It was then I told him of my conversation with Donna.

As he was stronger, he was scooping out the hard frozen ice cream. With curiosity, I was “nuking” the jars of hot fudge (three of them), a phenomenon I had not yet tasted but was very much looking forward to as Jake also had cans of whipped cream, nuts, sprinkles and cherries.

Even from jars and cans, none of this could be bad.

Involved in our activities, I didn’t feel the air until I head Jake’s sinister whisper of, “Come again?”

I looked from the revolving jars of hot fudge in the microwave to Jake and saw he didn’t find my conversation with Donna simply odd and perhaps a little sad.

No, that was not how he found it at all.

“I—” I began, my mind flying through varying options of how to handle him when he dropped the scoop in the tub of ice cream and prowled to and out the door to the garage.

I fretted over the ice cream sitting on the counter for a brief moment, thinking I should put it back in the freezer. However, as Jake was clearly angry and just as clearly intent to do something about it, I decided to leave it where it lay and followed him.

The large garage was lit, Jake was standing beside his truck parked in it, his phone to his ear and when I arrived, I saw I was too late to stop him when I heard him say, “You have got to be fucking shitting me.”

Oh dear.

I got close and Jake cut furious eyes to me (now, under the fluorescent lights in the garage, a rather attractive shade of silver I had not seen before and, alas, couldn’t fully enjoy considering the circumstances).

“No,” he clipped into his phone. “First, you do not ever talk to Josie. We do what’s the impossible right now and sort this out eventually, you two gotta have a discussion for some reason, I might allow it. After this shit and the shit you’ve been pullin’ with Con and Amber, no. Josie is off-limits to you. I don’t care if you’re sittin’ next to each other gettin’ a pedicure at Alyssa’s, she doesn’t exist. You get that?”

There was a pause and I bit my lip before he powered on.

“And get it outta your head that we’re reconciling. That shit is never gonna happen, Donna. How the fuck you can think that, I have no fuckin’ clue. It’s been fuckin’ years since I shared a bed with you and, straight up, when I left it the last time, I haven’t even thought of goin’ back. Now, forced to think of it through this shit, woman, you cannot believe after you’ve taken so much twenty-somethin’ cock I’d ever go there. The thought turns my goddamned stomach. Get this and get it now, that shit is not gonna happen. Not ever. Now do you get that?”

He was being quite brutal, therefore I wrapped my fingers around his bicep and whispered, “Jake—”

He ignored me and kept speaking.

“You have fucked up royal with your kids. You want me to help you sort that, you get your head outta your goddamned ass. Until you’ve proved to me you aren’t livin’ in a fuckin’ fantasy world, totally fuckin’ clueless to pretty much everything, you got no help from me. They’re not slippin’ through your fingers, Donna. They’re gone. Con tries to be cool with you because he’s a good kid. Amber, you’ve lost. You pull your shit together and find a way back in that works for her and for me, I’ll back that play. But not until you pull your shit together. You hear me?”

He stopped speaking and I decided to say nothing and get closer. He didn’t move away but I knew he was concentrating on whatever she was saying because, even though he was still looking at me, his eyes had gone unfocused.

Finally, he spoke again.

“This shit, these tears, they mean nothing to me, Donna. We’ve been done so long, I don’t even think about you unless I look at my girl when I know she needs a woman for whatever shit that’s fuckin’ with her head and I do it pissed way the fuck off that her mother is not there for her. She’s got Josie now and you need to wake up. A girl, I would expect, can’t have enough good women in her life. But it blows my goddamned mind you’d walk up to Josie at Wayfarer’s feelin’ funny for her that she’s got somethin’ good you think she’s gonna lose when she’s got everything and she takes care of it in a way she’s never gonna lose it. Everything you lost because you didn’t take care of it, you aren’t takin’ care of it, and if you don’t sort yourself out, you’re never gonna get it back.”

He paused to take a breath but kept right on going.

“Now, we’re done. Think on this shit, Donna, and please, God, fuckin’ wake the fuck up.”

He was indeed done for he disconnected and shoved his phone in his pocket.

His eyes were still on me and before I could say a word, he did.

“You got any understanding of that bitch now?” he bit out.

“Would you, perhaps, like a hot fudge sundae to calm you down before we discuss this matter further?” I offered.

“We walk back into that house, babe, this shit is behind us and we eat hot fudge sundaes enjoying them, not thinkin’ about Donna’s ridiculous bullshit.”

As this was what he wanted, and I wanted Jake to have everything, I gave it to him.

“I would assume that most of her lovers look like you or, perchance, behave like you,” I stated.

He jerked up his chin in an affirmative even as his jaw clenched but said only, “Least the ones I’ve seen.”

I nodded.

“Then she’s attempting to live the glory days with these men who matter very little to her, thinking inaccurately that those glory days will return when the real thing does.”

“That’s whacked,” Jake declared.

“Yes, it is,” I agreed.

“She’s whacked,” Jake went on.

“Yes, she is,” I again agreed.

He studied me a moment before asking, “She get in there with you?”

“Pardon?” I asked back, confused.

“She fuck with your head with this shit?’

My brows drew together as I informed him, “Certainly not.”

“She and I are done,” he announced.

“I know that, Jake,” I assured him.

He studied me another moment before his expression cleared and his voice gentled to say, “Sorry that shit happened to you.”

“I’m not,” I returned immediately. “If this is the precursor to her getting her finger out of her ass, then I’m delighted it happened. Those children need their mother. Perhaps she’ll deal with her shit and finally give them one.”

