“Homemade cookies.” He really is a damned good cook. Plus he’s got a chocolate chip cookie recipe that was his grandmother’s, and he fucking nails them perfectly every time.
“That’s what I meant,” he says. “I’m no dummy. Love you.”
“Love you, too.” It’s out of my mouth before I even realize I’m saying it. It’s automatic now. I end the call and glance in the rearview mirror.
Shit.
Of course I can’t be lucky enough that Katie didn’t hear. She’s looking right at me. I’m turning into our driveway when she asks it.
“Aunt Zoey, do you love Daddy?”
I go for honesty. It’ll be the easiest position to defend later. “Yes, honey, I do. I love Daddy, and I love you. Uncle Arlo and I both do. And Daddy loves us. We’re really close friends, like adopted family.”
I hope that’s enough, but she’s not quite finished. “Last time I was here, I saw Daddy kiss Uncle Arlo.”
That nearly makes me swallow my tongue. I try to figure out a way to salvage this. “And? I kiss Daddy, too. We’ve been friends a long time. Sometimes, when friends are close, they kiss hello or good-bye.”
“Is Daddy going to live with you and Uncle Arlo from now on? Or will we move again?”
I shift the car into park and unfasten my seat belt. Let’s just do this now, matter-of-factly, and get it over with. If we make a big deal over it, or act freaked out, it’ll make it that much bigger of a deal in her mind.
“We’re going to build the new house. Remember we talked about that? Then, the three of us, and Lucas, will live there. And you’ll have a bigger bedroom for when you come to visit us. We’ll also have a pool at the new house.”
At least she doesn’t seem weirded out about any of this. “I asked Mommy a couple of weeks ago if she wanted Daddy to move back in with her.”
Shit shit shit. “And?”
“She said no.”
Does it make me a horrible person that relief fills me over that news? “Why did you ask her that?”
Katie shrugs. “I was curious. One of my friends, her parents fight all the time. They were going to get divorced,
but then her dad moved back in. Now she’s sad because they still fight. I don’t think Mommy and Daddy should live together. They fight too much when they’re together. They aren’t like you and Uncle Arlo. I don’t think Mommy likes Daddy very much.”
Even more relief fills me. “Sometimes, adults start out in a relationship, and it’s only later that they realize it won’t work out. Like me and Lucas’ father. Doesn’t make either person a bad person, it just makes them…different.”
Although, in the case of Lucas’ father, Bill is definitely a shitty human being.
That particular convo can wait until Katie’s an adult, though.
I shut the car off. “Let’s get your stuff inside so you can do your homework, okay?” Arlo won’t be home from work for probably at least an hour.
“Okay.”
Fortunately for me, that seems to be the end of her curiosity.
For now.
But I know the three of us—myself, Arlo, and Nolan—will have to sit down and have a talk about presenting a united front. We’ll need to make sure we’re careful around Katie. I don’t want to do anything to cost Nolan a renewed custody battle. He’s a good father, and he loves Katie.
As much as I hate Jerilyn, the one good thing about her is that she gave him Katie, which is something I never could have done. She’s a bonus daughter for me and Arlo, and I don’t resent her presence in Nolan’s life.
I just resent her mother, and how she’s treated Nolan over the years. Maybe even more because I still bear my emotional scars from Bill.
We’ve finished unloading the car when Arlo calls me. “I just heard,” he says.
“Yeah, change of plans.”
“I’m ducking out early. He told me you’re working on a headache. Why didn’t you text me?”
“I was moving too fast.” Katie is in her room, so I drop my voice. “I told Nolan I wanted homemade cookies.”
That makes him laugh. “Going straight for the jugular, huh?”
“Need to get something good out of today.”
“Don’t worry about cooking tonight,” he says. “I’ll call in Chinese and go pick it up when he’s close.”
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