“Are you cold?” Jake asks.
“No. This is perfect.”
He looks over the back of the seat. “Do you think Hank’s cold?”
“It’s ninety degrees, Jake. I sincerely doubt he’s cold.”
“Should we check?”
“He’s fine.” I bracket Jake’s face with my hands and force him to look at me. “Thank you for dinner. Thank you for taking care of us. Thank you for making me feel special. Thank you for being you. Thank you for being my boyfriend.”
He finally grins. “Does this boyfriend gig come with any perks?”
“Sure does, if you mean like dirty diapers and blue raccoons that keep you up at night. I think you already got a bunch of those kinds of perks.” I snuggle in closer to him.
He shakes his head and speaks softly. “The perks are when Trixie climbs in my lap and asks me to read her a story. Or when Gabby asks me if I can teach her to do a three-point turn, which is not very easy to do in my truck. Or when Alex wants to throw the football back and forth until my arm is ready to fall off. Or when Hank grabs my finger and holds it tight. Those are my perks. I love those moments. And eventually, we will get to have sex. Lots of sex.”
“The job comes with plenty of shitty moments, too. Just wait until all four of them get a stomach bug at the same time. Or when they all have a snow day from school and you have to keep them from killing one another. It’s not all joy and roses.”
“Roses have thorns, Katie, so I’d say it’s pretty much the same. You can’t appreciate the good without the bad.” Jake presses a lingering kiss to my forehead. “Are you trying to change my mind about being your boyfriend? You already made the offer. No take-backs.”
I laugh. “No take-backs. I promise.”
It’s all a little too wonderful to be believed.
Jake fiddles with his phone until a new song starts. “Oh, I remember this one,” I cry. I lean over and turn it up some. Jake starts to sing along.
“You sang this to me while we danced by the campfire. Do you remember that night?” I turn to face him more fully.
He brushes a lock of hair behind my ear with tender fingers. “Yep. Why do you think I downloaded it?” He sits quietly for a moment. “What was playing the first time you danced with your husband?”
I shake my head. “I don’t remember.”
He nudges me. “You do too.”
“No, really. I don’t. I remember other things, though.”
“Like what?”
“Like the snowball fight when he won me over. I had to save him from a whole group of women who really wanted his attention. So I put myself in front of him and took the snowball to the face.”
Jake winces. “Ouch.”
“It didn’t hurt.” I smile at the memory. “It was worth it.”
“I’d take a snowball to the face for you.”
“I know you would.” I bury my face in his neck and breathe in the scent that’s all Jake. “You smell so good.”
“So do you. You used to always smell like Love’s Baby Soft.”
I laugh. “I did, didn’t I?”
“Yep. Even now, every time I smell that kind of perfume, my dick gets hard.” He chuckles.
I reach over and take his hand. “Is that happening now?”
He groans and adjusts his big body in the seat. “Change of subject.”
I stare hard at him. “I think I’m falling in love with you, Jake,” I say quietly.
He stops breathing. Then he squeezes my hand and says, “Really now...”
“When summer is over, are we going to write a few letters and then forget about one another?”
He shakes his head. “When summer’s over, I’m going where you’re going, if I can’t talk you into going with me.”
My heart goes pitter-patter. “What if I’m really bad in bed?”
“That’s not possible,” he whispers.
“What if I snore really loudly?”
“I’ll buy earplugs.”
“What if I—?”
“Katie,” he argues, “there’s nothing you can do to turn me off right now.”
Hank lets out a cry from the back seat.
“Well, that might work,” he says. He reaches over and starts the truck. “We had better get home.”
I slide over to my spot and buckle back up. I grab his phone and cycle through his songs. He has a whole playlist called “Katie.” “I like this one,” I say as a new one starts. “We listened to this one when we were washing your car one day. You sprayed me with the hose.”
He chuckles. “I could see right through your t-shirt.”
“It all goes back to the boobs, right?” I laugh too, though. “Hey, speaking of your car, will you take me out in it? Or did you leave it in New York?”
He clears his throat. “About that,” he says as he pulls back out onto the road.
“What about it?”
“So my wife is bringing me the car this weekend. She’s driving it down here.”
My gut clenches. “You mean your ex-wife, right?”
“Um…” He scratches his chin. “Not quite yet. We haven’t finalized things yet.”
“You mean to tell me you’re still married?”
“Technically,” he says, as he puts on his turn signal and turns onto his dad’s property.
“Jake,” I say quietly, “you lied to me.”