Circle of Friends, Part 6

by Susan Mallery

  “He doesn’t like to be called that,” she whispered. “We use his full name at all times.”

  “Okay. King Edward it is.”

  Eddie sniffed his fingers, then raised his chin slightly as if saying he could be scratched now. Josh obliged him.

  “He likes you,” Crissy said as she put the cat down. “That’s unusual.”

  “I’m a likable guy.”

  “I keep hearing that from other sources. Your staff was very excited to meet me.”

  He remembered their questions after Crissy had left and how they’d all adored her. “I don’t get out much.”

  “Apparently. I thought they were going to offer me money to keep seeing you.”

  “Would you take it?”

  “I’m thinking of expanding again soon, so probably. I’ll need the cash for financing.” She linked her arm with his. “Come on. I want to impress you with my ability to ladle food onto plates and heat it in the microwave. It’s an art form not enough people appreciate.”

  He let her lead him into her kitchen, where she settled him on a bar stool by the island.

  “I talked to Abbey this afternoon,” she said as she pulled cartons of Chinese food out of the refrigerator. “Brandon is still doing well, so I guess I can let that worry go. We did talk about how I could maybe spend the day with him. Or at least an afternoon. By myself. Just the two of us.” She bit her lower lip. “The thought terrifies me. What do you think? Can I do it? I mean I know I can, but would I get through two or three hours all right?”

  “You’ll be fine.”

  “I hope so.”

  She continued talking, but he wasn’t listening. As he stared at her he realized he wasn’t here for dinner, or even for sex, although he had big plans in that department. He was here because he needed her. Being around her made him feel alive. She was laughter and light and he was tired of living in the dark.

  CHAPTER TEN

  CRISSY PACED THE width of Rachel’s classroom as her friend stacked colored paper.

  “It’s three hours,” Crissy said, trying to keep the panic out of her voice. Three hours? It was a lifetime!

  “I thought we’d go to one of the multientertainment venues. It’s not my thing, so I did some research. The one I like best has laser tag, video games, bumper cars, go-karts, miniature golf and boat bumpers.” She paused and grimaced. “I really don’t want to get on a tiny boat in an oversize pool, but if Brandon insists, I’ll suck it up and do it. Anyway, when we’re tired of all the activities, we can get a pizza. Afterward we can stop by some batting cages and get him ready for the season. Assuming he plays baseball. Do you think he does? Or is he more a soccer guy? I never played soccer. I don’t know very much about it.”

  Rachel looked at her and laughed. “Is that all? What about a movie?”

  Crissy hadn’t thought of that. “Do you think there’s time?”

  “No, there isn’t time for a movie, you nut. There isn’t time for half of what you have planned. Come on. We’re talking about three hours. That’s nothing.”

  “So speaks the kindergarten teacher,” Crissy mumbled. “You’re good with kids.”

  “You’ve hung with Brandon before. You’ll be fine.”

  “I haven’t hung out with him at all. We’ve barely spoken. Plus now he knows I’m his birth mother. Before I was just some adult. The stakes are higher now. He’s going to have expectations and I don’t know what they are. What if I let him down? What if he hates me?”

  “Why would he? You’re great.” She shook her head. “I’m talking to a wall. Do me a favor and collect all the crayons lying around, then sort them into the six containers on the side table. There should be about the same amount in each container.”

  “You’re just giving me busywork to distract me.”

  “Maybe. You’re making yourself crazy for nothing. Look, you pick him up and drive to the game place. There’s fifteen minutes. The same taking him home. So that’s a whole half hour gone. Eating is another twenty minutes. Make that thirty, if you’re ordering a pizza. We’re talking about filling two hours. You have more than enough planned.”

  Crissy knelt on the floor and began picking up crayons. “What if he hates being with me? What if I’m boring or uncool?”

  “You’re a grown-up. You’re uncool by definition.”

  She hated the sound of that. “But I want to be cool.”

  “Sorry. That’s not how it works.”

  Damn. “What do we talk about? I don’t know anything about him. Not really.”

  “So ask,” Rachel said, obviously amused by the entire situation. “Have him tell you about school. What classes he likes and what he doesn’t. Does he want to play sports in high school? Is he into cars? What does he want to study in college, that sort of thing. Argue about baseball teams or football. You’re making this way too hard.”

  “You’re being annoyingly rational.”

  “It’s the friend’s job.”

  Crissy scrambled under a small desk and grabbed three more crayons. “I guess it will be okay. I wonder how long he’ll play each video game. If I knew that I could calculate how much time that would use up.”

  “Stop! Relax. Take a breath.”

  “I can’t breathe. I can’t think. I can only panic.”

  * * *

  LATER, AS CRISSY walked to her car, she tried to think positive thoughts, but it was impossible. There were so many ways for her to fail with Brandon. She needed a better plan.

  Inspiration struck as she drove down the 15 freeway. She activated her hands free cell phone and made a call.

  “Hello?”

  The low, male voice made her smile. “Hi, Josh. What are you doing Saturday afternoon?”

  “Not much. Aren’t you seeing Brandon?”

