“Here, let me take her,” Tabby offered, her hands appearing beside me and wrapping around Liv’s waist. “I haven’t seen her since yesterday and I need some Livvy loves.”
Snorting, I gave up my stinky butt of a daughter and moved back to where I’d been sitting, waiting for Tabby to smell what I had. “Who’s auntie Tabby’s big girl? Who’s my precious baby? Who’s…,” she broke off and sniffed her. “Whoa, girl. Your ass stinks worse than the broken sewage pipe in town, and that cleared an entire block. Holy Jesus,” she wheezed, turning her head to the side and gagging silently.
“Strong, isn’t it?”
Nodding, she moved her head around trying to find a pocket of fresh air, before gulping and looking over at me with watery eyes. “Kinda burns your throat.”
We were interrupted just then by a knock at the door that made both of us look over at it and then back at each other. Thinking I’d check the app that the feed from the cameras outside streamed on, I looked around for my cell but came up empty. Seeing my predicament, Tabby rolled her eyes, balanced Liv on one arm, and reached into her back pocket to get hers out.
Looking at her screen, the side of Tabby’s mouth tipped up, and she made her way toward the door. Figuring it was probably her fiancé Dave – who was the sheriff here in Piersville – I picked my coffee up and leaned back. The two of them meeting had been a complete fluke which had started with him arresting her, mistakenly thinking she’d broken into her house, and then he’d refused to take no for an answer when he’d asked her out. So, after numerous arrests, including when he proposed, they were now on the track to marriage and their happily ever after, and I loved that for her. Did I want it for myself? Abso-fucking-lutely, one day, just not now.
“We’ll shelved the mammaroni topic for another day, but it is happening,” she informed me as she walked toward the door. “Wait ‘til you see who’s on the other side of the door, Livvy. It’s your favorite person in the whole world,” Tabby told my daughter, but she was mistaken. Liv’s favorite person in the world was Ellis Beauregard, the six-foot-two, co-owner of the tattoo store in town, the baby whisperer, the Josephine Harrison whisperer (although I would deny that until I turned blue), and the most awesome man I’d ever met. If I could go back in time and meet him instead of Larry and still end up with Liv, I’d give a limb for it. Like I’ve said, I wasn’t scarred or damaged, but I wanted to use that ‘millennial mentality’ of living my best life and it didn’t include a man. Giving Liv the life that I’d always dreamed I’d give my kids was my priority, and now that I was a single mother I wanted to do that by myself without the risk of her being let down by another man. Not that I thought he would, but I didn’t even want to risk it happening to her. Maybe much further in the future, but not now. And I couldn’t expect someone to wait around for me to be ready, so it was likely that the man I ended up with wouldn’t be Ellis, because any woman worth her salt – who wasn’t trying to ‘live her best life’ – would snap him up in a heartbeat. Apart from me. The me who was a twat. The me who was so set on this plan for herself and her daughter that she was an even bigger twat. The woman who wanted to cave more than she wanted the cookies and cream Hershey’s kisses in the refrigerator. The woman who fell asleep reliving the moments I’d spent with him that day pretty much every damn night. The me who didn’t want the future that didn’t have Ellis in it. The woman who was settling for having him as a friend, so long as it meant being able to keep him in our lives.
I was a total twat.
And one who’d gotten who was at the door completely wrong.Chapter 2Jose
“Hello,” was all Tabby said, when I heard a voice respond to her that I hadn’t expected.
“Yo,” Ellis muttered back. “And how’s my princess? Did you miss me, because I missed you.” I heard Tabby chuckling as the click of the door shutting sounded, and just knew that she’d handed the baby over to him, dirty ass and all. Eyes trained on the space where the wall that separated the entry hall from the open plan living room/kitchen space ended, I watched as he rounded it with my daughter held close to his chest. She had her chubby little arms wrapped around his neck and was hugging him with a huge smile on her precious face, happy to be in his arms. Not even stopping, he shot me a wink, and continued on to where the supply of diapers was that I kept through here so I didn’t always have to run back and forth to change her.