by Natalie Ann
“Morning,” she said.
He turned. “Sorry if we woke you up. Ben is a creature of habit. I’m shocked he slept through the night or even until seven. I figured a different place might throw him off.”
“Guess he was pretty comfortable then,” she said. “I’m glad.”
“Me too,” he said, reaching a hand for her to move forward. He gave her a kiss and she welcomed it. If she was feeling insecure this morning, this was helping to ease it.
“Why don’t I make some breakfast for us if you want to go shower?”
“Sounds good. Are we good?” he asked when he handed Ben the bottle and then set him in his booster seat.
“I am. More than okay. Are you?”
He smiled. “Oh yeah.” He got some of the puffed treats that Ben snacked on yesterday and put them on his tray. “Wish we could have had some more time, but I passed out last night.”
After their first time, they were reaching for each other a second time in the middle of the night, then both slept soundly. “I didn’t hear Ben this morning which tells you how deeply I slept.”
“He doesn’t cry,” he said. “Just starts talking. I guess I was listening more for it since I didn’t have a monitor here.”
“I can get one,” she said.
He turned to look at her. “No, it’s fine.”
She couldn’t read the look on his face and realized she might have overstepped herself again. There she was rushing when she told herself not to. “Okay. Just trying to be practical and hoping maybe we can do this again.”
“Definitely,” he said, giving her another kiss and going to shower.
She looked over at Ben, saw he was happily eating, so she pulled out eggs and bread, then found some bacon in the freezer and thawed it fast under hot water.
Ten minutes later most of the bacon was cooked and she was mixing Ben’s cereal and opening a jar of pears.
“You didn’t need to rush,” she said.
“Long showers are a luxury,” he said. “I’ll feed him.”
“I can do it,” she argued.
“Bacon and eggs are a luxury too,” he said. “I’d rather they not get burned. So pick a task and I’ll take the other.”
“You know, you’re still the perfect boyfriend. Always considerate and willing to help out.”
“I’m not sure anyone but you ever thought I was perfect. I’ll take the bacon and eggs if you want to feed Ben. Something tells me you’d rather.”
She grinned. “I would. He does most of it on his own I discovered.”
“He does. Though if you let him eat his cereal a lot will end up on your nice hardwood floors.”
“Thanks for the warning.”
She moved over to the table with Ben’s breakfast while Trey took care of theirs.
Two hours later, she was giving them both a kiss while they were walking out the door. She would have loved for them to stay longer but knew she was pushing her luck. Trey had things to do and Ben was getting bored, she could tell.
By noon her phone was ringing and she saw it was her mother. “Hello.”
“How did it go?”
“How did what go?” she asked. There was no way her mother could know Trey spent the night. She felt bad asking him to move his truck into the garage, but it was best for now.
“Watching Ben after I left?”
“It was fine. I’ll do better next time. I probably shouldn’t have tried to entertain him for hours because then he wanted more just like you said.”
“You’ll figure it out, I’m sure. Do you think you’ll have him often?”
“No clue,” she said. “It went well, but during the week I’m working and he’s at daycare anyway. At night it’s easier if he’s with Gillian.”
“True.” There was a pause. “Did Trey stay the night?”
She sighed. She wouldn’t lie. “He did.”
“And?” her mother asked.
“And what? I’m not talking to you about my sex life.”
Her mother laughed. “I don’t want you to either. I want to know what is in your head and your heart.”
“Conflicting thoughts,” she admitted.
“I’m sure.”
“My head is telling me to take it slow. My heart has already lost the race.”
“I figured,” her mother said. “I don’t want to see you hurt again.”
“Life is about getting hurt. I know that. I’ll be fine.”
“We all think we will be fine, but this time it’s not just Trey you are losing your heart to, is it?”
“No. It’s hard not to love Ben. He’s such a good baby.”
“Don’t get too attached until you know more.”
“Too late,” she said. “But I’m not stupid enough to voice anything. For now we are going to take it day by day. He’ll stay here again. I’ll watch Ben. We’ll try to make as much time for each other as we can, but we both have lives too. I know it.”
“Remember that. You tend to give too much of yourself to people and they don’t do the same.”
“Oh, I learned that.”
No reason to tell her mother that the two men she dated after Kevin ended because they wanted more than her. Part of her wondered if they wanted her name like Kevin did, or if they felt something more for her and it kept her holding it back. In that case, she was the opposite and wondered if she could ever let go again.
Since she didn’t feel the same there was no reason to drag anything out and ended it with those two.
She never thought Trey wanted anything but her and she had to wonder if that was why she wanted to reconnect with him.
And until she could wrap her head around her own motives, she was keeping a lot of things close to her chest.
“We always say we learn things,” her mother said.
“I appreciate the concern,” she said. “But trust me. You have no idea how badly I don’t want to set myself up again.”
Her mother sighed. “I know there was more with Kevin than you ever told us.”
