Page 15 of One Night Flame

I blinked. “A weekend?” This was not at all what we’d discussed.

“Don’t look so surprised,” she said. “You’ve earned a little freedom. And who knows?” Her eyes twinkled with thatpatented brand of mischief I really should’ve been better at spotting by now. “Might come in handy.”

“Grandma, this is a date, not a honeymoon.”

She waved me off. “Pssh. Don’t start saying what it’s not before it’s even happened. There’s a fresh box of condoms in your nightstand.” Before I could protest, she was moving into the main part of the house. “C’mon, kiddo. We’ve got pancakes in our future!”

“Pancakes!” my son shouted, already racing for the door without even a goodbye.

Then the door slammed, and they were both gone.

“Well, bye to y’all, too.” I let out a breath and headed for the living room.

The quiet hit me first. Not silence exactly—there was still the hum of the fridge, the creak of the old floorboard by the hall—but it was Liam-less. No cartoons on low volume. No Legos threatening my arches. Just… quiet.

It felt unnatural.

Also kind of incredible.

I looked around, hands on my hips, surveying the usual wreckage of a six-year-old’s life. I had plenty of time before Cord was due to pick me up. I could do a quick sweep of things. It wasnota just in case I brought him home. It was simply an opportunity to actually get somewhere without my pint-sized hurricane coming in my wake to sow additional destruction.

I gathered up a fleet of plastic dinosaurs from the coffee table and dumped them into the toy chest, along with a plush fox, a race car, and what I thought used to be a chicken nugget. Well, that went into the garbage. I wiped a ring of dried juice from the counter. Straightened the pillows on the couch. Tossed two tiny socks and a rogue pair of Pokémon underwear into the laundry basket.

When I stepped back, the room looked almost—adult. Notentirely. The bookshelf still leaned with kid titles and construction paper projects. But for a blink of a moment, the space felt like something I might’ve lived in before.

Before Liam. Before divorce. Before everything got so heavy and loud and shaped by everyone else’s needs.

Not that I’d had a version of that before. Liam had changed the entire trajectory of my life before I’d ever really been out on my own. So imagining that Before felt more like imagining the Instead. The what-if scenario where I hadn’t gotten pregnant right after high school.

I didn’t like that thought. Not really. Because I adored my son and wouldn’t trade him for anything in the world. But it stayed.

I crossed my arms and stood there in the middle of my mostly clean living room, exhaling slowly.

It was nice. Just for tonight. Nice to be Lucy, not “Mom.” It had been a really long time since I’d been Lucy to anyone but my grandmother.

I was halfway through applying lip gloss—carefully, because I was out of practice and more than a little afraid of looking like I’d borrowed it from my seventh-grade niece—when the doorbell rang.

My hand jerked. Lip gloss smeared.

I stared at myself in the mirror.

Too late now.

There wasn’t anyone to fall back on, no Liam meltdown or PTA excuse. Grandma had him for the night—hell, for the weekend, apparently—and the house was quiet. Too quiet.

I smoothed the gloss with a fingertip, gave my reflection a last glance, and headed for the door before I could talk myself out of it.

This wasn’t just a date.

It was the first one that had ever really counted. Imean… it didn’t count. Not really. Grandma hadbought himfor me. But as practice went, maybe that was a good thing.

What I’d had with Marcus didn’t feel like it qualified anymore. That was teenaged desperation and hormones and two scared kids pretending they were grown. That relationship ended the second he decided he wasn’t cut out to be a parent—and left me to do it all on my own.

This?

This was my first real shot at something that might be mine. Or at least a baby step to remind myself that I wasn’t actually one foot in the grave yet.

I opened the door.

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