Well good, I texted and sent. Then, I’d hoped he’d be an engineer, but Vegas bookie is just as sweet.

To that I got, Stop making me laugh when I can’t kiss you.

Which made me grin again.

“Yeesh,” my boy muttered, disgusted. “Merry’s not even here and you’re all gooey.”

That didn’t make my grin die.

Not even slightly.

Though it did make me throw one of my many awesome, mismatched Janis Joplin pillows at him.

Ethan caught it and threw it back.

* * * * *

On Monday morning, after I’d dropped Ethan at school and hit the bank to deposit my tips (and the stupid one hundred dollar check that Trent and Peggy sent me, putting that in Ethan’s new account), I heard the text sound from my purse in the seat next to me as I was driving home.

I decided driving home safely was priority one, considering my life no longer sucked and I wanted to live it fully, so I left my phone in my bag (something I always did, considering, even when my life sucked, my kid was awesome, so being safe was always priority one).

But once I was in my driveway, I dug it out and was throwing open my door, looping my purse over my arm, and reading it at the same time.

It was from Merry.

Ethan get to school okay?

Not having him for years and falling in love with him more and more every time I saw him or even thought of him, I never would have thought, if the impossible happened and I got him, there would be farther to fall.

I was dead wrong.

I was moving my thumb over the phone as I hopped out of my car, nowhere near done with my text, when I started to shift out of the door to close it and ran into something.

I jerked in a turn and stared at my dickhead neighbor who was right there, in my space.

Okay, apparently, even when most of your life stops sucking, some of that suckage remained.

“Hey,” he said.

“Hey,” I replied, forcing myself not to look around to see if I could find Ryker watching.

“Sorry, baby.” He moved back half a step. “Thought you saw me.”

I got out of the way of my door, slammed it, and put space between us as I beat back a lip curl at him calling me “baby.”

I also did all this as I answered, “I was texting.”

“Yeah,” he said, taking a step toward me, and I held my ground even though I didn’t want to. “Listen, know you got a kid but thought you might wanna find someone to look after him and go grab a beer sometime.”

I looked to his house.

I saw the beat-up Chevy truck I knew he drove.

I did not see the run-down Ford Fiesta his woman drove.

Not good news.

I looked back at him. “It’s cool you askin’, but just to say, I got a kid and I also got a man.”