Page 23 of Backup Plan

Me: No problem.

Everleigh: She mentioned you offered her a place to stay.

Me: I did. I may not be around, so I might as well have someone else here for Dolores to clean up after.

Everleigh: LOL—and yes, I heard you’re going to San Diego tomorrow. Good luck. Would be nice to see you out of Chicago.

Truth be told, I kind of agree.

My dad’s trial starts next month, and it would be nice to be far, far away from it instead of being the one expected to show up.

Me: Thanks, Ev. See you in Vegas.

Everleigh: Just in case you need it, I’m going to attach Penny’s contact info, and I sent her yours, too. Just since she’s my maid of honor, if anything comes up, you can all get in touch. Or if she needs to run away from Brent.

The contact comes through a second later, and I save it to my phone.

Me: My door is open if she needs it.

Everleigh: I told her the same, but your place is much closer to the kids’ school and her office. Thanks for being a solid bro.

I’m not sure how solid of a bro I am for fucking her best friend last night, but it didn’t come up, so I imagine Penny didn’t say anything. And…I guess I have Penny’s number now. And she has mine. Interesting.

It’s not like either one of us is going to use it. Not tonight, anyway.

I’m tempted. I want to tell her that I’m still thinking about her, that my sheets still smell like her, like a fucking bouquet of fresh flowers. That I can’t stop thinking about how we just lay there afterward, my fingertips dragging up and down her spine as we talked about nothing and everything.

I’ve never done that after sex.

I’m usually too spent, but it was like I didn’t want to waste a minute of the time we were blessed with. I wanted to know everything about her. I wanted the night to last forever.

But nothing lasts forever.

The reminder has me setting my phone down on the counter and heading up to bed.

CHAPTER 7: Penny Calloway

Happy Meal

I collapse on the couch after I finally get Sammy down.

At seven, he thinks he’s big enough to stay up past nine. He’s not, for the record, but if I don’t let him just stay up, he comes out of his room no less than three thousand times to ask for something. Anything. Water. A snack. A story from recess three weeks ago that he forgot to tell me. Whatever it is pushes him past nine anyway, so it’s easier to just let him stay up.

We’ve taken to watching shows together. He’s really into sharks, and his favorite is Shark Week. I record every possible show, and we watch them until his eyes get heavy. But the rest of the year when it’s not Shark Week, he’ll sit with me through pretty much any competition show, and he’s picking up my penchant for anything on the Food Network. I can totally see him being either a chef or a marine biologist someday. Or maybe a marine biologist who loves to cook in his spare time.

Though truth be told, I like to watch Food Network. I don’t love to cook.

That’s not true. I do love to cook. I don’t love to do all the dishes afterward, so I tend to keep it simple with sheet pan or crockpot meals. My kids are picky eaters, anyway, so most of the time I end up microwaving dino nuggets for them, and I eat whatever quick meal I can throw together between when we get home from practice and bath time—if we don’t pick up fast food and a to-go coffee on the way home.

What a day…and I’m not saying that in a good way.

It’s the first chance I’ve had to sit all day.

I ran home this morning, took a thirty-second shower, threw on clean clothes, and raced to the office. I walked in just as the nine o’clock meeting was coming to a close, so I missed everything. My boss, Stuart, pulled me aside, and rather than asking me if everything is okay, he reamed me out for missing the meeting.

I spent the rest of the day basically putting out fires. I’m a project manager at a marketing firm, and that means I’m the middleman between our agency and our clients. One client hated the campaign pitch and threatened to leave. Creative is behind on another project, so I needed to reschedule several events there. Another client was supposed to launch next week, and they’ve decided they want new branding.

And then I picked up the kids from school, and they were a whole lot of extra since I didn’t see them yesterday after school due to my client meeting and my wild night.