“Oh, really?” she asks, that smile returning.

I backpedal as quickly as possible. “What? No! What? We were driving! Got back late! Very early! That’s it!”

“Uh-huh.” She puts two mugs in the microwave and starts it. “So you guys just crashed, huh?”

“Yes, ma’am. That’s it. Just crashed. So tired. Long drive.” I fake yawn. It probably looks like I’m doing a bad impression of a T. rex. Or a good impression of an allosaurus. Subtle differences, those.

“I bet,” she says. “Long drives can do that to you.”

Goddamn stress sweat. “Sure can.”

“Tea?” she asks me as the microwave goes off.

“Thank you,” I say politely. And maniacally.

She takes sugar and honey down from a shelf without even having to search for it, and I’m somehow able to keep from growling at her. The smile plastered on my face probably wouldn’t look out of place in a mug shot lineup of known serial killers.

“Shall we sit?” she asks when she finishes the tea.

“Sounds wonderful.” Sounds awful and I’d rather get punched in the uvula!

“How was Tucson?” she asks.

“Hot.”

“And Kori’s all right?”

“Peachy.”

“Have a good time?”

“Yes.”

I’m golden. She won’t break me.

She takes a sip from her tea. “You and Dom get on okay?”

I’m drowning in my own sweat. “We got it on okay—or, what I actually meant to say was we got on just fine.”

“Lovely.”

“Quite.”

“Indeed.”

“Totally.”

“His bed is really soft, isn’t it?” she asks innocently.

“I wouldn’t know,” I say. “I slept in the spare room.”

“Did you?”

“Sure did.”

“So, Ben’s room.”

Oh fuck. “Yes.”

“You slept in Ben’s room.”

“Yeah.”

She laughs. “In his racecar bed, huh?”

Son of a bitch! Did he have a racecar bed? “I pretended I was driving really fast,” I told her, spilling my tea all over myself.

“Did you?”

“Yes.”

“Fascinating.”

“I agree.”

“Tyson?”

“Yes?”

“Ben doesn’t have a racecar bed. It’s just a normal bed.”

“You liar!” I shout at her.

“You little shit!” she says with a grin. “So it finally happened, huh?”

“I have no idea what you mean.”

“Oh, bullshit. Tyson. I don’t care. Well, I do. But not in the way you think.”

“How can you say that!” I cry at her. “This is your ex-husband! His loins did stuff with your loins and you have a child!”

“Ew,” she says, her nose wrinkling. “Let’s not talk about loins anymore.”

I bury my face in my hands. “Oh, Jesus.”

“What’s wrong?”

“Everything. Nothing. I don’t know.”

“Well, that was… all-encompassing. And succinct, as usual.”

“I hated you,” I say, dropping my hands on the table. “For the longest time.”

She seems taken aback by my candor. “I know,” she says. “But I won’t apologize for it.”

I shake my head. “And I don’t want you to. I was wrong. I’m the one who’s sorry.”

“Tyson, can I tell you something? Just between you and me?”

“I guess.”

“And you have to promise to let me finish.”