She had to be around thirty years older than me? You’re cheating on this bet.”
“Hey, she’s sweet and I thought Jack would like her. At least I’d know you two were eating more than delivered pizzas and Hot Pockets when you had him. You probably eat even less when he’s not around.”
“Bullshit. You sabotaged me.”
After a few sips and a long pause, I said, “You sabotaged me too. And I was in a rush to find someone for you. But I will say this: I already have your second date in mind. And you—you giant asshole—will be happy to know she’s more your age.”
He opened the pouch he kept his darts in, which prompted me to dig mine out of my purse. “Good.”
Before it slipped my mind, I had to know how last weekend had gone. “Hey, how’d it go with Lauren and her beau? Was he cool?”
“Got rescheduled.” His brows lifted. “They’re supposed to get back to me with another night.” He shrugged and I could see the disappointment.
I changed the subject, not wanting to make his night any worse. “Oh, and for my second date, could you please, for the love of my shriveled twat, keep in mind that I’m looking for big dick energy and not some incestuous dinner company. Please and thank you.”
“Jesus,” he muttered, pointing to the board with the tip of his dart, a smug grin lifting one side of his mouth. “You’re up first, but don’t expect me to go easy on you. I’m playing to win, Kid.”
What a fucking day.
No, strike that. What a fucking week.
I’d spent the majority of it in Cal’s backyard. For seven days, I gave the great pool debate a rest, long enough to give him the illusion that I’d dropped it. Then on Monday, when I was sure he’d be at work, I’d broken into their backyard with a team of my guys. As I’d suspected, Vanessa didn’t say a word. It had taken us two full days to get the utility lines marked and the area prepped. So imagine my surprise on Wednesday morning when I’d shown up with a trailer full of equipment including a backhoe and a mini excavator to find all of our hard work gone. Cal had been standing in the bay windows of his kitchen, a cup of coffee in his hands and a shit-eating grin on his face. But that little stunt was far from the victory he’d hoped for.
We’d had to work our asses off to get things back on schedule, but when he came home from work that afternoon, there was a concrete hole in his backyard, ready and waiting for plumbing to be hooked up. I didn’t give a fuck if he filled it with water and let his wife float in it or turned it into the neighborhood skatepark. There was no turning back.
That should have felt like a victory. And in some ways, it did, but I was exhausted, and despite that, I hadn’t been to the gym all week, so my whole fucking body hurt. I wasn’t a stranger to hard work, but with Hud Construction’s rapid growth over the last few years, I’d basically worked myself into a desk job. It felt nice to be back at it—at least in my mind. My traps were a different story though.
On top of all that, I missed Jack. He’d spent the week with Lauren’s parents at their beach house on Hilton Head Island. Judy and David owned the house next door, so I was positive my boy was having a blast and being spoiled in ways only grandparents knew how to do, but damn, a week was a long time. Technically, I only had him every other week as it was, but Lauren and I made sure he never went a whole week without seeing both of us. Sunday couldn’t come soon enough.
Oh, and speaking of Lauren, she’d had to reschedule my little meeting with investment banker Mark for the fourth time in two weeks. Apparently, he was just as busy at work as she was. How the hell they had spent more than an hour-long lunch together in the month they’d been dating, I’d never know. But it sure as hell kept me up at night, reeling through worst-case scenarios. The longer she put this off, the less I felt like “the best baby daddy ever,” but more accurately, “the most understanding and flexible baby daddy ever.”