Page 26 of Unexpectingly Happily Ever After

″Be careful with the kids.” My voice is muffled against his chest.

″What am I going to do, break them?”

″Please don’t.”

I’m already close to tears at the thought of being away from them for four days. Thinking of them broken in some way just about puts me over the edge.

″I won’t break your kids,” he assures me.

″They’re your kids too.”

″Which is why I am perfectly capable of taking care of them. You think so too. You told me that.”

″Maybe I had been drinking when I said that,” I say in a small voice.

″Casey.” He tips my chin up. “Everything will be fine.”

″You know what fine stands for, don’t you? Fucked up, insecure, neurotic–”

″Casey!” His tone of exasperation stops me.

″Everything will be fine,” I echo. “I’ll have fun.”

″You will have fun. Say hi to the girls. I love you.”

″Love you too.” We kiss as the headlights flash impatiently against the window. “I better go.”

J.B. opens the door for me and carries my suitcase to the car. “Try to stay out of the trouble,” he says as leans down for one last kiss.

″I’ll do my best.” Hopefully, the forced wink distracts him from my quivering chin. “But I’m not promising.”

I wave as the car drives away, and keep waving even after J.B. goes back into the house. I take a deep breath, and then another. It’s fine. I’m fine. It’s only four days.

″Early flight?” the Uber driver asks.

″I’m going to Las Vegas.”

″The city that never sleeps. You’ll fit right in.”

I hide a yawn. “I think I’ll need a nap.”

As I drive away from the house, the enormity of what I’m doing hits me. I’ve rarely been away from the kids for more than a few hours. I’m a full-time kindergarten teacher, but when the kids were indaycare, they were so close that five minutes after the school bell rang, I was picking them up. They spent an overnight at my sister’s, and the odd afternoon with Cooper and Emma, but that’s it.

The kids are my life, and I’m going away without them.

But as much as I love them, I love myself too. And I love Morgan and Brit. J.B. was right to push me into this. I need something else in my life because someday my kids are going to be gone. They’re going to move out, be far away from me…

I clamp my hands over my mouth to stifle the whimper.

I obviously didn’t get enough sleep last night if I’m getting upset over something that may or may not happen in twelve years’ time.

If we were to have another baby now, the kids will be seven when the new baby arrives. Is that too big a gap? And I’ll be forty-three–is that too old to be the mother of a newborn?

I don’t feel like a forty-year-old. Despite the constant exhaustion, the more time I spend with the kids, the younger I feel. Maybe having a baby would be a good thing.

How old would I be when a baby becomes a teenager? Has J.B. even thought of that?

The lack of traffic snarls and construction backups at four am makes it a speedy drive to the airport. I try not to think about J.B. back in bed as I wheel my bag into the airport.

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