Page 58 of Heartache & Playdates
Bianca’s eyes narrowed slightly as she tilted her head to the side. “Okay, so what’s the problem? Did it end badly? Was he a stalker? Did you go psycho?”
“No,” I chuckled. “Nothing like that. We were together a long time ago. In high school. It was just… a shock to see him.”
“Oh!” She dipped her chin in understanding. “So you haven’t seen him since high school and then he showed up with his daughter this morning. Okay, I get it.”
“Um, no. Wehadn’tseen each other since high school, but there was a reunion last year we were both at. And I had dinner with him, last week.”
“Oh, okay. So…” She lifted her hands in confusion. “What’s the problem?”
“There’s no problem, it’s just…um, well, at dinner I told him that I didn’t want to see him anymore. I’ve been with someone, for ten years and you know.”
“Did he go nuclear? Did he pull a Teresa Guidice and toss the table? Or worse, did he cry?” she asked as she cringed, apparently she did not find men showing emotions attractive.
“No. Nothing like that. We finished dinner. He walked me out to my Uber and he wished me well.”
She stared at me for a moment. “Okay, so I’m still not seeing the problem.”
“You’re right. There probably isn’t one.” Not one that I could explain to her. I couldn’t say that I was keeping the secret of all secrets from him which was why I needed to keep my distance. And having his child in my class would be a daily reminder of my past that I didn’t think I could handle. I wished I could tell her all that, but I couldn’t.
She leaned forward on the bean bag chair. “So who is he? Is it Ryland’s dad? No, wait. Jessima’s dad. He’s a doctor, right?”
I took a deep breath and knew that I had to reveal who he was. I’d opened up this can of worms, and I knew I couldn’t play coy now.
“It’s Hannah Cruz’s dad.”
Her eyes widened and she sank back into the chair. “Fuck. Off.”
“What?!” Had she dated him? I hadn’t even thought about that. Of course, she was gorgeous and Hannah mentioned that she went to kindergarten here. Of course, he would have met her and dated her.
“Maddox Cruz?”
“Yeah.”
“You dated Maddox Cruz?” she repeated
“Yeah.”
“Andyoutoldhimthat you didn’t want to see him again because you have been dating someone for ten years?”
“Yeah.”
“Who are you dating? Ryan Gosling? Jason Momoa? Idris Elba? Jake Gyllenhaal? Bradley Cooper? I mean what man could possibly be better than Maddox Cruz?!”
No man. No man was better than Maddox Cruz.
23
MADDOX
I staredat my computer screen mindlessly. I’d been running a program that had a bug and I’d been trying to fix it for the past two hours. Normally, this would take me less than ten minutes to solve but I couldn’t focus on the task.
Irritation at my distraction had me typing a message to Samara with the program attached on our internal system.
Have an intern work on this.
Her response of a thumbs up emoji was instant.
Normally, I didn’t pawn off work, but today my head was just not in it.
