improved by yours truly.
I wasn’t afraid of the challenge though, and I wasn’t scared to get my hands dirty. Hell, I’d grown up in the Georgian dirt with my brother, playing with bugs and chasing snakes with the neighborhood kids. Granted, our neighborhood was pretty tame, and we weren’t trudging through any wild forests, but rather a creek bed that ran through the adjacent golf course.
Regardless, I could take care of myself.
Plus, you could learn how to do just about anything on YouTube. So that left me no time or interest in a love life. Then again, everyone gets a scratch they can’t itch themselves from time to time.
I’d let Craig give me a scratching the weekend before and it had left a lot to be desired. A whole lot.
From then on, with regard to me, Craig wasn’t going to be itching anything other than the flaky, mysterious skin thing he had going on. Maybe I’d mention it when I called him the next day. I didn’t want to date him, but sometimes a guy needed a friend to nudge him in the right direction. And the only helpful direction I could point him was to a good dermatologist.
“I’ll have a Sprite,” he told the bartender as I pulled tip money from my wristlet and slugged back about half of my first rum and Coke.
When we both had our drinks, it was time to find our table. So I headed up front, knowing as part of the wedding party I’d be seated near the lucky couple. I spotted Hudson and snaked my way through the others filing in.
“Double-fisting it tonight?” Hudson made the gesture for shame-shame with his hands.
I sat and hooked my finger around the back strap of the torture devices melded to my blood-encrusted feet. “I only have two hands. Otherwise, I’d have more.”
“Craig, good to see you again.” Hudson’s voice was full of phony enthusiasm. “Lex’s mom told me you two were coming together, but I could hardly believe it until I saw you with my own eyes.”
If I could have pulled the straw from my mouth, I would have sassed back, but I couldn’t. My priority was to get the alcohol inside my body as soon and efficiently as possible. However, without my strongest line of defense—my smart-ass mouth—at my disposal, I was left feeling Craig’s arm wrap around the back of my chair. Ew.
Hudson grinned. “Just think, in a year or two, that might be you two up there.”
My nostrils burned as the drink reversed course and sprayed out of my face. I hacked and coughed, gasping for air. Crusty Craig patted my back as I choked.
“Dad, did you and Mom have a wedding?” Jack asked, effectively saving his father’s life. He’d been standing beside his dad, and as Hudson refocused his attention on his child, he perched Jack up on his knee.
“No, Mom and I never got married,” he answered simply.
For all of his many faults, being a good father wasn’t one of them. And since I’d always wondered what Hudson and Lauren had told Jack, I quelled the urge to kick the chair out from under him in order to find out.
“Why?” the golden-headed boy asked, his head tipping to one side.
“Because we were better at being friends. And when you came along, we decided we wanted to be the best mom and dad we could be instead of being just an okay husband and wife.”
It was a good, honest answer, which seemed to satisfy the kid, and then the rascal turned to me.
“Okay, so, why aren’t you married yet?”
I took a break from my deadly drink to answer, “I don’t know, Jack. But as soon as I find out, you and my mom will be the first to know.”
Disappointed that the dip-your-nose-into-Alexis’s-relationship-status had spread to Jack, I went back to my cocktail.
Shit. He’d been one of the few people in the room I didn’t have to explain my life to.
Now, it was just me and Captain Morgan.
In high school, I had been an all-state wide receiver. Before that, I’d played catcher for the county’s World Series winning Little League team. Before that, I had been the undisputed best lightning bug trapper in my entire neighborhood. Hell, I’d once caught my son in midair when he’d launched himself off a swing as a toddler.
But when Calvin shot that garter belt in my direction, I didn’t bother pulling my hands from my pockets as I let that fucker bounce right off my chest.
No way