Page 31 of Mine To Keep (Southern Wedding)

Kayla looks up from her work. “Have you seen Grace?”

“Yeah,” she answers. “She and Loren left for the day to go to some florist for the gala.”

I put my hands in my pockets and walk back into my office. Walking behind the desk, I open the shades with the remote and sit down in my chair. “Should I call her?” I ask myself. “Maybe text her?” I pick up my phone and think about texting her, but what if she is next to Loren?

The rest of the afternoon flies by with back-to-back phone calls. Then I have to rush to pick up Meadow, who runs to me when she sees me. “Daddy!” she shouts, and I squat down in front of her, my arms wide open.

“Hi.” I kiss her cheek. “How was your day?”

“Good.” She wiggles out of my arms. “We did a hand cast,” she tells me as I walk toward the exit.

I stop when I see Levi and Eva walking in holding hands. “Hey,” Eva greets when we cross paths.

“Hey,” I reply, holding up my hand to both of them.

“Hi, Meadow,” Levi says, smiling at her. The two of them got married not too long ago and are now raising her sister’s baby after she died.

“Oh, I forgot,” Eva says. “We are having Cici’s birthday party in a couple of weeks.” She looks at Meadow. “And you are her favorite person.”

Meadow smiles at them and then looks up at me proudly. “Daddy, can we go?”

“Sure,” I confirm, looking at them. “Levi can text me the details.”

“Will do,” he agrees, slapping my shoulder. “See you two later.”

Meadow and I walk out of the daycare holding hands. She buckles herself in as she tells me stories from her day.

When we get home, she runs straight into the backyard and toward her swing set. I sit down in one of the patio chairs as I watch her swing back and forth, leaving me with my thoughts. The only thing I can think of is Grace, and how tomorrow, like it or not, the air is going to be cleared.

fifteen

Grace

I’m tying the strap from my sandal around my ankle when my phone rings beside my bed. I rush over, noticing it’s Sofia FaceTiming me. Looking at my watch, I see it’s seven thirty in the morning.

“Hello,” I greet her once the call connects, and her face fills the screen. She’s in her bathroom wearing a robe while she puts on her makeup. Her hair is piled high on her head. If she’d called me thirty minutes ago, we would have been in the same spot.

“Hello,” she says, looking down at the screen between doing her eyebrows. “I got the pictures you sent last night.” After I walked the blond wife into Caine’s office, I knew I needed to get the fuck out of Dodge. So, I went to Loren’s office and asked her if she would like to come with me to the flower shop. I knew it was going to be a couple of hours, so after we finished, I would just be able to go home instead of going back to the office and facing whatever it is I had to face. Yes, I know eventually I will have to face him, but I wasn’t ready to do it post orgasm.

“Yes,” I say, walking toward the kitchen to grab my bag before leaving, “and?”

“It’s perfect,” she says of the pictures I sent her of the centerpieces Loren and I helped the florist create. “I love that it’s a low one so you can talk to the person on the other side of the table.”

“I know,” I tell her, grabbing my bag, “that was the only thing I was looking for.”

“Well, you did a good job,” she praises. Finally looking into the phone, she puts down the brush in her hand. “What’s wrong with you?”

“Me?” I ask her. “Nothing, why?” My heartbeat gets jumpy.

She takes a second to look at the screen more closely, her whole face filling it. “Lies,” she says, “you look like you hardly slept.”

“Ugh.” I know she isn’t going to let up, and I also feel like I have to talk to someone about this. “Fine.” She picks up her cup of coffee, bringing it to her mouth. “I sort of…” I look up at the ceiling. “Kind of…” I tilt my head to the side. “Maybe…” I hold up one finger and then tell her, “Perhaps made out with my boss yesterday in his office and had an orgasm.” I watch her eyes go big at the same time she spits coffee out of her mouth like a fountain before she coughs.

I wait for her to finish choking before she looks at me, her face red from coughing. “I’m sorry, what?”

“Well, he’s a dick,” I tell her, sitting down on the chair at the table, “and he was extra dickish yesterday. He was barking at me like, ‘you’re never at your desk,’” I try to mimic him.

“And you thought if you gave him an orgasm, he wouldn’t care?” She laughs but then coughs again.

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