Addison sighed and looked down at the invitation from the support group. Maybe she should check it out. She needed to make new friends. Or, at least, talk to other people with kids once in a while. Other people with kids besides Gabe Trahan. Because the less she thought about him and wondered about him—and his had-to-be-adorable son—the better.
“Hey, Addison, can I run something past you?”
Addison turned, swallowing her bite of praline before answering Elena. “Of course.”
Elena took a deep breath. “Do I smell pralines?”
Addison shifted to show the basket. “Yep.”
“Oh my God.” Elena took the praline Addison held out. “Are these from Gabe, too?”
Ugh, even hearing his name made her chest hurt. “No. They’re from a single-parents support group.” She held up the invitation.
“No kidding.” Elena took a bite of the maple candy and chewed. “You going to go?”
“Not sure. Maybe?”
“I could watch Stella for you.”
Addison forced a smile. “Oh, that’s okay. I have someone.”
“I haven’t seen her since you moved down here. I’d really love to have a pizza and movie night, Ad,” Elena said.
Addison bit her bottom lip. She and Elena had been close in college, but when Elena had moved to Louisiana, they’d drifted apart a bit. Elena came back to New York to visit her family regularly, and they always made time for lunch and to catch up, but they weren’t a part of each other’s daily lives. Elena had met Stella a few times. But she’d never babysat. Addison would never have asked her. Well, even if they were a part of each other’s daily lives.
“Then the three of us will have to set a date for a movie night,” Addison said with a smile. “We’d love to have you over. But you’re not babysitting for me. You’re a friend. I’d never take advantage of that.”
“It’s not taking advantage if I offer,” Elena told her.
“But it’s . . . awkward,” Addison said, unable to come up with a better word. “Don’t worry, I have a lady.” She moved to the other side of the desk. “What did you want to show me?”
“You have a lady?” Elena repeated, ignoring Addison’s question.
“I do. She watches Stella after school.”
“A stranger.”
“Well, yes, but I went through a referral service. She has references and a background check and I’m paying her.”
“So she has to do everything exactly your way,” Elena said.
And that made Addison pause. And think. She met her friend’s knowing gaze. And swallowed hard. Then she nodded. “Yeah.”
“I would do everything exactly how you wanted me to,” Elena told her.
“It’s just complicated when it gets personal,” Addison said. “I’m . . . picky. And I don’t want . . .”
“To be disappointed,” Elena filled in when Addison trailed off.
Addison sighed. “Yeah.”
“I’m not your ex.”
Addison shook her head. “I know. But I wanted help in the beginning. I was so overwhelmed. And who would be better than her father? If anyone was as dedicated as I was, it should have been him.”
“Of course it should have,” Elena agreed. “But he was an asshole. That doesn’t mean everyone else who ever has anything to do with Stella will be.”
“But it kind of means I have crappy asshole radar, doesn’t it?” Addison said with a small smile. She’d admit it—she’d been burned by wanting to involve someone else in Stella’s life, someone who should have loved her completely and who hadn’t held up his end of the bargain. It was so much easier to just do it herself. Or to get help from people she could fire if things didn’t go her way.
Elena laughed. “Well, we’ve all got at least one asshole who snuck past our security systems at some point.” Then she gave Addison an affectionate, if slightly worried, smile. “You have to give someone else a chance at some point.”
“Do I?” Addison asked. She wasn’t convinced she did.
Elena sighed. “Okay, fine. But my offer stands. Anytime.”
Addison relaxed slightly with that. “Okay. Thanks. And it’s me, not you. You know that, right?”
“I definitely know that,” Elena said with a nod.
Addison actually laughed at that. “Okay, so what did you come in here to show me?” Addison asked, hoping to steer the conversation away from the topic of how no one was good enough for her daughter. Probably even Addison.
Elena reached for another praline, but she held up the long cylindrical tube she’d brought in.
“I have a few plans for Trahan’s Tavern, but I’m not sure about the front windows.”
