Jingle Bell Hell (Bad Luck Club)

by Denise Grover Swank

  He made a painting for me? It puts a lump of emotion in my throat—the only other kid who’s drawn me a picture is Ben, and I hung it in Hagan Construction’s small office—but it’s not right to let Aidan think we can go back to our original plan.

  Mary cringes. “Honey, Jace only came because I was busy.”

  “He said we’d play the game, Mom. If he doesn’t, that means he’s a liar too.” Aidan eyes us both with an accusatory scowl. “Are you a liar, Jace?”

  Shit. There’s no good way to answer that.

  Mary’s shoulders slump in defeat. “Okay, the library’s open for a little while longer. Maybe you can play one quick game.” Her gaze lifts to mine. “If it’s okay with Jace, of course.”

  I’m torn. Part of me wants to spend more time with Aidan and Mary, but I’m not sure my heart can take it.

  I’m still trying to decide how to answer when Aidan says, “We have to play it at home. Ms. Liu said the library was closing early today, so Jace and I wouldn’t have been able to play our game there anyway.”

  Was that part of what had upset him?

  “Oh, Aidan,” Mary says, looking flustered. “I’m sure Jace…”

  “Your mother probably has other plans,” I say as I take a step toward the door, abandoning the coat even though it was expensive and I need it. Maybe another time is on the tip of my tongue, but I stop myself from saying it, because there won’t be another time and he would take the words to heart.

  Aidan throws my coat to the side and gets to his feet, fisting his hands at his sides. “She doesn’t have other plans,” he says belligerently.

  Mary hesitates, then gives me a pleading look. “Jace, I owe you—”

  I cut her off, saying gruffly, “You don’t owe me anything.”

  She looks like she’s on the verge of protesting but says instead, “If you don’t have plans…”

  I look away. Truthfully, I want to go home with them, but the sane part of me insists it will only make things worse. Aidan will only grow more attached to me, and me to him and his mother.

  “Jace,” Mary pleads. “Can I speak to you in the hall for a moment?”

  “Of course.”

  She turns back to Aidan. “I’ll be right back.”

  He frowns but doesn’t say anything.

  I walk out of the room, and she follows.

  “Jace,” she says in a hushed tone as soon as we’re in the hall. “I owe you a massive apology. I didn’t handle yesterday well.”

  “You’re just a mother looking out for her son,” I say as neutrally as possible.

  “I realize this is a lot to ask,” she says, her cheeks turning pink, “but would you mind coming home with us? I’m worried he’ll have another meltdown. You don’t have to stay long, just long enough that he doesn’t think you’re a liar.”

  Is she concerned that I’ll look like a liar, or that she will? I want to tell her no, but I don’t want to upset Aidan, and some sick, masochistic side of me wants to spend time with Mary. Even if it hurts.

  I take a deep breath, looking back and forth between Aidan and Mary. Her eyes are beseeching.

  “All right,” I sigh. “All right.”

  Chapter Nine

  Mary

  He came. He didn’t need to come, but he did. When the principal told me that Jace was sitting with Aidan—and that Aidan had calmed down for him—tears immediately filled my eyes. Now, as I drive Aidan back to our house, gratitude nearly makes me crumble. I can’t stop thinking of the way he was curled up beside Jace. The trust on my son’s face…

  I’d threatened to have Jace arrested if he ever came near Aidan again, but Aidan had needed him, and he’d come. When was the last time I’d been able to rely on a man like that? Glenn would have come in last in the Father Olympics, and my own father…I’d loved him, and he’d shined brighter than everyone around him—kind of like Molly—except he’d lacked her loyalty, her steadfastness.

  But Jace is different, and I treated him worse than garbage left out on the curb. Garbage with leftover fish in it.

  Don’t read too much into it, Mary. Maybe he just wanted to see Ms. Liu.

  There’s a strange, unpleasant prickle inside me as I remember the way Aidan’s teacher looked at Jace before we left. She literally ran after him, almost tripping on a stray Hot Wheels toy some kid must have dropped, and presented him with her number, written on the back of a vocabulary flashcard in purple crayon. Now, how would the children learn the spelling of “soccer”?

