They both nodded, and Ben got up to grab another round, because apparently, we were celebrating now. Three idiots toasting a woman who had no idea we'd just decided to hand her our entire lives. But there was still something in my gut that was turning over.
"I didn't like how Beauford was looking at her," I said.
Ben stopped halfway to the cooler. Luke's head came up.
"Tonight, at the play. Before she ran." I'd been chewing on it all night and only now let it out. "He watches her. He's always watching her, but tonight there was something. He had that look. I've seen that look on men right before they decide they're owed something." My jaw clenched. "She brushes me off every time I try to bring it up. Says it's nothing, says she handles him. But a man like that, and her job hanging on his say-so…"
"You think being with us makes it worse for her," Luke said slowly. "The optics. If it got out."
"I think it could cost her everything." I made myself say the next part. "And I think I don't care what it costs us. If being with her blows up her whole life, we're there for the fallout. The job, the gossip, that greasy son of a bitch, whatever comes. She's spent her whole life being the only one holding the rope." I looked at the two men I'd trust with my son and my life. "She doesn't hold it alone anymore. That's what we tell her tomorrow."
"Tomorrow," Ben said, and handed me a fresh beer.
We drank to it. We had a plan. We were going to fix the whole thing first thing in the morning and start our lives with the woman who was the most chaotic, aggravating, sexy, tender-hearted disaster any of us had ever had the privilege of losing our minds over.
43
Callie
I made pancakes, which should tell you everything about my mental state. I am not a pancake mom. I am a granola-bar-over-the-sink mom, a we're-calling-string-cheese-protein mom. But it was the Friday of a four-day weekend, I'd been awake since five replaying three men hissing at each other behind a cardboard snowdrift, and somewhere around six I decided the only way out was through batter. By the time Tessa and Vaughn knocked, I had enough pancakes to feed a youth group and a kitchen that looked like a flour bomb had gone off.
"Oh no," Tessa said the second I opened the door. She looked at my face, then at the leaning tower of pancakes behind me. "You stress-cooked. Vaughn, she stress-cooked."
"I can see that." Vaughn ducked through my doorframe, because Vaughn has to duck through most doorframes. My best friend's husband looks like the man a biker bar hires to guard the other bikers. He's six and a half feet, with a big bushy beard, knuckles like walnuts, and always wears a leather vest herefuses to retire. He was carrying a thousand-piece puzzle under one arm the way other men carry a toolbox. "Morning, Callie. I brought the lighthouse puzzle. Where's my guy?"
"Mr. Vaughn." Oliver appeared in the hallway, fully dressed despite the day off, because Oliver does not recognize holidays as a reason for anarchy. He eyed the box. "That's the one with the seagulls. The seagulls are nearly identical. It took us four hours last time."
"Took us four hours because your aunt kept hiding pieces in her bra."
"It's called creating demand," Tessa said.
"It's called cheating," Oliver said, and led Vaughn off to the dining room like a tiny supervisor escorting a contractor. I heard Vaughn say, "Walk me through your seagull strategy," and my heart did a stupid little squeeze, because a man built like a wanted poster adored my son.
Tessa waited four seconds until they were out of earshot. Then she planted herself on a kitchen stool, chin in her hands, and stared at me.
"What?" I said.
"You know what."
"I genuinely don't."
"Calliope." She said my full name like a cocked gun. "You texted me at six a.m. inviting me over for pancakes, well aware I have been sitting on a theory for weeks. You slapped your hand over my mouth at rehearsal. I almost bit you. Confirm it right now or I start guessing loudly, in this kitchen, where your child can hear me."
So I told her, letting the words fall out in one long unpunctuated avalanche while flipping a pancake that did not need flipping. Tessa didn't say one word the whole time, which has never once happened in twenty years. When I finished she stood up, sat back down, and smacked the counter.
"I KNEW IT. I knew it the second you started glaring at every mom within ten feet of those three. The dads ARE the lake guys. The cupcake gods." She stopped. Her eyes went huge. "Wait. Wait wait wait. You've been living a reverse harem novel and you let me lend you BOOKS. You let me say things like get back out there, maybe try an app. An APP. You were out here collecting single fathers like infinity stones and you let me suggest an APP."
"In my defense-"
"There is no defense! This is the proudest day of my life. I have to sit down."
"You're sitting down."
"Then I have to lie down!"
And for a minute it was great. The kitchen smelled like butter, Tessa was cackle-snorting, I was shushing her, and from the dining room Oliver informed Vaughn that "Aunt Tessa just needs to laugh sometimes," and Vaughn rumbled back, "She really does, buddy."
Then Tessa caught the smile sliding off my face, and stopped laughing.
