The First Taste(131)

When Andrew reaches the door, I jog up the walkway to block him from going inside. “I should warn you,” I say. “There’s a surprise for you in there.”

“Yeah?” he asks, furrowing his eyebrows. “How’d you manage that?”

“It wasn’t easy,” I admit. Considering our history with exes, Andrew and I are completely transparent with each other at all times. This surprise took a lot of secret phone calls and money transfers, but I know without a doubt it’ll be worth all the sneaking around. “Come on. You’ll see.”

As he reaches for the handle, the door swings open. “What’d you bring me?” Bell screams.

So much for her separation anxiety.

“Nothing!” Andrew screams back at her.

Her face falls a mile. “What? Not even a little shell?”

I drop my shoulder bag and open my arms. “I brought you presents, baby.”

She runs into my embrace. I lift her up and immediately smell her hair. It reminds me she’s real. I had no idea I could miss someone as much as I did her—or Andrew for that matter. When I have to go into the city for business, all I want is to come back to him.

“How was your trip?”

I look up. Shana leans in the doorway, her arms crossed. She’s wearing her regular get-up of a black halter and dark jeans. I’m not sure I’ll ever get used to the cleavage, but somehow, I’m getting used to her.

“Amazing,” Andrew says. “And the kid?”

Shana nods. “Thanks for letting me do this. We had fun, didn’t we, Bell?”

“Yep.” Bell squirms. I put her down. “Shana did fine.”

I check Shana’s expression. She hates that Bell won’t call her mom. I’ve talked to Bell about it, but she gets squirmy. She isn’t ready. I haven’t mentioned to anyone yet, not even Andrew, that lately, Bell’s been calling me mom when she’s sleepy or emotional. Even if I wanted to share that, I wouldn’t be able to without bawling. It’s unreal. Special. And for now, it’s just between Bell and me.

Shana, almost thirty, has gotten her act together as much as someone like Shana can. She’s no angel. She still causes trouble at Timber Tavern and regularly stirs up gossip. She was even arrested a year and a half ago for public intoxication—and promptly called Andrew to bail her out. He didn’t. But the last year or so, she’s been consistent with Bell, and as long as she continues to prove herself, Andrew and I will cautiously let her into our lives. Under Flora’s supervision, along with the help of Pico’s new wife, Myra, and of course, her son Sammy—Shana got to spend these last couple weeks taking care of Bell.

She turned out better than Reggie, at least. He hit rock bottom the night he threatened Andrew and me—and kept going. He did his best to hurt us, but no lawyer would take him seriously when Reggie accused Andrew of being a bad father. He had no real evidence, and no charges could be pressed. I later learned that on top of losing his job, he’d invested most of his savings in a failing start-up. Though I can’t excuse his behavior, I understand a little better what drove him to my place. Reggie thought I was the one thing he could control that night.

Ultimately, he wouldn’t budge on avec. I had to let it go. It fell apart soon after I stepped down.

Since I didn’t have anything left to fight for, the divorce went through smoothly without Reggie doing too much damage. He tried. He went to the press with the videos he had, but once I stepped down from avec, nobody cared enough to run a story about two people in New Jersey who’d once had sex in the privacy of their own home. It was an embarrassing few months while Reggie tried to slander us, but we burrowed ourselves in our home. We used that time to strengthen our unit.

I moved in with Andrew a year later.

Andrew drops our luggage in the living room, and Shana and I move into the kitchen to give him a moment alone with Bell. I’m sorting through a stack of mail on the counter when Shana clears her throat. “I guess I’ll take off.”

I look up. “Thanks again for helping us out. How’d everything go with the,” I lower my voice, “you know?”

She smiles. “Good. Pico and Randy oversaw the entire thing, and I cleaned it this morning. It looks great.”

“I can’t wait to see his face.”

“Um. There’s one thing I wanted to ask you,” she says, tapping a finger on the tile. “It’s not about Bell.”

I set down the mail to give her my attention. She looks nervous, which is rare for her, no matter how tense things have gotten between us over the past two years. “It’s just—I haven’t mentioned it because I wanted to make sure I would follow through. When I graduated from cosmetology school, I started thinking about opening my own salon. Now that I’ve been hairdressing over a year, I want to pursue my own thing.”

“Oh.” As much progress as Shana has made, I brace myself. If she asks us for money, I know Andrew won’t give it to her. I’m not sure I’d be comfortable with that either, even though she’s fierce with enough street smarts to run her own place. I would know.

“I just—I know you’re a PR consultant, but Denise said you helped one of her friends restructure her thrift store, and I was hoping maybe we could sit and talk about a business plan. Sometime. When you’re free.”