“Just like you don’t want to hear about my sex life, you didn’t need to hear about my marriage issues.”
“I wish we had. Your father and I still wish we’d stepped in earlier.”
“I had to figure it out on my own. There comes a time when you need to grow up and take responsibility for your actions and decisions.”
That time was now and she was damn well not going to blow it again. She hoped.
13
At The Core
Trey didn’t have time to put the diaper bag down after setting Ben in the playpen before there was a knock at his front door. “Come in, Gillian.”
“How did you know it was me?”
“Aside from the fact you’ve probably been watching for my return and are nosy, I heard you coming down the stairs as if the place was on fire.”
His sister’s face flushed slightly. “Sorry. I wanted to see Ben.”
She made her way to his son and picked him up. The kid was getting spoiled left and right by women, it seemed. “He’s fine, as you can see.”
“I missed him.”
“You’ll have him tonight so we know that isn’t the real reason you are here.”
Gillian turned with Ben on her hip while his son started to tug at the long hair over his sister’s shoulder. “Fine. You didn’t come home last night.”
“No,” he said. He knew she’d be watching, no reason to say otherwise.
“Well?”
“Well, what? You don’t think I’m going to tell you about my night with Whitney, do you?”
“I don’t want details. Geez. I just want to know how things are going.”
“I’m sure you talked to Mom after she called me at work. Things are going at a pace that we are both comfortable with.”
What else was he going to say? That there were times he felt like he was transported back to when they were kids again? That every memory he had of Whitney flashed in his brain when he was in her bed last night
?
No. He wasn’t admitting those things to anyone. He didn’t even want to admit them to himself.
“What’s she like now?” she asked. “You don’t say much about her or what she’s done the past fifteen years.”
“I thought you were all up on the gossip in the area.”
“Not like you think.” When he started to walk to the laundry room with Ben’s and his clothes from last night, she was right on his heels. “Well? What’s she like?”
“She’s like she was years ago.”
“Come on. No one is the same as they were when they were in high school.”
“At the core she is.”
Whitney had always been a sweet friendly girl that approached him. Funny, now that he thought of it, that she did it again this time.
She made him feel good about himself even when he wasn’t feeling up to snuff.
She treated him well. She complimented him. Hell, she was the ideal girlfriend in a lot of ways, but he still broke up with her.
Everything was good but one thing. Her vision of the future was planned out and controlled when he was just trying to save money for his first car. She drove her parents’ cars when she had her license and then per her, they bought her a new one for graduation. That was how she met the sleazy ex.
“Ben likes her? She did well with him yesterday?”
“Ben adores her and she did well. He was happy to see me, just like he always is, but he likes spending time with Whitney. She spoils him with attention like you. You are both making it harder for me since I can’t wait on him hand and foot.”
“That’s because we give him back to you.”
“You hardly ever do,” he said. “And you should be out doing your own thing since you’re going to have him all night again.”
“Please. I’ll have him an hour before he goes to bed and then I get him up and off to daycare. Nights are easy and you know it.”
He snorted. “Now. They weren’t always.”
“No,” she said. “None of it has been easy for you and I don’t mean to downplay it. You are doing a great job on your own.”
“I’m not on my own. If I didn’t have you and Mom and Dad, I’d be struggling.”
“But you’d make it work,” she said.
He would because it’s who he was. How he was raised. But that didn’t mean he didn’t appreciate what he had.
“I would. So did you only come down here to be nosy?”
“Kind of,” she said. “When do we get to meet her?”
“You’ve met her,” he said, walking out of the laundry room and going to his room to get more clothes. Gillian was right on his heels once again.
“That was years ago.”
“And I just told you she hasn’t changed that much.”
“You didn’t say what she’s been doing for years.”
He let out a sigh. “You know. She got married and divorced. She went to college. She works for the family business. That about sums it up.”
“So why did she get divorced?”
He didn’t feel like getting into this, but he knew his sister had heard the rumors. “You said it yourself; her ex cheated on her. He sounds like a real dick. She’s better off without him.”
“And she never had kids? I thought that was the big problem back then with you two. She was looking toward happy ever after so fast.”
“No kids,” he said. “Probably a good thing for them too. And yes, she knows why I broke up with her. We’ve talked it over and we understand each other.”
“So you’ve told her to not go there again?” Gillian asked.
He turned into Ben’s small room and grabbed the hamper. “I’m not telling you anymore. What is between us is between us.”
“Don’t get so prickly about it,” Gillian said. “Daddy is in a mood, huh, Benny. I would have thought he’d be loosened up this morning.”
“That’s nice talk in front of my kid,” he said, smirking.
“Please. You know darn well Ben has no idea what we are saying.”
He laughed. “Good thing.”
“How’s Whitney’s house?”
His sister wasn’t going to let this drop. “Stunning but not over the top. Not glamorous, I guess. Huge. More space than she needs.”
