Her text coming in last night asking if he was serious about watching Archer might have been the best news he’d received in years.
Sad but true.
Then for her to want him to come to dinner.
Hell yes, he was on board for it.
“Can we go outside and play catch?” Archer asked, jumping up. “How long will dinner be? You did lasagna, right?”
She turned to him. “As you can tell, Archer asks more questions before he gets the answers to the others. Yes, we can go play catch if Jayce is okay with that. The lasagna will cook for an hour and then it will need to set out for another twenty minutes before we eat. Which answers your last question on what I made.”
“Beef or sausage in it?”
“Sweet sausage, with zucchini, spinach, red peppers and white cheese sauce.”
Archer’s jaw dropped. “I love cheese sauce.”
“I know,” she said.
Archer turned to Jayce. “I don’t like veggies, but if Mom drowns them in cheese I’ll eat anything.”
He laughed. “Good to know. But French fries are a veggie and you ate them.”
“That doesn’t count,” Archer said, frowning. “They are white. Anything white isn’t a veggie to me. If it’s green, blah.”
“Now you know Archer’s thought process on his diet. As I said, he’s allergic to peanuts. There isn’t anything in the house that would be bad for him.”
“Veggies are bad for me,” Archer said. “And beans. You say that because they make me fart really loud.”
“Oh God,” she mumbled, rolled her eyes and turned to walk out of the room.
Jayce laughed and followed her while Archer put the controllers away.
“He’s a character,” he said.
“Yes. I never realized how crazy it was to have a boy in the house until about two years ago. That’s when things really turned in this direction. My sister and I weren’t this bad.”
“Maybe not talking about farts,” he said. “But you always spoke your mind. I find that an attractive feature in a person.”
She turned and squinted one eye at him. Oops, maybe shouldn’t have said that, but he saw her eyes darken some. Maybe feeling a little of what he was. “Attractive?”
He shrugged. “Confidence looks good on everyone. It did on you back then and it seems you’ve still got it.”
“I wasn’t so sure there for a while,” she said. “But no, it’s not a good look on people who are arrogant.”
He wondered if that was the ex-husband or not.
Not sure how he could talk about that much with Archer around. He didn’t want to drill the kid either. That’d be a dick move.
“No,” he said. “Trust me, I’ve been around enough people like that.”
“At your last job?”
“Show me a room full of professional athletes and say more than half aren’t arrogant and I’ll sell this new bridge I’m building in the desert to you real cheap.”
She laughed and nudged his arm. “You haven’t lost that sense of humor either.”
“Nope. Sometimes that keeps me going.”