Even the mention of Gabe’s last name sent a shiver of awareness through Addison. “Sure, I’m happy to take a look.”
Elena unrolled the plans, and they spent the next few minutes discussing options for the front of the tavern as well as the ceiling and the inner doorways. Addison loved all the plans. Sure, she would have loved to be directly involved, but that was complicated. And Elena really was doing a beautiful job.
“When does the work start?” Addison asked as Elena returned the plans to the canister.
“Two weeks,” Elena said with a smile. “We’ll be working mostly in the morning so that we can avoid their busy times. We won’t need to shut the tavern down entirely for a few weeks, and then we hope to be able to get it all done in a few days.”
“That’s great. I’m sure Gabe and Logan appreciate that.”
Elena tipped her head. “He hasn’t said anything about the work?”
Addison forced a smile. “Gabe and I haven’t spoken since the day he was here for the initial meeting.”
“Ah.” Elena looked sympathetic. “I hope I didn’t have anything to do with that.”
“No. It was time to end things. It’s easier that way.”
Elena nodded. “How about we grab dinner? And maybe a couple of drinks? I’m a good listener.”
Addison appreciated the gesture. “I’m sorry, I can’t. I need to pick up Stella.”
“Oh, right. It’s so weird that you have a kid and I didn’t even know,” Elena said.
Addison nodded. “It does change my schedule up a bit.”
“I can imagine.” Elena didn’t make it sound like a good thing.
“But I promise I’ll always be available for client meetings and such.”
“I know,” Elena told her. “Just not for fun, right?” She gave Addison a smile.
Addison tried to return it but couldn’t quite. “Just a different kind of fun.”
“Right.” Elena clearly didn’t believe her.
Yeah, Addison probably needed some single-parent friends.
So, three days later, Addison was sitting with a cup of coffee in a circle of chairs with an eclectic but warm group of people who were happy to have her. Even though none of them knew who would have sent her a welcome basket of pralines.
That was odd, but Addison figured there must be a few people missing tonight. So far she’d met only nine members. There was Roxanne, a thirty-five-year-old divorcée with three kids, and Bea, a sixty-year-old who was raising her two grandsons, since her daughter had embezzled money from her employer and was now in prison for the next five years. There were also the two young girls—Lexi, who was seventeen with a three-month-old at home, and Ashley, the nineteen-year-old who had a little boy who was six months. The other two women were clearly very good friends, as they sat together, talking quietly. Dana and Lindsey were both twenty-seven, and each had two kids. Lindsey’s husband was deployed to the Middle East with the army, and Dana’s husband, Chad, had been with the same unit and had been killed in Iraq a year ago. And then there were the three men of the group. Caleb was thirty and was raising his sister’s daughter after she and her husband had been killed in a car accident. Austin was twenty-five and had an ex-wife and partial custody of his twin girls. And Corey was forty and had lost his wife to cancer, leaving him al
one with four kids.
Addison didn’t know who had sent the gift basket and invitation, but she was grateful to whoever it was. She already felt optimistic about meeting these people and hearing their stories. Surely in this group there was one other person who wasn’t supermom or -dad and didn’t have it all figured out. Hell, they were in a support group, right? That had to mean they had some doubts.
When it was her turn, Addison took a breath and gave the group a smile. “Well, I’ve never really been a part of a group like this. I just moved here with my daughter, Stella, and we don’t know many people locally. We’re just getting settled, and I got the invitation to the group and thought it would be a great way to meet some new people.”
Just then the door to the community center opened.
And everything suddenly made sense.
Gabe Trahan came striding into the room, big and gorgeous and acting as if he owned the place. Every member of the group greeted him enthusiastically, making it clear that this was hardly his first meeting.
And when his eyes met hers, Addison felt a flutter of butterflies in her stomach. He looked so good. And she’d missed him. God, that was stupid. She’d gone three weeks at a time without seeing him for the past six months. It had been only a little more than a week since their lunch. But she hadn’t planned on seeing him again at all. That had to be why this separation had felt different.
