Page 21 of Space Crush
His chest jolts with a short burst of laughter. “Don’t worry about it.”
But I am worried about it. My eyes move toward the front of his jeans. “I didn’t do any lasting damage, did I?”
His eyes fall to the large collection of lingerie in my shopping bag. “Care to find out for yourself?”
Stepping closer, I wrap my arms around his neck. “Don’t mind if I do.”
EIGHT
ACCELERATED LIFE TESTING
One year later
Evan
“How’s your mom doing?”
Kaley, still glued to her phone since it beeped with a notification five minutes ago, doesn’t spare me a glance as she enters the bedroom.
Ourbedroom.
“According to her dating app notifications, she’s more active than I am.” She scoffs over something she reads on her phone as she passes me sitting in bed on her way to the closet. “She’s going to meetDanat Clear Lake tomorrow and go kayaking.” With her back to me, I may not see it, but I can hear her eye roll.
Shirtless, I sit back against the upholstered headboard we picked out and bought together last week and chuckle at the monster I’ve created.
The past year has been amazing.
Our early drama may have made for a bumpy start, but it also helped us understand that the key to making our relationship work is clear communication.
First rule—no question is too small or stupid to ask.
Which is how I ended up showing Kaley how to help her mother download the dating app my mother uses and then mirror it on her own phone. Which she then taught Rose and Ian’s wife, Trish, how to do.
And when Bodie and Ian complained, I just laughed.
Side note—karma is hilarious.
Now our three significant others—plus a few more of our friends with single parents—created a group text that acts as a support group for adult children helping their parents navigate the online dating world.
I’ve never been so glad that my mom became serious about Kenneth, a retired high school English teacher that she met a few weeks after Kaley and I got back together.
Because while I may have been a silent,protectivewitness to my stepmother’s foray into dating, unlike Trish, I didn’t actively swipe right for my mother-in-law, filling up her weekends with dates like a soccer mom trying to manage her kid’s schedule.
At least Bodie, whose widowed mother was and still is in a committed relationship, was spared having to deal with his wife “pimping out his mom,” as Rose likes to say to Ian.
However, not to be deterred from meddling in the name of love, Bodie does have to listen to his wife’s trials and tribulations as she managessevendifferent dating profiles—one for each of her geriatric pole dancing class members who, according to Rose, “want to dance with the real thing.”
I shudder, despite sitting, ready for bed, under the fluffy comforter Kaley and I purchased to go with our new bedroom furniture.
“Maybe I should decline this Dan guy’s invite in case he tries something with Mom while they’re out in the middle of the lake,” Kaley calls out from the walk-in closet, thankfully pulling me from my current train of thought. “I don’t think Mom’s seen his message yet, anyway.”
She reenters the bedroom, the vision of her in a silk champagne-colored slip that she calls pajamas making my throat dry and the comforter tent over my lap.
Leaning against the closet’s doorframe, she glares at the phone in her hand. “I mean, who offers to take a sixty-two-year-old woman on an outdoor activity like that on the first date?”
I swallow hard, once more thankful that Kaley agreed to move in with me. Seeing her here, in my house, but one which we redecorated together to make it ours, makes me feel as if I’m walking on the moon I help others explore. “Isn’t that crossing the line?”
Once she forgave me in Ooo La La and I spent my next paycheck buying her everything in her bag, I took her out to lunch (leaving my stepmother in the good—if not diabolical—hands of Rose).
