Total pages in book: 131
Estimated words: 131387 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 657(@200wpm)___ 526(@250wpm)___ 438(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 131387 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 657(@200wpm)___ 526(@250wpm)___ 438(@300wpm)
Defeated, I sat back and grunted.
“I win!” he crowed. “Again!” he rubbed it in. His head turned to the side to look at Nadia sitting on the couch by his dad. “I’m sorry, Nadia.” He came back to me. “But you’re more fun to play with. Nadia always just lets me win.”
As any good stepmother would when your birth mother all but abandons you to go play house with her latest baby daddy, after a string of “surprise” pregnancies that were essentially ruses to either trap a man into taking care of her and their baby (emphasis on “her”) or get money out of him to support the child who was a result of you poking holes in his condom.
Yeah, Doc Riggs’s fling with a local gal got him a great kid, albeit unplanned.
And Hutch had been very forthcoming on our drive to the Riggs’s for dinner.
Also, hearing this story, I might have some clue as to why Hutch didn’t bring up the topic of birth control.
We were exclusive. I was on the pill. He’d seen my pill case.
But he’d never broached it, even though I knew sex was better for a man if that barrier wasn’t there.
And I’d never broached it because he hadn’t.
But seeing a friend go through that?
You’d be ultra careful.
The Riggses were probably about as far away from town as we were, but it was in the opposite direction, so it was quite a drive from one place to another, and this was good, because the story had been long.
I looked from Ledger to his father, Doc, slouched on his couch with his baby daughter lying on his broad chest.
Seriously.
What was it about a hot guy and a baby?
I looked to him because he asked his wife, “She out?”
Nadia tilted her head to check, and Ledger scooted back to do the same.
“She’s out, honey,” Nadia said, at the same time Ledger confirmed “LeeLee’s asleep, Dad.”
“Right,” Doc said. Hands secure on his girl, he leaned forward and angled up to take his feet. “Gonna put her down.”
He then walked up from the sunken living room to the wood-panel-encased spiral staircase, where he disappeared.
“That was the best lemon cake I’ve ever tasted, Nadia,” I told her.
And it was.
Though I reigned supreme with my chocolate pudding cake, since Hutch just gave her a kind smile and a shake of his head when she offered him some.
“Gail, my mother-in-law, and I have kind of a cake war going on,” Nadia explained.
“And it’s awesome,” Ledger unsurprisingly declared. “So awesome, I’ve made them sign a contract that, even when I’m in college, they have to FedEx me a big slice of whatever they make. And Nadia can FedEx stuff. She’s loaded. I tried to make them sign it in blood so they can’t wiggle out of it. But Gramme said, one day I’d get that a grandmother’s vow is unbreakable. But I don’t need that one day. I already believe her.”
“As you should, she tells no lies,” I replied, even though I’d never met any of my grandparents.
He grinned, not understanding they made those cakes mostly for him, so when he was gone, the cake war would probably fizzle out.
Or he’d get those FedEx boxes, and in them would be the entire cake.
It felt good to be around a kid (or kids, including Liam and Emma) who had good parents, and even with rough patches like whatever Ledger had to deal with regarding his mom, he had loving adults to fall back on.
At the same time it sucked that, for the rest of my life, I’d wonder how that felt, but as I was all grown up, I’d never know.
“Get May’s chocolate pudding cake recipe from her,” Hutch advised Nadia. “You’ll blow Gail out of the water.”
“Chocolate?” Ledger said holding one hand up. “Pudding?” He held the other hand up. Then he squeezed them together and said in utter disbelief. “Cake?”
Jeez, I liked this kid.
I laughed and turned to Nadia. “I’ll get you the recipe.”
“Thanks,” she replied. Then asked, “Are you going trick-or-treating on Lillian and Harry’s street?”
“Oh yeah,” Ledger bounced on his knees. “You gotta. It’s sick.”
“I stopped trick-or-treating a little while ago, my man,” I told him.
“They have stuff for adults too. Hot cider.” Nadia smiled. “Hot alcoholic cider. Beer. Wine. I hear Susan and Allen are going to have a haunted house that goes from the front yard, through their house, to the back. Ronnie, that’s Lillian and Harry’s neighbor, is beside herself. She has no idea how she’s going to one-up a haunted house.”
“Whoa. Like, just two people are going to put on a whole haunted house?” I asked.
“Susan and Allen are enjoying retirement. And Susan’s got more energy and verve in her than a kindergarten class.”
Nadia would know, she was a teacher (now on maternity leave), though, not a kindergarten teacher. Still.