Southern Chance

by Natasha Madison

  “Okay.” I don’t know if she’s asking me or telling me.

  “I’m making mac and cheese, and, well, it’s not really mac and cheese without the bread crumbs.” She throws up her hands. “I’m going to need your keys.”

  “For?” I ask and look at Ethan, who is pretending not to laugh at Kallie freaking out.

  “For?” she says. “Did you not just hear what I said? I need bread crumbs.”

  I shake my head, and I want to tell her that it’s going to be fine without it, but I’m not going to add fuel to that fire. “My keys are in the truck.”

  “Okay, I’ll be back.” She turns off the stove. “Ethan.” She looks at him. “What’s your favorite dessert?”

  “Um,” Ethan looks at me and then looks at Kallie, “apple crumble pie.”

  “Okay,” she says, “I’ll see what I can do.” She turns and walks out of the house, slamming the door behind her.

  “Um, Dad,” Ethan says, “is she going to bake me a pie?”

  “Kiddo.” I look at him. “I have no idea.”

  “She’s jumpy,” he says to me, and I look at him.

  “She’s nervous,” I say. “She was nervous to meet you.”

  “Why?” he asks. I tap my fingers on the table.

  “Well, she knows how important you are to me,” I say.

  “And she wants me to like her.” He nods at me as though he’s solved the puzzle.

  “Yeah, kiddo.” I lean over and kiss his head. “She wants you to like her.”

  “She’s pretty,” he says.

  “She is,” I agree with him. “She’s always been.” I grab my wallet and take out a picture that I’ve kept hidden in the back. It’s frayed at the edges and the color has changed from glossy to a yellow tint. “This was us.” I show him the picture we took on prom night. The only one I had on my phone.

  “You were so small.” Ethan jokes with me. “You got guns, Dad.”

  “Who taught you that?” Laughing, I take the picture back from him and put it back in my wallet, right behind the picture of Gabriel.

  “Uncle Beau,” he says, and I shake my head.

  “Anyway, kiddo, if you can do me a favor and give her a chance, you’ll see how awesome she really is,” I say softly, and I’m about to say something else when the door opens and slams closed, and she comes rushing in with a glass plate in her hand.

  “Okay, I got the bread crumbs,” she huffs. Going to the stove, she turns it on. “And the only thing my mom had was apple pie, but she’s going to make you apple crumble pie tomorrow so we can have it then.” She looks at Ethan. “Or you can have it all yourself,” she says and points at the apple pie in front of her.

  “Your mom made apple pie?” Ethan asks.

  “She has this huge freezer where she puts all her baked stuff in, and she told me that all I had to do is put this in the oven for an hour, and it’ll be perfect.” She looks like she is flustered, and I get up and walk over to her.

  “Baby,” I say, and she just looks at me like she is going to cry.

  “I’m ruining it,” she whispers. “I’m ruining everything.”

  I hold her face in my hands and wipe away the tears that come down her cheeks. I can see she was crying before she got into the house. “Baby, nothing is ruined,” I say. “Will you come and sit down with us so my boy can meet you, please?”

  “But I have to make dinner for him,” she says. “He’s a growing boy, Jacob.” She looks down. “The way to a man’s heart is through his stomach.”

  “I love you,” I say, kissing her.

  “Jacob, you just kissed me, and Ethan is here,” she says.

  “He needs to get used to it,” I say. The timer goes off, so I let my hands fall from her face.

  She turns and goes to put the pasta in the water, and I go back to the table to help Ethan, who just smiles at me. “She is going to make me pie tomorrow,” he says.

  “Yeah, kiddo, she will,” I say, and she makes us mac and cheese. She tops it with bread crumbs and bakes it at the same time as the pie.

  “I forgot vegetables,” she says, putting her hand to her head.

  “Good,” Ethan says, and I shake my head when the oven buzzes.

  “Go wash up, please,” Kallie says to me, and Ethan pushes away from the table, putting away his homework and walking into the little bathroom on the side to wash his hands. “Can you get me three plates, please?” she asks, and I walk over and grab three plates for her. I look at the baked mac and cheese and lean in to kiss her neck.

