“Was?” I ask as I watch Evee grow tired of the book she’s playing with.
I grab a stuffed bunny to put in front of her as Ava answers solemnly, “He was Bennett’s friend.”
I nod, knowing the story of my boss’ brother, and how he died in a fire almost two years ago. Hey Honey’s opened on his birthday, and Bennett’s go-to coffee order—a coffee with cream—is a permanent menu item we call The Ben.
“I’m surprised I’ve never seen him before,” I answer. The man who walked into the coffee shop no more than fifteen minutes ago was a walking, breathing contrast of a man, with his large frame and gruff voice but the softest eyes.
I definitely would have remembered seeing him.
“I didn’t realize it until he left, but I’ve seen him a few times. Today, he looked a little more,” she pauses, trying to think of the right word, “rugged. Like he’s been living off the land.”
“He did look like he could use a haircut,” I add with a chuckle.
“It hasn’t been since I worked next door at Lenny’s though,” she explains, talking about the bar next door owned by some of Luke and Annie’s friends. “The last time I saw him, I was still bartending there.”
“So he wasn’t around when Hey Honey’s opened?” I ask, wondering why Bennett’s friend wouldn’t be here for the opening of the shop dedicated to him.
“From what I remember hearing, he headed straight up north to his cabin after the funeral. Quit his job at the fire station, packed a bag, and went remote,” Ava answers with a shrug.
I nod my head in response as Evee reaches for the bunny in my hands, a two-toothed smile on her little face as she disregards the book she was holding for the stuffed animal. “Did Luke say anything else about him? Like why he’s back?”
“You seem almost as interested in him as he was in you,” Ava teases. I look up at her from my place on the play mat to find a smirk on her face, her freckles more prominent with the sunlight coming in through the window.
“He was not interested in me,” I reply, avoiding commenting on her statement of my interest in him and trying to deflect, but I feel heat in my cheeks.
“He so was,” Ava shoots back as she leans back in the desk chair. “He was looking at you like he wanted to swallow you whole.”
I let out a little scoff, looking down at Evee as she tries to untie the bows around the bunny’s ears. “You say that like it’s a good thing.”
“Come on, Rue. You need to let loose a little. Let a big, strong man like that take care of you.”
My jaw drops in feign astonishment. “How un-feminist of you, Ava. We don’t teach my daughter that she needs a man to take care of her.”
Ava laughs. “Not like that, silly. He could take care of you in manydifferentways,” she says with a raise of her brow. When I don’t say anything, she adds in an all too serious tone, “What I’m saying is you need to get laid.”
I bring a hand to my chest as if I’m scandalized by her words. “Ava Dolores Williams, you are going to be the death of me.”
She laughs even harder. “One, what did we say about throwing the middle name at me, Rumi Lillith Matthews?” I reach behind me and throw one of Evee’s stuffed animals at her. “And two,” she continues, catching the stuffed cat before it hits her in the face, “we need to stop pretending that you are not the hottest, most sexiest MILF to ever walk this planet.”
My head drops to my hands, my face burning with embarrassment.
“And I know Mr. Caveman was thinking the same when he looked like he wanted to reach over the counter and throw you over his shoulder to take you to his cave where no other man could ever look at you again.”
“That’s it. You’ve killed me,” I mutter with my face still in my hands.
When I think back to how Jack was looking at me, my cheeks instantly feel even hotter. His eyes bored into me, and it made me feel like he was seeing me and only me—like no one else mattered.
“I’m just saying,” Ava sing-songs, and there is a hint of triumph in her voice, as if embarrassing me was her goal with this all along.
I look up to find that triumph written all over her face as she looks down at me from the desk chair. I shake my head. “And I’m just saying, I don’t think that’s how he was looking at me.” It’s the only answer I can come up with; the one that helps me ignore the fluttering in my stomach that should definitelynotbe there.
As if I have any business thinking about dating or sex when I have my daughter to think about.
Not to mention how my knee-jerk reaction to Jack’s attention was to shrink into myself and make myself smaller, not bask in it like maybe someone without the history I have would.
I don’t do well with attention, especially male attention, something my therapist and I work heavily on, and Jack’s attention was on nothing but me when he caught me holding in a laugh at him.
The last time I let myself give in to male attention, I ended up finding a man who was exactly like my father, as if I’m solely capable of attracting men who only feel stronger by hurting the women who love them.