  “Uh-huh. We’re off to one of those big arcade places. Laser tag, go-karts, video games and pizza. Sound like fun?”

  “Are you asking for me or for him?”

  “Both. I was thinking having you along would make things easier.”

  “You were, were you?”

  “Uh-huh. I happen to know you find me unbelievably sexy. There would be a reward in it later. A really good one.”

  “That’s tempting.”

  She heard the amusement in his voice. “Come on. It’ll be fun.”

  “Okay. You win. What time?”

  * * *

  CRISSY FELT AS if an entire butterfly marching band was practicing in her stomach. She wanted to blame the symptoms on something easy like morning sickness, but she’d yet to feel the slightest bit different on the pregnancy front. Instead she was forced to deal with the ugly truth—she was terrified.

  Not scared, not nervous, but down-to-the-bone terrified that she would do something to make Brandon hate her. Or worse, think she was stupid.

  She tried telling herself that everything would be fine. She and Brandon got along great. As long as they were having fun, he would be too busy to think she was stupid. If only she could believe herself.

  While their time together was nothing more than an afternoon of hanging out together, to her it felt like so much more. She felt as if her entire relationship with her son was on the line. That was enough to make anyone feel a little queasy.

  She pulled up in front of Abbey and Pete’s house. Before she could get all the way up the walk to the small porch, the front door opened and Brandon stepped out.

  He looked as nervous as she felt. As she moved closer, she saw a little excitement in his eyes, but a lot of uncertainty. At least they had that in common.

  “Hey,” she said. “Ready for a fun-packed afternoon?”

  “Sure.”

  They stared at each other in a moment of awkwardness. She sensed some kind of physical greeting was cal
led for. The last time she’d stepped into this house, she’d just been a friend of the family. Now she was his birth mother. That had to rate some kind of contact. But hugging felt like pushing things and ignoring the issue seemed cold. Not knowing what else to do, Crissy offered her hand.

  Brandon’s relief was instant. He took it and they shook. Weird, she thought, but a start.

  The front door opened and Josh stepped out.

  “Hi,” she said as their eyes met.

  “Hi, yourself.”

  She had no trouble imagining all sorts of fabulous physical greetings with this man. A lot of them involved being naked—perhaps not the best idea under the circumstances, but something she would want to explore later.

  His smile told her he had the same sort of thing on his mind.

  She loved this man, she thought in that instant. The feelings had been growing so slowly and she’d been distracted by Brandon, among other things, so she hadn’t had a chance to notice. But she loved him. He was who she’d always been waiting for.

  But what would happen when he found out about the baby? Would everything work out or was there a long, ugly road of pain ahead?

  “Uncle Josh is coming with us,” Brandon said. “That’s okay, isn’t it?”

  “I think it’s a great idea,” she told him, refusing to think about what might happen. Instead she would focus on today and spending time with her son. “With three of us, we can be our own laser tag team.”

  His eyes widened. “We’re gonna play laser tag?”

  “You bet. I’m thinking that we’re going to kick some serious butt. What do you think?”

  Brandon grinned. “They’re going down.”

  * * *

  “FANTASTIC FUN” WAS a multiacre complex with every possible way to spend money on a kid. Crissy had gone online and purchased a day pass, allowing them access to all the activities—except video games. While she had ideas about what she wanted to do, she wanted to give Brandon the chance to make some choices, too.

  “Cool car,” Brandon said as Crissy locked the vehicle.

  She smiled at her BMW 330i. “It was a gift from me to me. Sort of a self-congratulations for a job well done with my business.”

  “Sweet ride,” he said, sounding closer to sixteen than twelve.

  “Don’t get your hopes up,” Josh said, grabbing the boy around the neck and rubbing his knuckles across his head. “You’re a long way from driving.”

  “But when I get there, maybe I can borrow her car.”

  “Or maybe not,” Crissy said, wincing at the thought of a new driver taking the BMW out for a joyride. “We’ll have to wait and see how things go.”

  “I’m very responsible,” Brandon said with a grin. “Just ask my mom.” His humor faded. “My, ah, other mom.”

  Great. They weren’t even across the parking lot and already they were in awkward land.

  Crissy put her hand on his arm. “Brandon, Abbey is your mom. She’ll always be your mom. I’m Crissy. Unless you have another name you want to call me.” She paused for effect. “One that I would have to approve.”

  That earned her a sweet smile. “Okay. Crissy’s good. For now.”

  “If you call her Queen Crissy, you might have a better chance with the car,” Josh offered.

  Crissy eyed him. “You’re supposed to be neutral, big guy. Like Switzerland.”

  “All right, Uncle Josh,” Brandon said. “Great idea. Queen Crissy. I like it.”

  They were still laughing when they walked inside.

  After an intense discussion about where to start their fun, they decided on laser tag. Vests, goggles and laser guns were provided, along with a map of the course.

  The three of them huddled together to scope out the competition.

  “Them,” Brandon said, pointing to a group of giggling teenage girls. “They aren’t going to be into the game. They’ll be slow and shoot bad. We can totally annihilate them.”

