Page 10 of Unexpectingly Happily Ever After

“So Brit thinks I can drop everything and go to Vegas with her.”

It’s the next night, and I’m perched on a stool in the kitchen watching J.B. prepare dinner. I’m still shaking my head at Brit’s plan for the three of us to spend a weekend in Las Vegas together.

It’s totally unrealistic, and the logistics of figuring out how to make it happen is already giving me a headache. But somewhere, deep inside me, the twenty-five-year-old party Casey thinks a trip like that would be amazing. To get on a plane and take off for a few days…

Impossible. I’m a mother now. Selfless, responsible…

″Sounds like a good idea,” J.B. says.

The twenty-five-year-old party boy is obviously still wide awake inside him.

″What are you talking about? I’ve got the kids to worry about, not to mention my job, which wouldn’t really matter because she’s talking about going for a weekend, but there’s the restaurant and the kids and you…” I list, finishing one hand and starting on the other.

J.B. has a rare Friday night off. He had suggested the two of us going out, but I told him I’d rather stay at home with the kids because I know he likes spending as much time with them as he can.

Plus, if we stay home, that means J.B. will cook.

″It’s herfourthwedding and I’m sure there’ll be more to come. How can she want to go have a big hoopla for something’s that not even going to last?”

Even though the hoopla would be fun while it lasted.

″How do you know it’s not going to last?” J.B. admonishes. “Who’s she marrying this time?”

″Justin somebody. Don’t you love it? Britney and Justin?” I shake my head at J.B.’s blank expression. “Britney Spears and Justin Timberlake? The cutest couple of the 90s? Or maybe it was the 2000s. No? You’re such a boy.”

″You like me being a boy.” He wiggles his eyebrows, making me smile.

″Sometimes. Did I tell you that Sophie told the whole LCBO that Ben has a penis? Why don’t you get outbursts like that?”

″I get outbursts.”

″Do they involve penises and vaginas?”

″Not really, no.”

″I’m going to tell them to come to talk to you when they want to know about sex,” I promise.

″Then our children will never have sex because I’ll put the fear of God into them.”

I sit on the stool at the counter as J.B. pours himself a glass of Cabernet Sauvignon and begins to prepare dinner. I love watching him in the kitchen. The graceful way he moves between counter and stove, the way he cleans up as he goes. Watching his knife fly through the mountain of vegetables, most of which the kids won’t eat.

None of them like the same thing. Carrots and corn and brussels sprouts for Sophie; peppers and tomatoes and celery for Ben; onions and cauliflower for Lucy.

The variety makes for a crowded vegetable drawer in the fridge.

″Do you want wine or should I make you a martini?” J.B. asks.

″It’s Friday night,” I say, leaving out theduh.

He reaches up to the cupboard where we keep the liquor. It’s a good-sized cupboard, considering he used to be a bartender and likes to hone his craft and I like to drink. I quite like being the recipient of his creations.

″Who helped last time?” he mutters to himself as he pulls the gin out of the freezer.

″Ben,” I tell him, thinking back to last Sunday when J.B. gave a Ben a lesson on how to make a whiskey sour.

Yes, our six-year-old children are budding bartenders. They like to help in the kitchen as well, but all three are fascinated by the science of mixology. At least that’s how J.B. justifies it.

″It’s science,” he said last weekend as Ben measured Canadian Club into a shot glass. “It’s not like he’s going to taste it.

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