She didn’t let on how affected she was, though. She gave him a you’ve-got-to-be-kidding-me look. He simply grinned. Which only intensified the swooping in her stomach.
And she realized that she should have been expecting this. Gabe Trahan was not the type of guy to give up on something easily. Knowing him only a short time had already showed her that. He came off as laid-back and just out for a good time, but there was an intensity below the surface. A drive that showed in his bar . . . and the bedroom. Even in how he ate beignets. He insisted that standing in line and people watching was a part of the experience at Café du Monde, and he’d soaked it up each time. Even though he’d had hundreds of them in the past, he’d dived in as if every one was the first beignet he’d ever tasted, and he asserted that if you didn’t leave with powdered sugar dusting your clothes, you hadn’t done it right. He was all about getting the whole experience out of something—every last ounce of pleasure.
Why she’d thought he might let go of the idea of happily ever after between them just because she’d asked him to, she had no idea.
“Hey, everyone,” Gabe greeted, scraping a chair back out of the circle and dropping into it. “Sorry I’m late.”
“We have a new member,” Bea told him brightly. “Addison, this is Gabe.”
Addison lifted a brow at Gabe. Were they going to let everyone in on the fact that they knew each other and that he was the reason she was here?
“Hey, Addison, welcome,” Gabe said. “What’s your story?”
She narrowed her eyes. Okay, so no. “Got knocked up by an idiot six years ago, and now my life is peanut butter and crayons and wondering where I put my brain and if it’s too early to drink. You know, the usual.”
There was a beat of silence, and then Gabe grinned and the rest of the group started laughing.
“I like you,” Roxanne told her.
Addison smiled, too. But the thing was . . . it was all true. And a thought occurred to her. Gabe had gotten her here. And now that she’d met everyone else, she kind of wanted to stay. But she couldn’t go soft with him. She couldn’t let him talk her into thinking that their being together was a good idea. She couldn’t let him get too close. So she needed to show him exactly what she was like as a mother so he didn’t get this fairy-tale idea going strong.
“Well, I have to be honest,” she said to the group, meeting Gabe’s eyes in particular, “at least with other parents who might understand. I didn’t sign up for this Mom thing. I hadn’t really given motherhood a thought. I was only twenty-four when I got pregnant. I had a lot of plans and dreams, and none of them included cleaning up another person’s poop. I looked at moms with kids throwing tantrums at Target and pretty much thought, Well, that’s your own fault. I had never actually thought about how I tie shoes, and certainly never thought about how to teach that skill to someone else. And I definitely never realized how damned frustrating it could be watching another human unable to make loops out of shoestrings. And I swear, if I never hear the words goodnight moon again in my life, I’ll be very, very happy.”
Several of the eyes in the group were wide and round. But Roxanne and Bea and Austin were all nodding.
“So I guess I need to know,” Addison said, looking around the circle but again landing on Gabe, “is this the kind of group where I can say that stuff, or is it the kind of group where we only talk about how amazing our kids are and how great we’re doing?”
No one said anything for a second. Then Caleb said, “I hate The Very Hungry Caterpillar.” Everyone looked over at him, and he shrugged. “I know that’s probably a huge insult to all children’s literature or something, but I hid the book last week for a few days because I just couldn’t read it again.”
“I would really love for someone to explain to me why you can put cheese on a burger and it’s fine, but if you put hamburger in macaroni and cheese, suddenly the world is ending,” Austin spoke up.
“I didn’t even feed my kids dinner for two days last week,” Roxanne said, sitting back with her arms crossed. She looked around the circle. “Oh, come on, they’re fourteen, twelve, and ten. There was food in the house. I just didn’t make it. They had to eat sandwiches and canned soup. Big deal. But they were being horrible brats about the food I was making, so I decided to make them think about what I do for them a little bit.”
