I interrupted to ask, “Are you still stalking me?”

“Am I Martha Shockley, your best friend since fifth grade?” she asked back.

“Martha, things have been busy,” I snapped.

“Yeah, busy with you gettin’ a little somethin’ somethin’ from a bad boy”—she leaned in—“liberally. You don’t have time for me but you have time to haul your kickboxing ass to his house on average three days a week seeing as your car isn’t here or the bakery.”

Jeez, she’d totally been stalking me.

“Oo, lawdy,” Elvira muttered.

“You got that right, sugar,” Daisy matched her mutter.

I glared at Martha.

“I’m in a new relationship,” I reminded her. “It’s always intense when it’s new.”

“You’re in over your head is what you are,” Martha shot back and my torso jerked back.

“Oo, lawdy,” Elvira repeated.

“You got that right, sugar,” Daisy whispered.

“You don’t know what I’m in,” I said softly to Martha.

“No, you’re right, I don’t,” Martha agreed. “Because I never see you or talk to you.” She shook her head and crossed her arms on her chest, saying, “I never thought you, you, Tessa O’Hara, my best friend since I could remember, would toss me aside for a guy. I don’t care how hot he is.”

“Depends on what he’s packin’,” Shirleen whispered to Daisy and Daisy audibly stifled another giggle.

I kept my gaze on Martha.

Then I announced, “I’m in love with him.”

At that, her torso jerked back and she added her eyes getting big. The rest of the women shuffled their feet but kept silent.

I kept talking.

“I’ve shared this with him and Brock has shared he feels the same about me.”

“Oh God,” Martha whispered, sounding slightly horrified.

“I’m happy,” I told her. “Happier than I’ve ever been in my life. Which makes it suck that his wife is playing games and using her sons as pawns to do it, filling their heads with crap about Brock being with me meaning they can’t ever have a family again and making plays to get Brock back when he hates her only slightly more than I do.”

“Oh God,” Martha whispered, sounding definitely horrified.

I nodded. “She’s a piece of work and a pain in the ass and the kids are totally confused because they like me but she’s pretty much telling them they can’t because if they do, that means they don’t love her.”

“Oh God,” Martha repeated on a whisper, staring at me.

“And, if that wasn’t enough, Brock’s dad has cancer and might be dying from it. There’s history there that’s unpleasant and his possible future demise is stirring up stuff that has long since been buried. Brock’s dealing with his own emotions with all that as well as his mom’s, his sisters’, and his brother’s.”