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Chapter 13
“Linda says that Mason needs to spend time with the both of us, knowing that we’re going to separate homes after. It will make him feel more secure seeing that we can be together and apart, and he can be safe in both situations. It might lessen the bedwetting. And you know what? I agree with her. How did you and Eric handle it?”
Hope played with her spoon, and it clinked against the saucer. “You’re very unlike Eric—in a good way. While he still lived here, we just … To be honest, he was okay with whatever I decided. I offered shared custody because I wanted the girls to have us both, but then he …” She was too ashamed to say it. “He gave it up because he decided to move to Nevada, to his girlfriend, now his wife.”
Chris smiled, but he seemed a bit disappointed, as if he was expecting her to shine some sort of light on a solution to his predicament and she had failed to supply it.
Hope looked away and scanned the coffee shop. It wasn’t as homely as The Mean Bean, but Mocha & Chino was on the 101, and it was better than being at one of the Riviera View cafés, bumping into colleagues or parents who would gossip about the English and Chemistry teachers dating. It was the kind of place that the Silicon Valley crew would hold their business meetings or come to work on their laptops when they weren’t up to driving all way to the Bay area, or felt too cooped-up at home and wanted to be surrounded by this addicting smell of special brews and the soft music that played in the background.
“Linda offered we continue with the bi-monthly joint meetings with the therapist, and I agreed. At least until Mason turns six. Right?”
Hope pressed her lips together, creasing her chin in a I dunno way. It was better than the Can’t you talk of something other than your ex? expression that she stifled. “You two know what’s best. It’s never exactly the same for everyone.”
“No, of course not,” Chris replied.
It was their third date, and the second that Chris had spent talking almost solely about his ex. She hadn’t minded at first, but it was a one-way street. He didn’t ask her about her issues, except when he needed her to corroborate something for him. During summer school, they used to talk about books, share movies and series recommendations, come up with funny ways to improve Show & Tell, but now it was no more.
They had kissed after the previous date at a restaurant. Chris had said that she had been his first kiss since Linda. She had smiled sympathetically and hadn’t revealed that he hadn’t been her first since her divorce, or the best.
“Do you want another coffee or …?” she asked. It was afternoon, and they had only been here thirty minutes, but she was getting restless.
“No, I’m fine. Thanks,” Chris replied.
She sneaked another peek at the room. A man was sitting alone near the windows, his gaze fixed on his phone. At the sight of him, a hot coil ignited under her ribcage, diffusing heat all over her, from her toes to the roots of her hair. Oh shit.
Jordan Delaney.
Why was he there? He hadn’t been there a few minutes before, and she hadn’t noticed him come in. Was she doomed to see him at every café or bar?
She must have been staring, because he raised his eyes, as if he felt someone was watching him, and their gazes collided. He seemed startled, too.
They looked at each other for a moment. He then shifted his eyes to Chris, and a slow smile curled his lips. He nodded once then returned to his phone.
Thrown off balance, Hope shifted on her seat and resumed playing with the spoon’s handle, half-listening to Chris, who was telling her about the new mealtime routine that he and Linda were trying to get Mason on, so his schedule would be the same at both homes.
Distractedly, she shook her head in a quick motion, as if she could churn up her thoughts and feelings like the flakes in a snow globe. Because here she was, with Chris, but her reaction to Jordan indicated that her experiment was evincing a disaster.
Chris wasn’t someone she was ashamed to be seen with. True, his too-large Hard Rock Café Los Angeles T-shirt made him look far less enticing than Jordan with his white button-down shirt that was cuffed at his elbows and sat so well on his broad shoulders. But, so what? Chris was a nice, normal, regular guy, and his shirts weren’t bespoke like Jordan’s probably were.
She tried to forget that tattoo on his bicep, the one that told her that Jordan had facets that she hadn’t known, like some lost key to an underlying essence she had sensed in him. She tried to forget that Libby liked him and that she appreciated Libby’s opinions on people. Or that he had been kind to her daughter and sweet to both her children. Chris dealt with kids every day and had one of his own.
When nothing else worked, she reminded herself of Avery’s words from a few days before, when they had sat next to each other in the teachers’ lounge. “Congrats again on Hannah winning. I knew bringing Jordan would be a good thing. I can’t wait for him to meet my son.”
“What did you and Eric do in such cases?” she caught the tail of Chris’s question.
“Let’s get out of here,” she said. “We can drive to the market in Cambria. Wouldn’t it be fun?” She hoped she didn’t sound like when she was trying to convince her daughters to tidy up their rooms.
“We can go, but I have to be back by seven.”
“We will.”
Chris excused himself and went to the bathroom. He was the only buffer between her and Jordan, who sat a few tables away with no one between them now. She watched him as Chris’s movement caught his attention, and he followed him with his eyes for a moment before looking at her. He smiled again.
To her alarm, he got up. But instead of approaching her, he went to pay at the counter, leaving a bill in the tip jar. Then he detoured toward her.
“Hey.”
“Hey.” Her throat constricted.
