When you’re ready, Ellie, I’ll be here.
She drifted off at some point because when her eyes opened again, daylight was streaming through the cracks in the blinds. Daniel was sitting at the foot of her bed with his blanket playing with a handful of magnetic blocks, while Daisy lay beside her, sucking her thumb and cuddling her stuffed kitten.
Who needed an alarm clock when you had small children?
Rather than wishing the kids would just give her another hour of sleep as she did most mornings, she felt energized, awake, alive.
She sat up and drew them both to her, hugging them and kissing their chubby cheeks. “Good morning, my sweeties. Would you like waffles for breakfast?”
Daisy, as it turned out, had shed her overnight diaper and was running around half-naked, while Daniel was soaked. Ellie took off his diaper, put him in a pair of disposable training pants, and dressed him. Then she dressed Daisy, who was already potty trained for daytime, and put her hair into little pigtails.
“Okay, let’s make waffles.”
The kids stood together on a chair, “helping,” while she made the batter from scratch and poured it into the waffle iron, their happy chatter making her smile. In the breaks between waffles, she scrambled some eggs and started a pot of coffee.
“Hot.” Daniel pointed to the waffle iron.
“Yes, it’s very hot. Don’t touch it, or it will burn you.”
Ellen scooped more batter—just as Daisy put her palm on the hot iron.
Daisy screamed.
Ellie dropped the batter back into the bowl, scooped her daughter up, and stuck her hand under a stream of cool water. “Daisy Mae! Why did you do that? I told you not to touch it. See? It was hot, wasn’t it?”
Daisy nodded, crying her little heart out, while Daniel watched wide-eyed.
“Hot!” He pointed to the waffle iron again, looking like he might cry, too.
“Daisy is okay,” Ellie reassured him. “You’re okay, Daisy.”
There were no blisters, just redness.
Thank God.
Ellie sat them in their booster seats at the table, then went back to making waffles without their help. When the waffles were done and the coffee brewed, she cut up a waffle for each of them and served them with real maple syrup, scrambled eggs, and a sippy cup of milk.
It was the perfect breakfast for a snowy winter morning. The kids ate contentedly, quiet now, their focus entirely on getting each piece of syrupy waffle into their mouths.
As Ellie ate, she glanced out the back window—and saw a trail in the snow leading from her back porch up the mountain to Jesse’s cabin.
I don’t want to be the thing you regret in the morning.
Would she have regretted it?
She looked down at the ring on her finger, twisted it. She couldn’t be sure how she’d have felt because it hadn’t happened. But wasn’t that why he’d stopped? He’d wanted to give her time to think, to decide whether she truly wanted to have sex with him or whether last night was just about wine and loneliness.
And, God, she was lonely. She’d known that, but until he’d kissed her, she hadn’t realized exactly how lonely she was.
She glanced up at the little photo of Dan she kept on the fridge. She hadn’t thought of him once while she and Jesse had been kissing.
But Dan had wanted her to be happy. He’d made her promise—
It was Wednesday. Playgroup!
Damn! She was running late.
“Okay, kids, let’s get you cleaned up. It’s time to go play.”
*
Jesse dragged his ass out of bed and shuffled into the bathroom to take a leak. His gaze fell on the clock. How could it be ten already?
Shit.
He hadn’t meant to sleep that long. Then again, he hadn’t slept much at all, sexual frustration keeping him awake, his mind filled with Ellie—the taste of her skin, the feel of her breasts in his hands, the soft sound of her sighs. He’d finally taken matters into his own hands, imagining that his fist was her sweet body. He’d come—hard. But that hadn’t been enough to get her out of his mind.
It’s your own fault, idiot.
Yes, okay, maybe it was. But whatever Jesse’s faults—and his father had a list that was probably a mile long—he wasn’t the kind of man who could take advantage of a woman’s grief and loneliness just to scratch a sexual itch. The last thing he wanted was to look into Ellie’s eyes and see that he had added to her troubles.
She’s not for you, anyway, remember?
Somehow, that didn’t make him feel better.
He walked into the kitchen, grabbed the milk out of the fridge, and drank straight from the carton, leaning against the wall with one hand. That hand just happened to land on the button beneath the fucking fish Herrera had given him for his birthday.
Tinny music spilled out, making Jesse jump.
The fish’s tail and mouth began to wiggle.
“Take me to the river/Wash me in the water.”
Fuck this day anyway.