The Slow Burn (Moonlight and Motor Oil #2)(17)

But the life I’d lived, I knew it was.

“Okay, Addie,” Deanna murmured.

“So I’ll see you and Charlie around five on Sunday?” I asked.

“Sure thing, babe,” she assured. “And, well, sorry if I upset you about the Toby thing.”

“You didn’t upset me. It’s cool. It just isn’t what you think.”

“Right,” she muttered doubtfully.

Hmm.

“You take care,” she went on.

“You too. Love you. Later.”

“Love you back. And later.”

We disconnected. I put all that firmly in the back of my mind. Then I finished folding and I left the clothes across the top of the washer and dryer to add the ones from the next load when it was dry. I’d put them away in the morning, or maybe the next evening. Brooklyn wasn’t a light sleeper, but as much as I loved my baby boy, I got tons done when he was down, and I didn’t need to be waking him up by opening and closing drawers in his room.

I took the baby monitor with me when Dapper Dan and I went to Izzy’s upstairs office, which I’d converted into my card-making room after she moved out, and I moved Brooks out of the office where he’d been staying into the guestroom and me into the master.

I was hand painting some pine needles across the top of a card from which I was going to tack some ornaments for Deanna’s Christmas cards, or if she didn’t like them, for Macy’s shop when my phone vibrated.

The screen said Talon Calling.

That meant Toby.

I called him Talon as a joke.

I also called him Talon because it used to make him laugh, and he had a nice laugh. Now he’d heard it so much he just smiled, and he had an amazing smile, all white teeth in that thick coal beard.

I looked to the door, which was closed, then to the baby monitor, which was on, then I took the call.

“Yo, Talon.”

There was that smile of his in his voice when he replied, “Yo, Lollipop.”

Right.

After opening the mental Toby can of worms, that was killer.

He knew how he got Talon and I kept at it because, first, I liked his smile, and second, his father could actually have named him Talon, and Tobe was the kind of guy who could pull that name off, and last because it reminded me how we met, where we were, and helped me put myself in my place.

I had no idea why he called me Lollipop.

I just knew it was cute and it felt good when he called me that, sweet and sugary and all things that were so not me but could make me think he thought of me that way (when he surely didn’t), and I loved it.

I called him Talon all the time.

He called me Lollipop all the time.

Maybe I should quit calling him Talon so he’d stop calling me Lollipop.

“You phoned,” I prompted. “Did you do that just to listen to me breathing?”

I heard his chuckle.

I loved his chuckle.

Shit.

“Nope. You got lights for the outside?” he asked.

“What?” I asked back.

“Christmas lights,” he explained. “For the outside of your house.”

I stopped with my little brush dipped in green paint suspended over the cardstock.

“Uh . . . no,” I answered.

“I’ll get ’em,” he declared. “White or colored?”

Oh boy.

“Tobe—”

“I say colored. That cute-as-fuck farmhouse will glitter into the fairy realm if you put perfect white lights on it. Colored with the fat bulbs. Retro and ugly.”

You would not think this, but there was a lot there.

One, Izzy had left all her furniture, but she’d had a huge yard sale, clearing out most of the abundance of the shabby-chic stuff she’d decorated her house with so Brooks and I did not have to live amongst swirly, curlicue cutesy, and so she could buy some insanely expensive wineglasses she had her eye on (as well as save up for her wedding) when she’d moved out.

I was not a shabby-chic girl.

I was twenty-nine years old and I did not know what kind of girl I was seeing as I’d never had the opportunity to decorate. I’d been too busy having fun, living life, fucking up, and falling in love with a cheating loser to get a lock on my preferred home décor.

Two, if I had a choice, I’d put fat, colored, retro bulbs on my house for Christmas cheer because they were festive and ugly. I’d love the hell out of them and Brooks would get a kick out of them.

But knowing Toby was right there with me felt great, which meant it sucked.

And three, there was no way in hell I was going to turn on Christmas lights outside that I couldn’t see except driving up after work, because I simply couldn’t afford it.

The tree, I’d do, in the times Brooks and I were hanging in the family room, plus I already had the fake, pre-lit tree, ornaments and some swags I’d scored at that estate sale.

Unnecessary outdoor decorations, no.

“I’ll get enough to line the edge of roof and come early to do it so when everyone shows on Sunday, they’ll get a load of it. Iz might freak at the retro, but that’ll be part of the fun,” he went on.

“Toby, you really don’t need to do that,” I told him.

“I know. You really don’t need to do anything when it comes to Christmas. But you do because it’s Christmas.”