  You’re just jealous, the voice accused.

  It wasn’t wrong. Ms. Liu was young and beautiful and, aside from the Hot Wheels incident, graceful. Cool. If my attraction to Jace was inappropriate before, it’s even more so now.

  And stronger.

  “I still haven’t given Jace his ankylosaurus painting,” Aidan says, jolting me out of my thoughts.

  “You’ll have plenty of time, honey,” I assure him. “Although I’m not sure how long he’ll be able to stay. You might only be able to get in one round of the game.”

  He considers this. “I’ll have to teach him the rules,” he says. “That might take a while. You know, I think I’ll save his painting for Christmas too,” he says. “It’ll look better in a frame.”

  I wasn’t so sure Jace would want to see us—me—again after today, although I still planned to offer a much better apology than the one I’d whispered in the hallway of Thomas Edison Elementary. Aidan would be with Tom and Ruth this weekend. Maybe I could ask Jace for a private meeting.

  Something shivers through me, and I catch myself darting a glance in the rearview mirror. Sure enough, his red truck is behind us. Even from this distance, I catch a glimmer of his impossible blue eyes, and that shiver pools into something hotter in my core.

  Good grief, this inappropriate attraction has turned me into a madwoman.

  “You’re not going to make Jace go away again, are you, Mom?”

  I heave a sigh. “I’m going to try not to.”

  He spends the rest of the ride telling me about the ankylosaurus’s tail club, which I could probably write a dissertation on at this point, but I nod along and listen as intently as if it were new information. I’m just glad he’s feeling better. We’re pulling into the driveway when Maisie calls over Bluetooth.

  I answer it on my cell phone, not wanting to overwhelm Aidan with the noise. My impulse is not to answer at all, because Jace is just a minute or so behind us (he got stuck at a light), and I’m kind of pissed at her and Molly, though they must have had a good reason for not answering the school’s calls.

  “Is Aidan okay?” she asks in a quick burst. I can hear Molly in the background.

  “He’s fine,” I reassure her. “He’s with me now. What happened to you two?”

  What follows is a largely incoherent story about Tea of Fortune. Apparently, Dottie asked Maisie to bring in a few puppies for an adoption meet and greet in Tea of Fortune’s event room, and Molly joined her so she could write about it for the local paper (one of her many freelance gigs). The idea was for Tina to do a funny-slash-sweet fortune reading for the puppies. Unfortunately, Tina had to go home early with a headache, so Josie did the honors. She predicted the first puppy would spend fourteen years in Maisie’s shelter before dying of old age, the second would be run over by a bus, and the third would bite one of the watching guests—specifically, an old woman wearing pants covered in hamburger pictures—in the butt. Someone tried to steal the second puppy, yelling that they’d save it, while the first fluffball ran into the tearoom, got into a plate of “cleansing” sandwiches, and proceeded to poop all over the floor. Meanwhile, Josie’s third prediction came true, and the woman with the hamburger butt started shouting about lawsuits until Dottie calmed her down with a gift certificate. It had been mayhem, and Maisie and Molly had helped get everything under control—an hours-long process. Their phones had been ignored in the ruckus.

  Mabel had apparently spent longer than usual with Maisie’s husband,
Jack, at his family’s brewery, leading to a number of baby memes getting posted on Buchanan Brewery’s Instagram account. (Two out of three of Jack’s sisters also have babies, and it just so happened that they were all there this afternoon.)

  I watch in the rearview mirror as Jace parks at the curb. I find myself feeling a pulse of gratitude that he didn’t park behind me because I have a clear escape path if I need it, which is insane because (a) it’s my house, and (b) this inappropriate attraction is probably not something I can outrace.

  “Mom,” Aidan calls out. “Come on. Hang up on them. Jace is here.”

  “Aidan, that’s rude,” I chide. But he’s also right, so I say, “Sorry, I have to go.”

  Maisie squawks, and Molly says, “I heard that! Jace is there? What color panties do you have on?” and I’m very relieved to hang up.