“She probably thought she’d have it filled with a ton of kids. You don’t think that is what is going on now, do you?”
He slammed the top down on the washing machine where she was behind him again and turned to lean against it. His sister was worse than his shadow. “No.”
Even if Whitney did approach him again, he wasn’t going to go there. She’d said it wasn’t because of Ben and he was going to believe her. She sought him out at the firehouse before she knew he had a kid. That was a fact. He’d even made sure she didn’t think he was looking for someone to care for his son.
He moved into the kitchen to get a bottle of water and Gillian put Ben in his playpen now and handed him a toy. “Do you want me to take him for you today so you can get some things done?”
“I’ve just got laundry and some cleaning. He’s fine and you know it. He’s rubbing his eyes already, so I’m going to turn the TV on for him while I unload the dishwasher and pay some bills. Then Ben and I are going to be men and watch some football this afternoon. I’ll bring him up around five thirty.”
“Dismissed. Fine. I get it. I’ll feed him dinner. I’ll feed you both if you want. I was going to make some pulled pork. I’ve been dying for it. You know it makes a lot.”
He wanted to say no, but it would save him from cooking. “Fine. I’ll be up around five for dinner, then come back to get ready before I leave. Thanks. You know, you’re just like Whitney.”
“How’s that?” she asked.
“The little homemaker. You really should be out there having fun and not caring for me and my son.”
“I’ve had my fair share of fun. You know that. I need the break and Ben is a nice distraction.”
He did know. Gillian had been dating someone for years, waiting for that ring that never came. She finally moved out of the place they shared. He wondered if she would have moved on with her life if Ben hadn’t come into his. Then he told himself that it wasn’t his business to judge or make assumptions. He had too many other things to worry about in his own life.
14
Stars And Rainbows
Whitney was putting the finishing touches on dinner on Halloween night a few weeks later when the doorbell rang.
She rushed forward and opened it up to see Trey standing there with Ben in his arms in the elephant costume she’d bought.
She’d told herself not to do it. That it wasn’t her place. That Trey might even be working or his mother or sister probably had things planned.
But the more she told herself no, the more her finger hovered over the mouse and she clicked it. It sat at her house for a solid week before she brought it up to Trey.
He hadn’t been mad like she thought he might be. He’d laughed and said it matched the stuffed elephant that Ben slept with. That was why she bought it when she saw it.
What she didn’t say was that she’d gotten the idea after their first night together and had been searching for one.
In the past few weeks, Trey and Ben had spent the night two more times, and she and Trey only had two lunches out alone. That was fine with her. It was working okay in her eyes.
“Look at how cute you are,” she said, reaching for Ben who was holding his arms out for her and going right into them. He was always so happy to see her. And when Trey leaned in for the kiss, she knew that he was happy to see her too.
“He didn’t want to get in it, but we finally wrestled it on.”
“It’s probably hot,” she said. “I didn’t think of that.”
“It’s supposed to be warm for when he’s outside,” Trey said, shutting the door behind her. “I’m afraid I might not be able to get it back on him once I get it off.”
“I’ll get it on him. Are y
ou hungry? How was your day?”
“Yes to being hungry. I really should take you to dinner rather than you always cooking for us.”
They got to the back of the house and she took Ben’s costume off, then put him in the booster seat that she’d bought. She was trying to be careful with going overboard and she’d even mentioned to Trey she was going to do it. That, aside from Evan’s baby, more would be coming in the family and it’d be handy to have.
He seemed reluctant but then said it would be nice to not have to bring it over all the time. If she got some toys that she kept hidden for when it was just her and Ben, she wasn’t telling a soul.
“I like to cook. You know that. But in this case, I made hamburgers and French fries. Nothing fancy.”
“Burgers are always good.”
“I did a tiny one for Ben that we can cut up and I put the fries in the air fryer so they aren’t greasy. I made carrots too.”
Ben started to slam his hand down on the tray. “I guess someone likes the menu. I’ll get his plate.”
There was no use saying she’d do it. He knew she could and did, but she’d let him take care of it.
By the time the three of them were sitting down to eat, she asked again, “How was your day?”
“Busy. This time of year a lot is going on and people are getting their furnaces cleaned and repaired. Though there were a ton of plumbing calls for some reason too.”
“Do you like doing that?” she asked.
“It’s fine. I know it’s not glamorous. I guess it’s not much different than what your family does, just more specialized.”
“It is. We’ve got a lot of vendors we use, but I know they’ve got a few guys employed that just do those things themselves now. It’s easier than always having to call someone and wait for them.”
He laughed. “I know. My father hates turning people away, but sometimes he has to if they need it right then and he has something else lined up. He’s got another full-time guy and me, but I’m only a few days a week.”
“You work a lot,” she said, filling her plate. She got Ben his sippy cup and put it in front of him full of milk.