Ben’s eyes narrowed and he shot me a look that said we’d been played. Twice in one day by two separate people. I was also shocked and annoyed.
“Yeah! Duh, Daddy!”
Luke gently pressed a hand to Callie’s lower back. “Would it be okay if I caught a ride from you? I rode with Cole this morning.”
Oh, I was going to murder him.
“Um, sure. Just… I need to pick up the front seat a little and… Yeah, just give me a minute.” She smiled quickly for the two men who were going to be pouting at the ice cream shop. “I can pick Oliver up later or you can drop him off. You have my number in case anything comes up. He wants the vanilla without the black flecks even though he’s wrong about it.”
Ollie’s hands went to his hips. “Mom.”
“I’m right about this, Ollie. One day, you’ll see for yourself.” She blew him a kiss and then hugged the other kids tight. “I’ll see the rest of you on Monday. And once Monday comes, remember, we don’t talk to the other kids about Ms. Morgan winning a trophy for shooting your dads a hundred times. Normally it’s not okay for an adult to ask you to keep a secret for them. Remember our lesson about that? It’s different this one time because your dads are here and we just don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings if they found out we hung out this weekend.”
“There was a lesson about adults asking them to keep secrets?” Ben shuddered. “I’m going to put Beth in a bubble so no one can talk to her.”
“Dad!” Beth groaned. “I don’t want to live in a bubble!”
Callie blew another kiss to Ollie and backed away. “Okay, bye guys! Have so much fun! Oh, let me give you money for the ice cream.”
Ollie frowned. “I can pay for my ice cream, Mom.”
“What? How do you have money?”
“Aunt Tessa gives me money for my birthdays. Since I’m not old enough to invest it, I save it.”
Callie stood frozen. “Great. You’re even better at finance than me. I’m just going to go clean out my disgusting car and think about my choices.”
Ben and I were looking at Ollie through a new lens. I could tell Ben was just as impressed with Ollie as I was. He knew about investing. He saved his birthday money. It was like staring at one of our dads in one of our kids’ bodies.
Noah chose that moment to bend over and fart on Emma.
It had been a humbling day. Not only had I been bested by a second-grade teacher, but I was also losing ground with Callie because Luke had outsmarted me. For a moment I felt like Noah was onto something. Maybe I’d hold Luke down later and fart in his face like we were teenagers again.
35
Callie
“I said don’t look!” I held my arms out and tried to block him from seeing the front seat dead zone of my car. I’d spotted two bras and a spider in the pile earlier that morning so I wasn’t exactly going to let him see it. Though, I was going to need help with the spider. Or maybe we’d just become car friends and he’d become someone I’d talk to on the way home from work. Or she’d. I hadn’t seen enough to know the spider’s gender. God, what was I even thinking about?
“It can’t be that bad, Cupcake. It was clean just a few weeks ago.” He grabbed my waist and hauled me into his chest so he could look over my shoulder. I felt him go still. “Is that a Nintendo? And a…baguette? Callie, no. Baby, there’s a raccoon.”
I twisted around so fast that my hair slapped him in the face. “A raccoon? Where?”
He laughed softly and slid one of his arms around to rest over my stomach. “Just kidding. I did see a spider, though. I’ll clean everything but that. I don’t do spiders.”
I scoffed. “Seriously? No way am I going to take care of Charlette. Spiders scare the shit out of me. We should just leave her. I’ve already committed to the idea of her being a friend of the car.”
“If the spider’s in the front seat, where am I supposed to ride?” His expression was grim. “I’ll just call an exterminator.”
I laughed out loud and had to bend over when the urge to pee hit all of a sudden. “That’s crazy, Luke! We’re just going to have to do something because I have to pee and it’s quickly becoming an emergency.”
“Just go inside, Cupcake.”
“I can’t. When the kids weren’t looking I went back and threatened to break the front desk kid’s face if he made lewd gestures in front of kids again.”
“God, you’re fucking sexy.” If I expected Luke to be smiling or laughing at what I’d assumed was a joke, he wasn’t. He slowly backed me into the open door and his eyes focused on my lips. “You were a surprise today. How do you just keep getting more and more fascinating, Cupcake? You’re killing my self-control.”
A side effect that I’d never had when training as a kid but was experiencing exponentially after the morning paint battle was arousal. I felt how wet my panties were and my clit felt like there was already a ghost thumb pressing into it. My breathing turned shallow and I found myself licking my lips. It took a car driving past for me to snap out of my lust haze and push Luke away.