“But they’re our kids,” Dana interjected. “We’re supposed to do stuff for them, right? And yes, they take us for granted, but that’s just kind of the way it is, isn’t it?”
Roxanne nodded. “Sure. I mean, of course we’re supposed to do stuff for them. But I think it’s perfectly fine to teach them to be thankful for it. I don’t need praise and glory all the time, but I also don’t need to get shit from them when I’ve been working all day and then rush home to make dinner for them.” She shrugged. “And mine are older than yours. I don’t know if you can expect a four-year-old to totally understand, but a fourteen-year-old? Oh yeah, he can learn to be a little appreciative.”
“I agree,” Bea said. “We have to teach them to consider other people’s feelings, and that should include ours.”
“I don’t know,” Lindsey said from beside Dana. “We’re their parents. I mean, even if they don’t say please and thank you, we still have to take care of them.” She looked over at Addison. “But I did sign up for this, so maybe that’s why it’s different.”
Oh boy, so Addison hadn’t made a friend in Lindsey. She opened her mouth, but Roxanne got there first.
The other woman sat forward in her chair. “Well, I signed up for it, too. In fact, it took us more than a year to get pregnant with our third. But that doesn’t mean that I have to like my kids every second of every day or that I never think they’re brats. I love them, completely. And I’ll protect them from everything—including turning into little assholes.”
Addison felt her eyes widen, and she realized that everyone else in the group seemed equally surprised. Okay, so maybe this group wasn’t about blatant honesty and they did focus more on the positive and encouraging. And maybe she’d just broken it.
But a moment later, Caleb said, “I cut Shay’s hair the other day because I can’t, no matter what I do, figure out how to do a good braid or ponytail. And every time I try, she gets mad because it looks terrible, and she cries for an hour. After I cut it, she cried for six hours. But I’m not even sorry.”
Roxanne gave him a grin, and even Lindsey laughed lightly at that.
Lexi, one of the teens, said, “I’ll teach you how to braid.”
Caleb gave her a half smile. “You braiding her hair when you
babysat was what started the whole thing.”
Lexi laughed. “Sorry. Tell you what, you have me babysit this weekend, and I’ll convince her that her short hair is super cute and awesome.”
Caleb’s smile stretched, and he nodded. “Deal.”
Something squeezed in Addison’s chest, and because she couldn’t seem to help it, she looked across the circle at Gabe. Who was watching her. With a smile. He gave her a single nod that somehow she knew meant “Everything’s okay.” How she knew that’s what it meant, she couldn’t say, and how he knew that she’d been worried that things were not okay, she didn’t know, but she strongly felt that momentary connection with him.
“Okay, so in summary,” Roxanne said, allowing Addison to tear her eyes from Gabe and focus on the other woman, “all kids can be jerks sometimes, and we love them anyway, and we have to keep feeding them and brushing their hair, but we don’t have to always put up with their shit. And we don’t have to be sorry when we don’t.”
“Amen,” Bea said.
“Amen,” Austin agreed with a smile.
Lindsey and Dana didn’t add their agreement, but they also didn’t argue.
“Okay, what else?” Corey asked the group. “Anyone have anything they want to talk about?”
Gabe shifted forward on his chair, resting his forearms on his thighs. “I do.”
Everyone immediately focused on him, and Addison almost rolled her eyes. It was very obvious that everyone here loved Gabe.
“Great. What’s going on?” Corey asked.
“Well, as you know, there’s this woman I’ve been seeing.”
What? Addison felt her stomach flip. He was going to talk about her? Right now? In front of her? And “as you know” indicated he’d already talked about her with this group. Oh boy. She bit her bottom lip and vowed to just stay quiet and not react to whatever was about to come. But this was low. Really low.
“The woman from New York?” Corey asked.
They even knew where she was from? Addison tried to remember if she’d mentioned where she’d moved from when she’d introduced herself.
Going Down Easy (Boys of the Big Easy) Page 8