  She scoops out three plates and leaves it to sit for a second to cool off while she sets the table. “Where does everyone sit?” She looks at me, not wanting to sit in Ethan’s or my place and it be awkward.

  I’m about to tell her that she can sit anywhere when Ethan pipes in. “I sit here.” He points at the chair where he was just sitting in to do his homework. “And Dad sits there.” His hand moves to the head of the table. “And Grandma sits here.” He points at the chair next to him. “You can sit in front of me and next to Dad.”

  She looks at him with a smile. “That sounds like a good plan.”

  He gets in his chair, and Kallie puts his plate down in front of him and another plate down where I’m going to sit. I wait for her to get her own plate and come to the table. She sits down and looks at me. “Do we say grace?”

  Again, Ethan pipes up. “I can say grace,” he says, and we join hands. “Bless this food that Kallie made and bless the apple pie.”

  I try not to laugh, and we all say, “Amen.”

  Dinner goes smoothly even though Kallie barely eats anything. She just pushes things around on her plate, and I look at her when Ethan asks for a second serving. She’s about to get up when I put my hand on hers. “I’ll get it. You eat.” I point at her, and she smiles tightly.

  Ethan tells her all about football and the positions he plays, and he tells her about his favorite subject in school, which is gym, and how he hates math. When he finishes eating his two plates, he brings his plate over to the sink and puts it on the counter. “Can we have pie now?”

  “How about you go take a shower and let the pie cool?” I say, and he starts to frown.

  “I think it’ll be better cooler,” Kallie says, getting up. “This way, the ice cream won’t melt when I put the scoop on it.”

  His eyes go big. “Ice cream and pie?”

  Kallie throws up her hands. “Well, yeah, silly, how else do you eat apple pie?”

  “Not like that,” he says and looks at me. “Why haven’t I had it like that?”

  “I have no idea,” I say and then look at Kallie, who is putting the dishes in the dishwasher, “but go shower, and we can have it.”

  He hops and skips to his bathroom, and I count, “Five, four, three, two, one,” and point when he says my name.

  “Dad, come turn on the water.” I get up and walk over to Kallie first.

  “Coming!” I yell down the hall. “You didn’t eat,” I tell Kallie, and she just shrugs.

  “I thought I was going to throw up I was so nervous.” She looks at me, and I see the tears in her eyes. “He’s perfect.”

  “Yeah,” I admit. “It’s why I know what I did was wrong, but why I can’t regret it. If I regret it, I regret him, and I can’t do that.” No matter how much I wanted to hate Savannah for doing what she did, I couldn’t hate her because of Ethan. It was a very tight line, and no matter how many times I wanted to hate her, I couldn’t do that to Ethan.

  “You’re a good man,” she says. “I may sometimes want to kill you, but a good man none the same.”

  I’m about to lean in and kiss her when Ethan yells my name again. “I’m naked, and things are shrinking, Dad!”

  She rolls her lips. “I’m going to clean up.” She kisses my lips. “You make sure things don’t shrink.”

  “I love you, Kallie,” I say, and she looks me in the eyes.

  “I love you, too, Jacob.” She says the words quietly and then leans in t
o kiss me one more time before I go off and make sure my son is okay.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Kallie

  “I’m not staying,” I hiss at Jacob when he takes my purse, my phone, and my shoes away from me. “What if Ethan wakes up?”

  “Then he will call my name,” he says.

  We just had the best dinner ever. Sure, I had a mini freak-out and rushed to my mother’s house and had a panic attack on her couch while I made her get me bread crumbs and a fucking apple pie. I didn’t know if she had it or not. If she didn’t, she would just have had to make one and deliver it to me because there was no way I would have let Ethan not have apple pie.

  I didn’t eat much since the nerves in my stomach were all over the place. I kept holding my breath and waiting for him to tell me he hates me and that no one is going to love his dad. But none of that happened; it was the opposite. He sat there with a huge smile on his face the whole time, while he ate two huge plates of my mac and cheese. And then when he took a shower and came out in his pjs, I wanted to hug him and smell his hair. Instead, I blinked away the tears, watching Jacob be a dad. I always knew he would be a great father, but seeing it is so much more.

