Floored - Karla Sorensen Page 0,87

area.

I'd taken to texting Jude updates amid our search.

Me: This one was pretty good. Not as good as Rebecca's, though.

Jude: It looks dry as cardboard.

Me: Maybe not CARDBOARD. But it needed a lot of cream. Can you eat one of hers for me? Or just send me a picture of one? Or a video so I can pretend I'm sniffing it?

Jude: Good Lord, you sound like an addict.

Jude: Here. It's got currants in it.

I laughed when I saw the picture he attached, him shoving half the scone into his mouth. The sight of him wasn't a punch to the heart or anything, one side effect of being able to see him on TV every week when I got the chance to watch one of his matches. But this was a different Jude than the one I saw on the pitch. Despite the silly picture, he looked tired. It was in the dark circles under his eyes, the lines on his face that hadn't been so prominent when I'd last seen him.

Molly sipped her coffee across the cafe table and watched me. "It's going okay with him?"

I shrugged. "As good as it can, I suppose."

"Do you miss him?"

My eldest sister was the only one who dared to ask me about him. Maybe because she was the most romantic to her soft little heart. She'd tamed her big beast of an athlete in Noah, and I knew she was holding out hope that I'd still be able to overcome ... everything ... when it came to Jude.

Staring at the picture, the scruff along his jaw and the mess of his dark hair, I rubbed my thumb over the image, and then cleared it away so I wouldn't obsess.

"Yeah." There was no point in lying to Molly. And I wouldn't have lied to anyone else either if they'd asked, but along with the realization that I was very skilled at moving through life restlessly was the fact that my family was used to that. They probably thought I'd brush them off with a It's totally fine, guys, look at how completely fine it all is. "But I don't think missing him is the problem. It's figuring out what we're like outside of missing each other. He's finally talking to me about stuff, but it's not like I can just hop back over to England because the thought of him makes me heartsick."

"Makes sense," she said. "No one is perfect, but you already know that, and I don't think that's what you want from him."

I shook my head. "No. I don't need perfection. I think my problem was that it felt so good when we weren't worrying about anything else, and now that everything else has surfaced, I can't think about how good it was between us until those things are better, at least. And they may never be."

Molly watched with a soft smile when I curled my hand over my stomach. A soft bump greeted me, and I motioned for her hand. She slid her chair closer, eyes widening. "Can you feel it moving?"

"Yeah." I took her hand and set it along the top of my bump, and we waited. I tried pushing on the side, and then felt it again.

Molly gasped. "Ohhhh, hi little Banana, I'm your favorite Aunt Molly."

I laughed as she tucked her head down beneath the table and kept talking to my stomach. A couple passed us, not even trying to hide their WTF faces. I waved.

"And we're going to do so much fun stuff," she kept going, rubbing the top of my gently moving stomach with her palm. "And I just love you so, so much." When she sat back, her eyes were bright. "Goodness, that's amazing."

"You should have one," I said slyly.

Her cheeks went pink almost immediately. "Noah said that the other day."

"Really?" I squealed. "Oh please, please, please, get knocked up so we can have babies grow up together."

She laughed. "I caught him looking at baby Wolves stuff the other day, and I think it's Jude's fault for sending that jersey at Christmas. It got him thinking about, I don't know, everything. We're so happy and so busy, but if you wait for life to be the perfect time to do things like get married or have babies or travel, you'll never do it."

"Very true." I thought about Jude, and how if it hadn't been for our night at the bar, and my shitty memory with birth control, he'd still be alone. I was young, so