I got another moment of study before a slow, attractive grin spread on Jake’s face and he moved so he could wrap his arms around me.

“Deal with her shit?” he asked.

“Indeed,” I answered.

His grin got bigger and his arms got tighter. “As much as this pisses me off, wish like fuck I was at Wayfarer’s watchin’ you give her the honesty.”

“I can’t imagine why,” I replied. “It was most irksome.”

“Irksome,” he murmured, still grinning but now doing it looking at my lips.

My belly fluttered, but my lips said, “Yes. Irksome.”

His arms got tighter as his face got closer. “Irksome,” he repeated in a whisper, his word sounding on my lips since his were that close.

“Yes,” I breathed right before he kissed me.

Delightfully, he did this thoroughly and I melted into him as he did it, wrapping my arms around his neck, gliding my fingers over his hair to hold him to me and kissing him back.

We did this for some time before we were forced to break the kiss when a loud knock sounded at the door right before Ethan shouted through it, “Jeez! What’s the deal? Hello? Hot fudge sundaes?”

I smiled up into Jake’s smiling eyes just as Ethan went on, still shouting (albeit no longer through the door), and he did it sounding like he was telling on us.

“Con! Dad and Josie are makin’ out in the garage!”

I didn’t hear Conner’s reply but did hear Ethan’s shouted one.

“I don’t care! But I want a sundae!” He knocked on the door again and his next comment was directed through it. “Hurry up!”

“Gotta get a sundae in my kid,” Jake said softly.

“You do,” I replied.

“Soften him up before I let him know his ass is in church in about an hour and a half,” he went on.

“Good plan,” I approved.

His eyes warmed, his neck bent, he touched his forehead to mine then lifted his lips to kiss it.

After that, he let me go but grabbed my hand and we went in to finish the sundaes. Ethan was not in the kitchen but he was the first one I went to where he was sitting on the couch in the family room and I handed him a bowl.

He tucked in immediately and was lifting the spoon to his mouth but doing it with his mouth moving in order to declare, “When I get a girlfriend, we’re just holding hands. None of that kissing stuff.”

I pressed my lips together in an effort not to laugh.

The Taylors and Amber didn’t bother.

It was Conner who spoke. “You are so full of it.”

Ethan swallowed an enormous bite of sundae and turned his eyes to his brother, “I’m not.”

Conner’s eyes were twinkling when he replied, “Bud, trust me. You so are.”

“Am not,” Ethan returned.

Conner grinned at his brother, turned his attention to me and winked, then looked back to the game.

I gave the other bowl I had to girl Taylor before I went back into the kitchen to get more bowls that Jake was assembling.

I did it smiling.

I also did it feeling sad for Donna.

She was very much missing out.

But even sad for her, I was delighted for me.

For I was absolutely not.

* * * * *

“At this very minute, the Colts are playing,” Ethan, sitting in the pew on the other side of his dad, groused.

“Shut it, bud,” Jake, sitting in the pew next to me, muttered.

Ethan didn’t “shut it.”

He declared, “We’re missing it.”

“Eath, it’s taping,” Conner, on the other side of Ethan, pointed out.

“I better not find out the score before we get home,” Ethan warned.

“Ohmigod,” boy Taylor, sitting next to Amber who was sitting on my other side, whispered excitedly. “There’s Kieran Wentworth.”

“Where?” girl Taylor’s fabulous sheath of shining black hair flew this way and that as she looked around.

“Four pews back, on the other side,” boy Taylor told her and went on to note, “He must be home from school for the weekend or something.”

I leaned into Amber and murmured, “Who’s Kieran Wentworth?”

She leaned into me and murmured in reply, “He was a junior when we were freshman. He’s so hot, he’s a legend. He’s at Boston College now. Taylor has been in love with him since forever.”

I looked over my shoulder and four pews back on the other side I spied a highly attractive young man with short-clipped dark sandy blond hair, an exceptionally square jaw and cheekbones that would be immensely photogenic.

He also had very broad shoulders.

Further, he was wearing a rather stylish dark blue tailored shirt and wearing it quite well.

I turned back and leaned back into Amber. “He’s most attractive.”

“Yep,” she agreed.

“I cannot imagine he hasn’t noted Taylor’s charms,” I remarked.

“Uh…Josie, he’s nineteen and in college. She’s sixteen. That’s not gonna happen.”

Hmm.

“Give it two years,” I stated.

“He’ll be snapped up in two years,” Amber returned.

“Not if he has something to wait for,” I told her and felt her eyes turn to me so I turned mine to her.

She was smiling.

I winked.

Her smile got bigger.

I felt Jake lean into me and I turned my attention to him when he said, “I know Taylor’s father. Don’t go there.”

I looked into his eyes then looked away and murmured, ‘Hmm.”

“Babe, the kid’s nineteen,” Jake stated something Amber had just told me.

“And?” I asked.

“He’s also in college.”

“Yes?”

He stared at me.

The choir started singing so I grinned to myself and stood with the rest of the congregation.

I did not miss it when, several minutes later, Reverend Fletcher came out, looked amongst his flock, saw me with the Spear family in our pew and he smiled at me.

Further, I absolutely did not miss it when, some time after that, Reverend Fletcher asked us all to pray for Arnold Weaver and his family as they had, just hours earlier, lost their beloved Elizabeth.

And I completely did not miss it when this was announced and Jake’s arm, already extended behind me to rest on the back of the pew, curled around me to pull me tight to his side at the same time Amber reached out and grabbed my hand.