He’s telling me he likes me, and when I want to do something about it, I can.
“Mommy!” Ben yells.
“I’m here,” I shout back, stepping away from Joel as Ben sprints into my room, nearly colliding with Joel, who catches him.
“Hey there, little man,” Joel says with a grin.
Ben is delighted to see the man who promised him a ride on a fire truck.Obviously. His eyes are like saucers. “Youlive here?”
“Yup.”
Ben grins at me, jumping up and down. “Mommy, we live with a fireman.”
“Yes, we do,” I tell him.
Temporarily.
“I was just helping your mom?—”
“Unpack,” I blurt out, my cheeks burning from the conversation we’d been having before Ben interrupted us.
Ben takes Joel’s hand and pulls him to my suitcase. “Okay. I can help. You open it.”
I should have thought longer before I opened my big mouth.
Joel looks at me, eyebrow raised as he waits for my response.
I smile. “It’s okay if you have something else to do.”
He grins. “Nope. Just got home from work. I can help.” He unzips it and throws the lid open.
There is no missing the shit job I did cramming my clothes in my suitcase while Murph waited outside our room to carry our bags down the stairs to my car.
Or my red, lacy panties staring Joel in the face.
Dinner starts the same way it always does: with bribery.
“Five pieces of broccoli and you can have dessert,” I tell my son, who hates anything green and has to be bribed with the promise of something sweet afterward.
Face twisted with disgust, he pushes broccoli around his plate with his fork. “It doesn’t taste of anything.”
“Sure it does,” Joel says, taking a bite of his broccoli and chewing happily. “All the guys at the firehouse love it. How’d you think we all got this big?”
I haven’t been able to look Joel in the face since he got an eyeful of my underwear while helping me unpack. Cheeksburning, I grabbed the panties and shoved them in the top drawer of the dresser, all while he averted his gaze.
That was an hour ago.
After hanging my jeans and the few dresses I had in the closet, he left, and I finished unpacking while Ben jumped up and down on my bed. When that wasn’t enough excitement for him, he played with Lego that will be in every room of this house before this week is over.
Ben stares at Joel’s muscled arms, then shakes his head. “I don’t believe you.”
“That’s too bad,” Murph says, digging into his broccoli. “The guys at my family’s ranch fuel up on broccoli. Can’t ride a horse for hours without the strength that comes from veggies.”
Win is one hundred percent focused on clearing all the broccoli from his plate. Ben gives him a wide-eyed stare, as if impressed anyone could like broccoli that much.
That does it.
Ben eats his broccoli.
