Page 15 of I Choose You
My father gave me a once-over when I walked in. I wasn’t in my best clothes, coming from the jobsite, but that wasn’t unusual. We weren’t exactly fancy-dress people.
“Good. You were starting to look scraggly,” he said. “Grab the mixer and finish the mashed potatoes.”
“Uh, thanks.” I scratched at my newly shaved jaw. After working with Claire earlier, which had been better than I expected—granted, my expectation had been pretty damn low, but still, it was cool to see what she had done with my original idea—I had taken off work a little early so I could stop by the barbershop on the way home and get a haircut and shave. “Where’s Sheila?”
Dad’s new girlfriend had been making the meal for our family dinner for a few months now. I had no issue helping out, but usually Sheila had it covered, sometimes with Maeve’s help.
“She had to stay late at the diner. One of the servers called in sick, but she should be here any minute.”
“And after a long day on her feet, she gets to come home to a fresh-cooked dinner. Good job, Pops.” I slapped him on the shoulder as I passed him in the kitchen.
“Look at you, talking in full sentences again. Having a real conversation. Claire must be good for you.”
“Claire? What does she have to do with anything?” I asked.
Where the hell had that come from?
“Woah, someone decided to show us up, looking all pretty,” Wyatt joked as he came into the room holding Jane, Maeve right behind him.
“I don’t look pretty, jackass. You wish a haircut could make you look this good.”
Wyatt wrapped his arm around Maeve’s waist and brought her in for a deep kiss. She pulled back and looked up at him with stars in her eyes. The love they felt for each other was palpable, and I found myself happy that Wyatt had found thatrather than annoyed by it.
Wyatt and Maeve were still figuring things out between them when Kayleigh and I broke up. They got together just afterward, and it had been pissing me off to see them together. It felt good to leave some of that behind, finally. Wyatt deserved to be happy, the way he stepped up when our mom died.
“Who’s the new guy?” Luke asked as he walked in with Sebastian Devereux. Luke and Sebastian had been best friends since childhood and stayed friends over the years despite growing into totally different people. Where Luke was a buttoned-up police officer, serious and rule-abiding, Sebastian was a tatted-up ladies’ man who thought of laws as more like suggestions.
“Christ, everyone’s a comedian today.” I threw my hands up. “I got a freaking haircut and a shave. It’s happened before. I don’t know why everyone is making such a big deal out of it.”
“It’s ’cause you looked like a fucking hobo before,” Wyatt piped up.
I pushed the hand mixer into his free hand and pulled Jane to me. “Fuck all of you. I’m taking the baby, you finish dinner.” I flashed my middle finger in the air and turned toward the living room.
Sheila walked into the kitchen just as I was walking out. “Well, don’t you look so handsome. Doesn’t he look handsome, Charlie?”
The room went silent for a split second before every one of them doubled over with laughter.
I closed my eyes and tried to take a breath, but my chest rumbled with the laugh that I was holding back. “Thank you,Sheila.”
As I walked past her, taking Jane with me to the living room, Sheila said, “I stepped into something there, didn’t I?”
The rest of the dinner went by with many further comments on my appearance. My family liked to razz each other whenever they could, but they’d mostly left me alone since the breakup. I didn’t think my attitude invited playful banter. Now that they had an opening that didn’t set me off entirely, they took total advantage of it.
It was kind of nice to feel a little more like my old self again.
Thinking of Kayleigh could still send me into a tailspin, but it was getting easier to pull myself out of it recently. Even seeing Georgie and Tom Ingram, Kayleigh’s parents, at Millie’s wasn’t as painful as it had been before. Georgie had thought that Claire and I were together, and I didn’t get a chance to correct her. It must have gotten back to Kayleigh by now. Did it bother her to think of me with someone else?
No.
I wasn’t going there. It wasn’t any of her business who I was with, even if it wasn’t the truth.
The front door opened, and a moment later, Juliet came into the kitchen. She wore the same perpetual scowl on her face that she always did.
“Did you start eating dinner without me?” she asked Luke, indignation dripping from her tone.
Luke raised his brow. “I wasn’t sure what time you were going to be here. You told me you and Erin might be going out after the spa.”
“Well, we didn’t. Erin had things to do.”
