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He needed time to think, and when he was with Olive, he didn’t.

Within a couple of days he’d found out he’d had a grandmother living down the road for years but it was too late to get to know her, since she’d died more than two years ago; he’d delivered a baby again, something that had not been on his list of experiences he wanted to repeat even though it had been kind of awesome; and he’d fallen for a woman who wasn’t going to stay.

Olive had a life in Alabama, a good life from everything Mike had told him. A thriving business, friends, and her parents didn’t live too far away. No man, to hear him tell it, not for years, so maybe she didn’t need one.

He could relate. After a couple of earlier relationships went sour, he’d decided to be happy on his own for a while. He wanted to say the destruction of those relationships hadn’t been his fault but looking back… maybe he’d been as much to blame as the women. Maybe it was all his fault. Maybe they’d just been wrong for him.

None of them had been anything like Olive.

Yesterday had been momentous. Dinner, a new baby, incredible sex. He liked Olive, he liked her a lot.

But like everyone else he’d ever cared about she wasn’t going to stay, so why make more of this than it was or could ever be? Fun, for a while. Someone to spend Christmas with, and then she’d be gone. This holiday affair, if that’s what it was, had begun with Olive saying she wasn’t looking for a relationship. He saw more in them, or at least the possibility of more, but she was simply… hooking up. That should be fine with him; it should be perfect. So why was he mentally grousing about it now?

Olive was going to leave, too soon. She’d be back to visit, he supposed, and one day she’d show up with a husband on her arm. Kids would follow. Maybe she’d remember hooking up with him one Christmas with fondness.

Shit, he was thinking too much, overthinking everything. He liked her more than he’d expected he would, but neither of them needed the complication of a serious relationship.

She liked him, too; he knew it. That didn’t mean she’d change her life for him. Whatever they had was temporary, a fling and nothing more.

The Magnolia stayed busy, even now as Christmas approached. Tuck wasn’t the only one who didn’t have family plans for Christmas. He wasn’t the only one hiding from the holiday, just waiting for it to be over. He wondered if he could take his tree down this week, well before Christmas. He’d only put it up — well, he’d had it done — for Olive.

He was surprised to see Mike walk into The Magnolia on a Tuesday night. The new father had called several times today. Tuck always found a reason to send those calls to voicemail.

“He lives!” Mike said as he took a stool at the bar.

Unless he wanted to turn and run, there was no place to go. “Shouldn’t you be at the hospital?”

“I should. If you’d answer your damn phone, I would be.”

“Beer?”

Mike shook his head. “Not tonight. Though I will take a burger with the works, fries, and a glass of water.”

Tuck put the order in, then returned to his friend. “So, Nathaniel,” he said.

“Who told you? Olive, I guess. I wanted to tell you myself, but you didn’t answer your damn phone.”

“Don’t you know how to text?”

“I thought this was too important to put in a text, but hell, what do I know. I hope you don’t mind. No one calls you anything but Tuck, so it’s not like it’ll be confusing. Actually, I’m grateful. Dawn was planning to name him Edgar, after her grandfather. She moved that to the middle name, which suits me.”

“It’s fine. I’ve been Tuck for more than twenty years. And…” He grinned. “Edgar?”

“Yeah, that was a close one.”

“You didn’t have any say in the matter?”

Mike laughed. “Hell, no. You just wait. One day you’ll understand.”

He didn’t think that day would ever come.

Mike demolished his burger and inhaled the fries. When he was done, he gave Tuck an odd, probing look.

“So, what’s with you and Olive?”

The question of the day, one he had no answer for. Not for Mike, not for himself.