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Scratch that, I think. This is the most I’ve felt like her boss.
It makes me a bit ill. I wish that Lewis had punched me.
“You know, if the kids hadn’t been there—” I start.
She interrupts, “I know.”
“I just?—”
“I get it,” she says firmly.
I’m not sure she does, but I don’t want to upset her, so I just nod.
“Okay, rules.” She waves a hand towards me.
I take a gulp of my drink. “The kids would prefer you not come over,” I blurt out.
Her brows leap but she just nods. “Can do.”
“When they’re not around, you can,” I continue because I apparently love digging holes for myself to climb into. “But Idon’t see why you would need to come if they aren’t there, as what would that do to convince them?”
“Right…”
“And I don’t see why you would want to come over after what you said to me in the office?—”
“What I said to you?”
“Yes,” I badger forward. “You’re clearly uninterested in pursuing anything beyond this ruse?—”
“Don’t make it sound like I’m in it for something,” she snaps.
I know that I’m the one dragging this out, I’m the one talking too much and with too much hostility, but still, I can’t manage to reign myself in. “Then why won’t you tell me why you lied?”
“Why the hell does it matter?” She throws her hands up. “If you are glad I’m lying, which you clearly are, or you would have corrected them, why does it matter?”
She’s right.
And I don’t have an answer—or at least, not one that doesn’t reveal so clearly how I feel about her. There’s no option that doesn't result in my humiliation, in my exposure, so I just tighten my lips and force down the words that I want so badly to bubble over.
“I’m aware of your brother’s intentions with my ex-wife,” I say instead. Her expression crumples and then shakes out, like she’s a computer rebooting, as she tries to follow my line of thinking. “I assume you are, too.”
Laura takes a large drink from the glass closest to her. “Ugh,” she says, shivering a little.So not a fan of the martini.“He loves Jessi.”
“He’s likely to want to marry her, if he doesn’t already,” I continue. Laura looks uncertain still, but she inclines her head as if to agree with me. “That will make you the children’s aunt.”
Her expression pales.
“Only by marriage, of course, and I don’t know how close you and your brother are now, so I don’t mean to assume you’d be in their lives.”
She tucks her hair behind her ears. “I… would want to be,” she admits. “Idowant to be.”
It stings.
In another world, she wants to be a part of my kids’ lives for me.
“So we will want to do this delicately. For your sake, and for mine.”
“Yes. Yeah,” she nods. “I think so, too.”