  “So speaks the compassionate member of our team,” Crissy murmured, wanting to defend her gender, but knowing Brandon was right.

  “We’re here to win,” he told her. “That family should be next.” He pointed to a father, mother and two little boys about five and six. “They’re too young to be good.”

  “Culling the weakest members of the herd,” Josh whispered into her ear. “Your gene pool at work.”

  She grinned. “If we were still hunting the woolly mammoth, I’d want Brandon on my team.”

  “So would I.”

  They fleshed out the rest of their strategy, which included staying together to protect each other’s backs, along with scouting expeditions to scope out any ringers in hiding.

  Once inside the dusky corridors of the laser tag course, Crissy found herself getting seriously into the game. She no longer cared about defending her gender or giving the teenage girls a break. Instead she wanted the highest possible score.

  They moved purposefully, staying together. The corridor opened into three possible routes.

  “On your right,” Crissy yelled, seeing movement in that direction.

  Both Josh and Brandon turned and fired. Crissy instinctively turned the other way in time to fire on the father of the family.

  Twenty minutes later they pored over their score sheet. Their total hits as a team was more than double anyone else’s in the maze with them.

  “Not that we had a lot of competition,” Crissy said. “Brandon, you did great. Look at your number of shots and your number of hits. Your accuracy is just over eighty percent. Josh, you’re barely at sixty percent. You’re going to have to be on probation.”

  “I have other skills,” he muttered, then took the sheet from her. “What about you, missy? You think you’re so hot and... Oh.”

  Brandon grinned. “Look, Uncle Josh. She kicked our butt. Jeez, Crissy, your accuracy is higher than mine and you got off more shots.”

  “I’m competitive,” she said primly. “Don’t mess with me during a game.”

  “I guess not,” Josh said. “I think it’s time to even things up. Now we’re going to play a game that I can win at, what with being a doctor and all.”

  Crissy groaned. “No way. It’s boring.”

  “It’s a game of skill and patience. I have both.”

  “What’s he talking about?” Brandon asked.

  “Golf,” she said with a sigh. “Or in this case, miniature golf.”

  Twenty minutes later, Josh was kicking both their butts.

  “It’s all his putting practice,” Crissy told Brandon. “We can’t compete against that. Those doctors and their golf games.”

  Although in Josh’s case, his victory had to be about something other than his skill at golf. She happened to know that he rarely took time off and that he didn’t play much golf. His patients got nearly all his attention.

  They stood on the fifth hole and faced the slow-moving windmill.

  “The trick with this one is timing,” Josh said confidently. “Watch how the blades move. You’ll need to shoot between them.”

  “Are they really called blades?” Crissy asked. “Aren’t they something else?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “We could go back to my place and look it up on the computer.”

  Josh patted her shoulder. “Sorry, no. We’re staying through the whole game. A game, I would like to point out, you’re losing.”

  “I hate this game. It’s stupid.”

  Brandon grinned at her. “Come on, Crissy. You have to learn how to lose gracefully.”

  “Never. I pout when I lose.”

  They made it through the turning blades and down onto the second level of the hole. Crissy had been nervous about spending time with Brandon, but everything was going smoothly. He was easy to be w
ith, she thought. A fun, funny, smart kid. Her kid.

  She felt a tightness inside. A longing and a powerful sense of regret. If only...

  She shook her head. If only what? If only she’d kept Brandon? If she had, he wouldn’t be this charming boy. He would be someone else. Who he was now was a result of Pete and Abbey’s influence. They had done so much for him. She would always be grateful. Yes, she had regrets, but they were selfishly about her. Knowing all she knew now, she wouldn’t wish for anything better for her son.

  He caught her looking at him and smiled. She smiled back.

  “I talked to Mom about what you said,” he told her. “About giving me up for adoption. I know you were trying to tell me that it wasn’t about me.”

  Her good mood evaporated. Oh God. Was he emotionally scarred? Angry? Depressed?

  “It wasn’t,” she said. “Do you understand that?”

  “Yeah. She explained it real well. She said it was like the difference between me, Emma and Hope. They’re a lot younger than me and can’t do stuff I can do. When they get older, they’ll be better at it, you know. You were young when you got pregnant. You didn’t know how to be a mom or raise a kid. It would have been hard for you and not very good for me. So you found someone who was ready to have a baby.”

  He shrugged. “It worked out for the best. I love my mom and dad. Now that you’re older, you can cope with me and we can be friends.”

  He sounded so rational and together, she thought, amazed and more grateful to Abbey than she could say.

  “So we’re okay?” she asked.

  He grinned. “Uh-huh. But Uncle Josh is going to brag about beating us for the rest of the day.”

  “We can’t let that happen. We’ll try harder.”

  “There’s no point,” Josh said smugly. “I’m in my element.”

  The rest of the time flew by. Crissy couldn’t believe it when she glanced at her watch and saw they were already ten minutes late returning Brandon. She called Abbey who was delighted the outing had gone so well, then herded both guys to her car and drove back.

  When they reached the house, Brandon jumped out. “That was fun,” he said. “Can we do it again?”