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“Stop apologizing for that.It’s not your fault.You were in the right place at the right time for my fucked-up brain to latch onto all the wrong things.I love the way you take care of my kid.I mean that.”
Chapter23
Mason
June
“So, how are things at home?”Eleanor prodded, stirring her coffee.People bustled in and out of the small coffee shop around us.
“Fine.Catherine and Candace seem to get along.I was worried about leaving them alone together, but so far things haven’t gone to shit.”
“Sure, sure,” she said impatiently.“I want the tea, Mace.”
“Where on earth did you get that term?Who are you these days?”I asked my formerly uptight ex-wife.Never in the thirty years we spent as friends did she use any kind of slang with me.
She giggled.“Not sure, but the change in personality comes up a lot.At some point I just stopped resisting the urge to be the old me.”She shrugged.
I took a long look at her.Instead of wearing her hair in a tight bun or down with just the right amount of curl, it was in a messy bun.She had foregone the makeup and, most notably, she was wearing fucking jeans.“You look… relaxed.When we were together, you were always…” I searched for an appropriate word to describe her essence without offending her.
“Uptight?Stressed?Stick up my ass?”she provided; one corner of her mouth tipped in a smile.
“I was going with ‘serious,’ but yeah.All of those.It’s a good look on you.I’m glad I divorced your ass.”I winked.
“Me too.”She smiled.“Now, back to the tea.You don’t look less stressed, so are you done…” she looked around the cafe, “being an idiot?”
I swallowed hard.I absolutely wasn’t.In fact, I spent more time thinking about the ways I wanted to have Candace than I did before I told her we had to stop.What was worse, emotionally I doubled down because I wanted way more with Candace than she and I had agreed, and it felt like torture not to touch her.“Yes,” I answered carefully.
“There’s depth to that ‘yes,’ Mason.”I just shrugged.“So, is this another Megan?”She wasn’t being an asshole.It was a reasonable assumption.
“I guess?I don’t know.”
That made her pause with a dumb founded look on her face as she stared at me with her mouth agape.“You don’t know?Mason, is it more than you told me?”
“No.”Not at the moment.
“Which one of you wants more?”she asked, genuinely interested.
I hesitated a minute before letting out a deep exhale.“Me.I’m losing the damn plot over this girl.”I braced for her response.
Her eyes widened, and she took a sip from her mug before asking, “Who knows about this?”
“You.Only you.Christ, can you imagine?It’s exactly why it can’t be more, Ellie.All the things you are thinking are all the things I need to remember.Please remind me,” I begged.Ellie had a doctorate in political science and was a well-respected campaign strategist before giving the career the middle finger.If anyone could remind me that I was a politician who couldn’t afford another scandal, it would be her.
“You have no idea what I’m thinking,” she scoffed.“Yes, all those things I can’t say in a coffee shop are true.But maybe listen less to those things and more to your own heart.I wish I had.”
“This is different.”
She raised an eyebrow at me.“In that you don’t see yourself falling for her, or that there are all these problems with that?”
Unable to say scandalous things out loud in a public place, I shot her a text.
First, her father would, rightfully, murder me.
Second, she can’t even buy alcohol
Third, I don’t know that she wants what I want
She gasped when she read the last one.