  We get out of the car, and Jace meets us at the stoop, where a large Amazon box is waiting. Thank God. If the game hadn’t shown up on schedule, Aidan would have flipped out. They could have played a different game, of course, but this one has become fixed in his mind.

  Aidan picks it up, beaming. “I get to open this now because it’s not a Christmas present,” he tells Jace. “Remember when I told you that Mom left our game with Nana and Gramps? She said they need toys for when I stay with them.”

  I glance up at Jace. “He stays there every other weekend. It’s a sort of—”

  He nods as if to say he gets it. Actually, I’ll bet he does. This man has been far more understanding than I deserve, and perhaps it’s time to tell him so. My inclination was to wait until Aidan’s in Charlotte, but if I put off the apology, I might chicken out.

  I smile at Aidan. “Why don’t you go inside and open that, honey? You can get it set up, and Jace’ll be right in.”

  Aidan gives me a suspicious look. “The last time you talked to him alone, it didn’t go so well. I’m not sure this is a good idea. You probably need supervision.”

  “I just have to apologize to him,” I say, feeling Jace’s eyes burning into me. “Nothing bad. I promise. Then I’ll make you both hot cocoa.” Maybe I can also get him to eat something. I suspect he left his lunch untouched.

  Aidan is enthusiastic enough about this prospect, on top of the allure of getting to open the box and set up the game by himself, that he nods and enters the house ahead of us. I shut the door, still feeling Jace’s gaze on me. Goodness. I can feel it in every cell of my body, it seems.

  “You already apologized,” he comments.

  “Not properly,” I say, steeling myself to be open with him. Vulnerable, if the situation requires it. “I made that call to Butterfly Buddies before I looked up the incident.” It occurs to me belatedly that I’m essentially admitting that I spent the afternoon Googling him, but he doesn’t look surprised or particularly annoyed by it. More like he expected as much.

  He nods slightly, telling me to go on.

  “It’s just…when you said you’d stolen a car…I assumed it had happened recently. I thought that…”

  “I know what you thought, Mary,” he says, his voice so deep and rich when he says my name that I can feel it between my legs. My entire body shudders, and I lose track of all the things I meant to say. He smirks a little, although not meanly. “You thought I was running a chop shop out of my garage. As it happens, I live in an apartment. A setup like that would be totally impossible.”

  “But at the time you were arrested, you lived in Sydney. You were running your family business.”

  He nods but doesn’t say anything, his lips in a tight line, and it occurs to me that I probably shouldn’t have said that. Talking about his family upsets him.

  So I blurt out, “My sister says she let you adopt a cat. She wouldn’t do that if you weren’t a good person.”

  “Your sister’s Maisie?” he asks, surprised. “She’s good people. Taking Bingo in was one of the best decisions I ever made. Not that it was much of one. She was holding an adoption event at a brewery, and he escaped his crate. Came right over and curled up on my lap.”

  Smart cat.

  I choke down the thought. “Did you name him? Bingo should be a dog’s name.”

  It’s an inane sentiment. The kind of thing that would have Molly sighing because I’m too literal to be alive. But he just smiles, slow and sexy.

  “What can I say? I like to reverse expectations.”

  “Well, you’ve reversed mine,” I say, feeling my cheeks heat. “What I mean to say is that I understand people make stupid mistakes, and yours was a long time ago…” Oh, dear. I probably shouldn’t have said it was stupid. It was stupid, but he looks like he’s on the verge of laughing again, which means it wasn’t the right thing to say.

  “Have you ever made any mistakes?” he asks, and from the devilish way he’s saying it, it’s almost like he’s asking me to make one—with him.

  The rogue part of me wants that. Needs it.

  “Yes, of course,” I stammer out instead, ignoring the subtext, which is almost certainly in my imagination. “Terrible ones. There was one really stupid one when I was a teenager, and you’ve heard about my ex-husband.” I blush. Again. “Of course, it wasn’t totally a mistake, because I got Aidan out of it, and I’m more grateful for him than anything.”

  “I know that.” He reaches toward my face, and my heart feels like it’s about to beat out of my chest as his fingers near the soft flesh of my cheek. When he tucks an escaped lock of hair behind my ear, I almost melt into a puddle.

