Beard Up(7)

"What, baby?" I turned around and stared at my girl.

My girl who looked so much like her daddy that it was hard to look at her sometimes.

"Your phone is ringing." She handed it to me. "Do you want me to answer it?"

I shook my head. "No, baby. It's only our neighbor."

A neighbor who'd asked me out no less than six times in the last week alone.

"Well answer him!" she ordered, pointing at the phone.

Luckily at that point the phone had stopped ringing, making it a moot point.

"Sorry, honey. Are you hungry?" I questioned.

She pursed her lips. "It depends. What are you cooking?"

My usual fanfare was out. I didn't have time to make much more than hot dogs and macaroni, and I told her as much a few seconds later.

"I'll take the hot dog. I don't want any macaroni." She made a gagging face.

My brows rose.

"What's wrong with macaroni?" I asked.

She bared her teeth in a grossed-out gag. "I heard that the stuff you make isn't made out of real cheeses," she said. "At least that's what Mrs. Temperance said when I was over at her house yesterday."

Mrs. Temperance was her friend Lindsay's mother, and also a right bitch. I hated her, but I couldn't really say that to my eight-year-old. She'd want to know why, and I would have to tell her that not every mom could make a home cooked meal every day from scratch and still look like she was stepping out of Penthouse.


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So I chose not to say anything at all, and I continued to endure the woman's ugly words and childish attempts to make my child think I was the devil who cooked out of boxes.

I walked to the counter where my roses-the roses from my dead husband-sat and inhaled deeply, basking in the scent.

I also bit my lip as I tried not to cry my eyes out.

The first birthday I'd received these after my husband had died hadn't been a good night for me. I ended up going to the bar owned by the Dixie Wardens, Halligans and Handcuffs, and got rip-roaring drunk while one of the club ladies watched my daughter for me.

Ever since, I'd managed to control my drinking until after she was in bed, but it was a close call sometimes as I remembered why my husband had started this tradition in the first place.

We'd met when I was sixteen and Tunnel was seventeen.

He'd been the teenage boy who lived at the house that my mother cleaned. He'd been the client's son, and he was so handsome.

After sitting in the car-the very hot car-for the fourth summer day in a row while my mother cleaned their house from top to bottom (even though it didn't need it), Tunnel had spotted me and invited me inside.

At first, I'd declined, but Tunnel had been good. And by good, I mean he guilt tripped me into doing exactly what he wanted me to do, and I fell for it like the besotted girl that I was. The same naïve girl who also had no clue that his family, the family that also employed my mother, would soon be my demise.

He'd seduced me with his pretty words, and soon we became the best of friends.

Then, as time had went on, we became more than friends.

Two years to the day from when we'd met, we became lovers. Then, we'd become parents.

Which had then started setting off a turn of events that neither one of us had ever seen coming.

Fast forward nine months and we were happy, married, and in love.

Though, neither set of our parents had approved. Both sets had disowned us, and even now, I never saw any of them, even all these years later. Sienna was eight years old, and not once had any of our parents met her, except in passing at the supermarket. Though that didn't happen anymore since we'd moved out on our own.

But I had my daughter. I had some great years with Tunnel before I'd lost him, and I had my dreams.

My phone started to ring again, and I reluctantly picked it up.

"Hi, Josh," I said into the phone, not bothering to pretend that I didn't know exactly who it was that was calling.

"Hey, darlin'," Josh said in his smooth, melted chocolate voice. "Are you cooking tonight?" 

Josh was so different from Tunnel. Where Tunnel had been hard, Josh was soft. Where Tunnel's words were sometimes blunt and honest, Josh's never failed to have the right amount of honey laced through them. Josh had brown hair where Tunnel had had dirty blonde. Josh was light, Tunnel was dark.

Shit. There I went again, comparing apples to oranges.

"Mina?" Josh's tone was almost hopeful, and I wanted to smack him. I'd invited him for dinner once and once only, and now he thought that I would cook for him whenever he damn well pleased.

Well, he'd be wrong. It was time to fix this before it got any worse than it already was.