Chapter One
Zoey
Friday Afternoon
I pinch the bridge of my nose as I struggle against what’s sure to quickly escalate into a screaming migraine. In the middle of the check-out line at Publix, with my overflowing cart only half unloaded, on a Friday afternoon, and with three people backed up behind me, isnotthe best of times to have a “conversation” with my ex-husband.
Whydid I even answer the damn phone? You’d think I’d know better.
“Bill, would youpleasecalm down. What’s going on?”
Hell, the butchers cutting meat in the back of the fricking store can probably hear him screaming over the phone and understand him a damn sight better than I can.
“I’ve had it, Zoey. I’mdone. You can fuckinghavehim. He’snotmy son. I want himoutof my fucking house!”
Oookay, so Lucas the pod-teenager and his father have had yet another fight.“Bill,please, would you—”
He hangs up on me.
Must. Not. Throw. Phone.
Nolan will give me a ration of shit if I break another phone. He’s getting tired of setting them up for me. This is my fourth one in as many months. Although, to be fair, the last two destructions weren’t my fault.
One ended up in a toilet when it fell out of the back pocket of my jeans—fucking designers and their shallow pockets in women’s pants, anyway—and the other ended up in the laundry when Arlo helpfully decided to wash my jacket for me after my best friend’s cat yakked on it, and Ar didn’t check my pockets first.
I thumb the power button to shut my phone off, bury the offending device in the bottom of my black-hole purse, and start throwing the rest of my groceries onto the conveyor belt without giving a crap what I put where.
Usually, I group everything carefully based on what it is, to make the bagger’s job easier. Frozen items together, cold items, produce, et cetera.
Not today. Nope. You get frozen peas and tampons and canned tunaalllmixed together.
Bad enough it looks like my weekend might be ruined by a migraine. Idamnsure don’t want to hear about the latest teenage-angst-fueled war between my sixteen-year-old son and his father.
Lucas wanted to live there. He got his wish.
That still stings, even two years later. Arlo and Nolan have tried to get me to talk about it, but I prefer burying it under a pile of other shit I don’t want to think about until I can process it without crying.
Which at this point is looking like half-pastnever.
My ex is a douchebag, to be sure. He’s finally managed to hang on to a job longer than a couple of years without pissing people off and getting himself fired. He’s the head of maintenance at an office building in downtown Sarasota, and sometimes he has to work weekends or nights if there are repairs going on, or maintenance jobs that have to take place when most of the tenants are closed.
When I arrive home, before I even unload the first grocery bag, I go inside and swallow three Excedrin Migraine tablets with a glass of water. I won’t get much sleep with the caffeine in them.
That’s something I finally feel like smiling about. Because I hadn’t planned on getting much sleep this weekend, anyway.
It takes me twenty minutes to unload the groceries from the trunk of my car, as well as my laptop and other stuff. By the time Arlo arrives home ten minutes later, I almost have everything put away. He walks into the kitchen, sets his lunch cooler on the counter, and kisses me.
Then he frowns. “What’s wrong?”
“What?”
He circles his finger in the air, indicating my face. “You’re wearing that pinched expression.” He holds up the bottle of Excedrin and shakes it. “And these on the counter.”
I sigh. “Bill’s on the warpath.”
“Oh,fuckme. What thehelldid that asshole say to you this time?”
I love Arlo’s protective streak. Normally, he’s a gentle man. The only thing that ever enrages him is Bill Motherfucking Webb.
