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“I appreciate that, Jamie, but honestly, it’s all water under the bridge. It’s been a long time, and I didn’t even blame you back then. We just weren’t aligned, weren’t headed on the same path. But it’s really nice of you to come here.” A soft laugh jumps from my throat. “A little awkward, but really nice.”
Jamie starts to smile—a just barely there curve of one corner of his mouth. He was never an expressive person and, other than being a decently good human, is just about the opposite of Chase’s outgoing personality in every way. But before either of us can say anything else, the boisterous sound of my family entering the building overtakes everything.
For maybe the first time in my adult life, I’m grateful for their graceless intrusion.
“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, is there a Fleetwood Mac show after Brookie’s thing?” I hear my dad ask from twenty people back in the line. He grunts, under what I can only assume is an assault from my mother’s hand to the back of his head, and continues on, volume control a phantom idea meant for other people. “What? I’m just sayin’. There’s lots of people here.”
I close my eyes for a brief second and then smile. Ladies and gentlemen, the Bakers have entered the building.
“What? No way, Sam!” My dad’s voice is now the star of the show. “Why would all these people be here to see Brooke? They’ve seen Brooke every day since she was a month old!”
I nod silently. Just a steady bob of my head and purse of my lips because, yeah, that sounds about right coming from my dad.
It’s not that he’s not proud of me; he just doesn’t understand how being something like a writer can have the magnitude it does. He never has. Even when he was carrying my newly divorced furniture into a walk-up apartment in one of his least favorite cities in the world—not that he has a favorite city, being the rural guy he is—he grumbled and bumbled and questioned every stranger we saw on the street, and he cursed my stairs and my door and my apartment. But he was there. Every step, every minute, every long hour in the ten-hour drive from home—he was there. And at the end of all his complaining, he kissed me on the forehead, told me he loved me, and said to call him when I needed him.
I made it on my own, but if I hadn’t, Hank Baker would have been there then too.
It took me a while to recognize all of it for what it was, but my path was one my dad had never taken—a path he would never have taken—and it’s just not as easy to come to terms with that as you’d think. We’re humans. We’re not perfect. Even parents.
“Hey, Chase,” I turn to ask, touching his forearm to get his full attention. “Can you go back there and bring my family up before my dad makes a full-on scene?”
“Sure thing.” Chase’s smile is bright, white, and playful.
I can’t help but stare at it.
When I turn back to Jamie, he’s watching me with interest, and I have a feeling it’s because he’s familiar with the dreamy, moony-eyed look that’s probably on my face as I watch Chase walk away. That look used to be directed at him when we were growing up.
Thankfully, my ex-husband lives ten hours away from me, and aside from right now, I haven’t talked to him in roughly six years. After today, I don’t intend to talk to him again. Hence, he’s not the person I have to provide an explanation to or be concerned that he’ll want to discuss why that very look is on my face and directed at my editor.
Jamie, and that part of my life, are truly in the past.
“Thank you again. It was nice to see you both,” I tell him and Mary Katherine, effectively dismissing them as my whole band of crazy family approaches the table. My mom, my dad, my sister Sammy, and her two wild offspring are like a band of spider monkeys, swinging through the trees.
They don’t even notice that it’s Jamie as he and Mary Katherine make their retreat—thank goodness—so we’re spared of a dick-whipping sword fight between my dad and reluctant ex.
My dad doesn’t hate Jamie—in a twisted way, they’re the same type of man—but the old Baker sin card was forever marred by our divorce, which in and of itself, is enough to make Hank throw down.
The Baker gaggle is loud as they approach my table like a swarm of bees at a fruit picnic, but man, my heart feels heavy with warmth.
I never expected it would be this good to see them, but even with my dad’s loudmouth grumbling, I jump up and practically over the table to wrap each of them in a tight hug.
