The Hot Mess and the Heartthrob(35)
This thing with Ingrid?
It’s top secret.
I shouldn’t even be looking at this guy.
“I don’t know who the hell you think you are, but you keep your hands to yourself around our Mrs. Scott, do you hear me?” he growls.
She puts a hand on my chest and steps in front of me. “Mr. Bouchard, I’ve got this. Army training, remember? I know twenty-two ways to kill a man.”
“Hmph.” He scowls at me one more time. “You need help burying his body, you know where I’m at. And I’m sorry about getting you wet, ma’am. I thought you were a teenager.”
She follows him to the door to the stairwell, bends, and then twists something squeaky.
When the hose lightens in my hand, I aim it at a flower pot and release the last of the pressure.
“Sorry,” she mutters.
She’s shivering. I’d wrap her in a hug for body heat, except I’m soaked to the bone. “Not your fault. You okay?”
“Yeah.”
Dammit.
That’s not the yeah of a woman happy at the end of a date. “Twenty-two ways to kill a man?”
“I actually only know one, and it’s to sing to him until his ears bleed. You’re soaked. We should—”
“Definitely do this again sometime,” I finish for her.
One brow quirks up, and then she’s laughing. “You’re insane.”
“Yeah, but only in the best ways.”
She goes up on her tiptoes and presses her warm lips to my cheek. “Thank you for the cheesecake.”
“Anytime.” Preferably soon.
Twelve
Ingrid
I’m at Piper’s hockey practice Saturday morning, still reliving making out with Levi in my head while I try to entertain Hudson with Matchbox cars.
He has a habit of trying to get out on the ice with the other kids.
Zoe has her nose stuck in a book and earbuds in her ears, listening to music on my old phone. The other parents are gathered in their normal groups. It’s not that we’re outsiders—it’s more that after our first practice where Hudson sneezed red slime that he’d stuck up his nose all over the coach’s wife, who was very kind and understanding about the whole thing, we tend to rotate to wherever he’s happiest and wherever he can’t find more things to stick up his nose.
Like other kids’ popcorn crumbs.
His doctor tells me this will pass, but I sometimes wonder if he’ll be the life of the frat party with all the magic tricks he’ll be able to do with his nose by then.
And then I wonder if Levi would still want to make out with me if he knew how many things I pull out of Hudson’s nose every week.
Probably.
My kids don’t seem to faze him. But then, it’s not like he’s auditioning for the role of their stepdad. We’re having a thing where I get to pretend to be a normal adult, and he gets— You know, I’m still not entirely sure what he gets.
A chance to blow off steam without the world watching? The novelty of dating someone different?
No, not dating.
Flinging.
We’re flinging.
We actually worked out terms over text early this morning before my kids were out of bed, with both of us agreeing that all of our dates—dates!!—should be kept on the down-low. He can’t guarantee I won’t get spotted by the paparazzi, but he did promise they’ll leave my kids alone.
I promised I wouldn’t tell a soul about our arrangement and added that no one would believe me even if I did.
Sad, but true, and he didn’t argue the point. And then Piper crawled into my bed, and she can read, so I put my phone away.
If I’m lucky, I’ll have another few texts from him the next time I get a chance to check.
I don’t realize how far I’ve retreated into my own head when Brittany Danvers plops down next to me.
In nine years of parenting, I’ve learned that we moms fall into basically three types.
There’s the organized PTO mom who can talk anyone into anything and generally sends her kids to school on national holidays with hand-stuffed baggies for their classmates, full of raisin boxes, Snickers bars, glow sticks, those little stamps that kids use to stamp the hell out of their walls when their mothers aren’t looking, and toothbrushes.
Then there’s the working mom who donates more money than necessary to every fundraiser to alleviate guilt.
And finally, we have the hot mess mom whose socks rarely match and who sometimes forgets to comb her hair and check to make sure her sweatshirt isn’t on backwards before she leaves the house.
I’m somewhere between the latter two, and a quick glance down confirms that while I’m wearing pants, and my blouse buttons up the front and even correctly today, my shoes are two different colors.
And I’m wearing sneakers. They’re actually two different styles.
Crap.
The thing about all of us, though, is that we all feel like we’re on the cusp of losing it, whether we look like it or not.
Brittany told me over drinks that we all wished were spiked at last year’s end-of-the-hockey-season party that she hasn’t slept in eleven years and that the sand she got up her vagina at their family Christmas trip to an all-inclusive in Mexico was the most action she’d had in months.