  “You’re a good mom,” he says. “I know you were just worried about him. I get it. And you were probably right. It might not be a good idea for him to get too attached to me, and me to him, given that you and I are attracted to each other.”

  Shock roils through me. It’s as if I’ve opened my eyes and found myself on a different planet, where the ground is as solid as a bounce house and left is right and right is left.

  No, it’s not possible.

  I gawk at him, taking in his sparkling eyes, the golden ends of his hair, and that short beard that shouldn’t look good, but oh God, it looks really good…

  “Did you just say…?” I start.

  It’s then that Aidan bursts through the door, holding something in his hand. He thrusts it out in front of him, scrunching his nose. “Did you get me this, Mom? It came in the box with my game. It was in a container, but I took it out.”

  Shock renders me mute and still, like a pillar of salt. Especially since I can feel the intense scrutiny of Jace’s eyes. There’s no way Aidan knows what he’s holding, but Jace must know.

  No, no, no, no, no, this can’t be happening.

  The vibrator wasn’t supposed to come until tomorrow. Why would they pack it with a children’s board game?

  A twisted sense of humor? A lack of reasonable bathroom breaks in the warehouse?

  Aidan waves the bright pink vibrator around.

  “There’s a little rabbit on it. Is it some kind of toy for Christmas? The package says it’s a magic wand that’s supposed to make people moan, but they spelled magic with a k, and it didn’t come with a spell book or anything.” He pulls a face. “I guess I can just use it with the Harry Potter spells. It does vibrate like it’s doing magic, and it can whirl in circles too.”

  A short laugh sputters out of Jace.

  My face is so red, it might as well be a fire truck. Magik wand. At least the name offers a reasonable explanation. For a six-year-old. God help me, I can’t bear to look at Jace.

  I make a grab for the vibrator, but Aidan evades me.

  “Why’d you get it in pink, Mom? You know green’s my favorite color.”

  Jace clears his throat, but nope, I still can’t look at him. He’s not laughing anymore, but I know he probably wants to. Who wouldn’t? If he did feel some sort of passing attraction to me before this, he certainly doesn’t now.

  Darn Nicole and her seemingly reasonable suggestions.

  “Aidan,” Jace says slowly, his voice husky. “There
are toys for adults too. That’s probably something your mom got as a treat for herself, although I’m sure she’ll get you a Harry Potter wand for Christmas if you want one. Let her have it.”

  Aidan does, which is what I wanted, but then I have a vibrator in my hand. A bright pink vibrator that seemed cute and kind of saucy when I saw it online but now seems totally ridiculous. What the hell am I going to do with it? I think for a moment and then stuff it into my bag. The end of the vibrator pops out of my bag, and it’s clearly molded to look like the tip of a penis.

  What is happening to me?

  “It must be some kind of mistake,” I say, finally forcing myself to meet Jace’s gaze. “I didn’t order this. I wouldn’t…”

  I thought I’d see laughter there, because he’s only human, but all traces of it are gone, and now he’s looking at me like I’m the last slice of birthday cake at an office birthday party. No, like I’m the first. And for a moment, I want nothing more than to live in that feeling. Then his gaze shifts to the pink protuberance from my purse, and I feel more blood rush to my cheeks.

  “It’s not mine,” I say, although that pink tip suggests it’s a lie. “I’m going to write them a strongly worded letter. It’s totally inappropriate that they’d send this in a box with a children’s game.”

  “Yes, it is,” he says with a smile. “I think I’d like to see that note.”

  “You’re teasing me, aren’t you?”

  “Absolutely.” His eyes are sparkling with mirth and heat, and I feel a strange sizzling sensation course through me, like a good kind of electric shock.

  Aidan pulls at my shirt. “Mom, why would they send you something like that by mistake? We’ve never gotten something we didn’t order before. Or at least we didn’t get a totally different item. Did you ask for it in a different color or something? You usually pick things in gray or dark blue.”

  “Yeah,” Jace says, still grinning, “I didn’t take you for a woman who’d go for pink.”