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“Yeah, Daddy,” Jessi teases, sticking out her tongue.
David looks at me.
I am moments away from perishing on the spot.
“I… think…” I trail off. David nods, waiting for me to do something to help. “I think… that idea… is… great.”
Lewis claps me on the shoulder hard enough that I rattle forward. I scowl at him.
“Great. It’s settled.”
Jessi smiles at me. “What a fascinating turn of events.”
“That’s… yep. It sure is something.”
“Mom, I’m bored,” Benjamin interrupts this terrible, awkward moment, and I think he is my favorite person in the room.
David says goodbye to the kids, who do not acknowledge me at all, and Jessi gives me a terribly awkward hug. Lewis claps David on the shoulder so hard that both men wince, and then David and I are once again left alone in his office.
“That…”
“I’m…”
We stare at each other.
“This sucks,” I declare.
David buries his face in his hands. “Yeah,” he grumbles. “Can you…?”
“Yeah, yeah,” I grab my suit jacket off the back of his couch and leave the office. I wait until the door closes before I sag against the wall.
Oh, JesusChrist.
This is the worst-case scenario. All the things we worried about, the things I fretted about, the things Alice asked me. This… this is far, far worse.
A double date. With mybrother.
This is a cosmic hell. I am being punished by a god.
“Woah, what did I miss?” Piper, David’s assistant, asks. I look up, startled that she showed up out of nowhere, and then I burst into tears.
“I will be taking rest of the day off,” I say tearfully.
She nods, bewildered, and I flee the premises.
CHAPTER 12
David
The pot on the stove threatens to bubble over.
So, too, does my temper.
“But she’s, like, my age,” Benji says for the tenth time.
“She is not,” I say for the tenth time as well. “She is over a decade older than you.”
“You hear how little that is, right?” he snaps.