  We ate apple pie, which is now Ethan’s favorite, and he asked if he could bring a piece to school tomorrow, so I already cut and packed it for his lunch. I sat listening to Ethan rehearse his nighttime story, and just when I thought my heart couldn’t get fuller than it was before, it almost explodes.

  Jacob comes to the couch after turning off the lights, and he lies down and takes me with him. After kissing and him holding me and me almost falling asleep, I got up and got ready to go, except he was hijacking all my stuff.

  “Jacob, please,” I beg, and he grabs my hand, turning and walking to the kitchen where he turns off all the lights except for the light on the stove and then walks to his bedroom. “I don’t think this is a good idea.”

  “I think we are thinking too much, and we should get into bed.” He tosses my things down on the bench in front of the bed. “How is this? I will set the alarm for six thirty.” I fold my arms over my chest. “Okay, fine, six because I want to get some loving before Ethan gets up at seven.”

  “Oh, no way, mister,” I say, shaking my head. “It’s one thing for me to sleep here but something else entirely for us to have sex here with your son five feet away from us.” I point at the door. “This is not even an option.”

  “Let’s play it by ear.” He winks at me, and I just roll my eyes. “Do you want to shower first, or should we?”

  “I’m not even going to give you an answer to that question,” I say, and he goes to the bag and takes all my stuff with him. “What are you doing?”

  “I’m not leaving your stuff out in the open where you can run.” He laughs. “Just be happy I’m not cuffing you to the bed.” The door closes behind him, and I sit on the bed to wait for him to get out of the shower. He walks out with a towel around his waist and shirtless, and I don’t even think I can stick by my no sex with Ethan in the house. “Your turn,” he says, and I get up, but he stops me and kisses me. My hand goes to his tattoo of Gabriel’s footprint. I lean forward and kiss the scab. “Love you, Kallie,” he says, and I just nod at him, then go to the shower.

  When I finally finish in the bathroom, I’m expecting to find him in bed waiting for me, but what I find is him in bed snoring softly. I walk to the bed and turn off the light, sliding in with him. He must feel me get into the bed because his hands reach out and pull me to him. “Night, baby,” he mumbles, and even though I want to hold out, I follow him into sleep.

  It’s crazy how easy we get into a routine of waking up at six with a soft alarm, and even though I held out the first day with no sex, it’s a losing battle the next day when he wakes me with his mouth between my legs. I cover my mouth when I come on his face, and when he flips me over and slides into me from behind, I bury my face into the pillow. By the time the seven o’clock alarm rings for Ethan, we are showered and sitting at the island while I drink coffee, and he reads his emails. I help Jacob prepare lunch for Ethan and clean up, getting into the car at the same time. I make dinner for us while he does homework with Ethan.

  “Kallie.” Ethan calls my name while I’m frying chicken steak.

  “Yeah, buddy?” I look over at him.

  “Will you be at my game tomorrow?” he asks. I know he has a game because it’s all he was talking about.

  “Of course she’s going to be there,” Jacob says from beside me now.

  “Cool. Maybe we can all go for ice cream after,” he says and looks down at his homework.

  “Um,” Jacob says from beside me, and I shake my head, not wanting Ethan to sense anything.

  Dinner is normal, but my nerves are setting in. When I get up to clean up in the middle of dinner, Jacob looks up at me and continues to eat, and luckily, Ethan doesn’t sense anything.

  After dinner, it’s the same routine except I don’t wait on the couch for him. Instead, I take a shower, and when I get out, he’s waiting for me on the bed. “What’s the matter?”

  “Is Ethan asleep?” I ask, and he nods. “I’m not sure how I fit in with all this.” I say the truth. “I know how I fit in here.” I use my finger in a circle. “I know where I fit in this”—I point at him and me—“but out there, I don’t know how I fit in.”

  “Kallie,” he says, not coming to me, “there is nothing to doubt when it comes to me and you. In here or out there. I want you beside me every single day, for every single event.” He walks to me now. “I never want you to doubt us ever. Never again.” He grabs my face, and I put my hands on his.

