I shrug right back at her. “It takes a lot of energy to hate someone. Why spend it there when I can spend it making up for all the time I missed with you the past few years?”
She watches me while she stabs a spoonful of ice cream from the carton and then shoves the whole thing in her mouth. “Don’t you ever want to be petty?” she asks around the ice cream.
“Only when you can’t hear me. I’d hate to set a bad example.” I shift toward the hallway to the bedroom. “I need to pee. But I’ll be back, okay?”
“Vivian said you left her mom’s house, like, forty-five minutes ago.”
Dammitagain. “I had to make a few stops on the way home, and then I got stuck in elk traffic.”
“Stops for what?”
“Gas.” Mental note: run out for gas when she’s asleep so she doesn’t notice my truck’s under half a tank. “And then I wanted cookies, but I didn’t want to scarf them in front of you, so I sat in my truck and texted old friends for a while.”
Too far.
Her eyes narrow while she licks her spoon. “What friends?”
“Charlotte.”
“She’s not an old friend.”
“Shefeelslike an old friend, and itfeltlike it had been ages since I talked to her as soon as I left her house. Do you ever connect with someone and feel like you’ve known them for years?”
“The only people I’ve ever known, until we moved here, are people I’ve known for literal years.”
She shoots. She scores.No, Mom, I haven’t made any super-tight besties that I’ll be so sad to leave when I go to college. You and Grandma fucked that all up for me.
“Well, trust me when I say, when you meet that friend and have that instant connection, you’ll know it, and you’ll love it, and it’ll make your life better.”
“You look at Mr.Jackson like he’s yourinstant friend.”
She knows.
She knows I stopped by Flint’s place, and she knows I’m making up an elaborate story so I don’t have to tell her the truth, and I am screwing this up all over the place.
I’m a grown woman and I like sex and I like Flint and this should be okay, but it’s not, because Junie’s not okay with it.
And I get it.
I neglected her for her father.
Why wouldn’t it be even worse when it’s for a man who’s new and exciting? And she’s already getting bombarded with images of her father spending more time with another woman than he spends with her. And I count phone, text, and email time asspending time with her, for the record. I’m willing to give him that.
But I’m smarter now. I know what I have to lose. And I will give my libido a stiff upper finger before I let working Flint out of my system interfere with being a good mom to Junie.
Maybe it’s an excuse.
But it’s the truth.
I know what’s important. I know I won’t let a man get in the way of my taking care of my daughter. If he hasn’t caught on to how serious I am about that, then he’s an idiot. I’ll figure it out, and I’ll move on.
Nothing could belessattractive than a man who doesn’t respect my daughter.
And I think Flint does.
I think he truly does, and he’s battling his own wants and needs against a teenager’s wishes.
“Life’s complicated,” I say to her stubbornTell me I’m wronglook. “But nothing will ever change the fact that you come first. Okay?”
