Page 75 of Hot for the Jerk

My fists bunched, and I stomped my foot like a toddler before I could stop myself.That just propelled him into a laugh.

“Laugh, Elsa.It was funny.”

My eyes formed thin slits as I fought the smile my face wanted to make.I turned to go.“Fine.Six o’clock.”

“Hey, girls,” he called into the house, “I got a date tomorrow night.You need to help me pick out what to wear.”

Girly cheers wafted out toward me.

“See you tomorrow for our date, Rosebush,” he said, still hitting me with that ridiculously sexy smile.

I nodded, way too giddy for my own liking, and already getting anxious over what to wear.“See you at six.”

Then I floated back to the car at the same time he closed the door.A second later, the music volume cranked, Marvin and Tammi’s tune starting all over again.

And no matter how much I tried to fight it for the rest of the day, I caught myself singing or humming that song.

I had a date with Jagger “The Jerk” McEvoy, and I wasn’t nearly as terrified about it as I thought I’d be.

Maybe he wasn’t the enemy after all.

Maybe … he was the fresh start I was finally coming to realize I deserved.

“I thought we hated Jagger McEvoy,” Marco protested, sitting on my bed Sunday night as I applied my makeup.“Why are you going on a date with him?”

I glanced at my child in the mirror.“Remember how in the first grade, you and Oliver Sundry didn’t get along?”

“Yeah, because no matter how many times I told him that he needed to wait in line for the slide like everyone else, he figured he could just climb the slide from the bottom and skip the line.”

“And now the two of you are best friends.”

Marco rolled his eyes.“After we created jobs, and someone stood at the bottom of the slide to stop him, while the rest of us blocked him from pushing through from the back.It took him forever to learn to wait his turn.”

“Okay, but he did learn, and now you’re friends.”

“Okay.Fine.Did Jagger learn how to wait his turn?”

I snorted and smiled at him in the mirror as I applied a bit of blush to my cheeks.“In a sense, yes.To be fair though, the reason we didn’t get along for so long was partly my fault too.I have apologized, and he forgave me.”

As if realizing for the first time in his life that his mother wasn’t actually a faultless angel goddess, my son’s green eyes went wide.“What did you do that you needed to apologize for?”

“I was mean to him.”

“How?How could you be mean?”The kid’s brain looked like it was about to explode.I was in the throes of destroying his reality of me that I could do no wrong.Here I thought I’d done it years ago when I almost had a coronary and removed nearly every privilege imaginable after he and Austin ran through the grapevines and hid from us for six hours when they were four and six.

Opening my mouth as I applied my mascara, I hesitated whether I should tell him the truth.I could tell him parts of it, I guess.Kids were never too young to learn how to apologize, accept responsibility for their actions, and make amends.

“You might be too young to remember, but we lived in Seattle for a few months before we moved to the island.”

He shook his head.“I know we did, but I don’t remember.”

I nodded.“Anyway, I thought I might be ready to date.So I tried one of those online dating apps where you can chat with people for a while before you decide to meet in person.I was chatting with Jagger.Then we decided to meet in person.Only, I arrived at the coffee shop, realized I wasn’t ready, and I ran away.Then, he tried to ask me why I did it and I wouldn’t talk to him.When he recognized me after we moved to the island, he tried to talk to me about it again, and I turned mean.Because I was scared.”

“Scared of what?”

“Of …”

Big green eyes stared back at me, blinking and waiting for my answer.

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