  “People are already talking,” I say. “My mother has been fielding calls and when she went out the other day, she got stopped and—”

  “And after tomorrow, it’ll be old news,” he whispers. “You know how it goes, Kallie. In two days, something else will be the talk of the town.”

  “I guess,” I say, looking down. I give him a fake smile, and he knows it.

  The next day when he drops me off, I walk into the house, and even Olivia knows something is off. “I have to run an errand,” I say, looking at my watch and seeing that it’s a little after two.

  “Going anywhere I should know about?” She wiggles her eyebrows at me. “Afternoon quickie.”

  I shake my head. “No,” I say, grabbing my purse, and I walk out of the house before she asks me anything else, and I walk into my parents’ house.

  “Mom!” I yell, and she comes out from the kitchen, wiping her hands on a towel. “I’m going to borrow the truck, okay?”

  “Sure, honey, is everything okay?” she asks, looking at me, and my stomach already feels like I’m going to vomit.

  “Yeah, I just have to pick a couple of things up. I’ll be back soon.” I grab her keys and pull out of the driveway before anyone else can stop me. I drive with the radio off, and my thumbs strumming the steering wheel.

  When I pull into the parking lot, I notice it’s empty except for one car. I walk to the door and pull it open. It’s different in the daytime. No loud music, no lights blaring. Just a quiet country bar. “Sorry, we’re closed,” Savannah says and turns around to see me standing here.

  “I won’t be long,” I say and walk in just a touch. “Are you here alone?”

  She looks at me and nods her head, coming around the bar, and I see her in just plain jeans and a tank top. This woman who destroyed my life, destroyed Jacob’s life. “What can I do for you?” she says with just a touch of attitude, and I’m so fucking over it.

  “Well, I’m happy that you know I’m not here for idle chitchat,” I say.

  “What are you here for?” she asks.

  “I’m here for one reason and only one. Ethan,” I start to tell her and just like the mama bear that I know she is, and exactly like the mama bear I would be at the mention of her son’s name makes her stand up straight. “I’m not going to beat around the bush. We are never going to be friends. I don’t really
want to even be here right now, but it’s not just about us anymore, is it?” She starts to say something, but I hold up my hand. “I’m not going away like I did eight years ago. I’m here, and I’m staying. I think for Ethan’s sake we should be cordial in front of each other when we are together for him,” I say and now she laughs out.

  “How would you know what is the right thing to do?” she says, and I look at her.

  “Well, for one, the right thing would have been to actually be honest.” I give her a cheap shot, and I have zero fucks about it. “You knew he would protect you,” I say. “You knew he would never tell you no. You knew that it would destroy us, yet you didn’t care. You just did what you wanted to do for you.”

  “I did what I had to do for my child,” she hisses. “You wouldn’t know anything about that.”

  “That’s where you’re wrong,” I say. “You see, while you were parading around this town pretending to be pregnant with his child, I was actually pregnant with his child,” I hiss, and now it’s her turn to stand there with her mouth hanging open and shock all over her face. “Pregnant and alone, thinking that the love of my life and father of my child lied to me, but it was all a lie. I gave birth to my child alone, and I buried my child alone because of you. And I won’t ever fucking forgive you for that.”

  “Kallie,” she says with tears in her eyes, “I would never.”

  “I don’t want your sympathy. I don’t want anything from you. Now or ever. I’ve spent this past week with Ethan, and I’ve fallen in love with him.” I force myself not to let the tears that are burning to fall. “And for him and for Jacob, I will pretend that we get along.”

  “Kallie,” she says again, this time not even pretending that she is crying. “I never wanted to hurt you. I never wanted to hurt Jacob. He is my best friend, and I don’t know where I would be without him.” I don’t interrupt her. “I’m sorry, so sorry.”

  “Sorry will not change anything,” I say, and I know nothing either of us can say will make anything better. Nothing she will say will bring back Gabriel. Nothing will ever make anything okay. “I’ll see you tonight,” I say and turn to walk out of the bar. The door slams shut, and when I get to the truck, I stop and rest my forehead against it.