Page 24 of Recipe for Rivals
I had a feeling it was going to be incredibly difficult to focus for the next hour.
CHAPTER EIGHT
NOVA
Mom anxiety wasa beast of its own. Logically, I understood flag football wouldn’t make or break Ben’s introduction to Texas, but I also remembered tearing him away from the friends he’d known his entire life and the amount of tears he’d shed on our three day drive to Arcadia Creek. This felt a little like a Band-aid over the real, raw pain he was facing. I worried it would only serve to make things worse if he didn’t enjoy it but persevered because he thought it was the way to make friends.
At least with the practice looming and his new friend Pete, he hadn’t asked to call his dad in the last few days. Watching him hold the phone so hopefully and the FaceTime ring going unanswered was like a knife to the kidneys every time.
I slid my gaze to Alice, watching her play Letterland on her Kindle in the front passenger seat. In the two weeks we’d been here, the kids talked to their dad once, and it was a quick phone call Sunday morning on our way out the door.
The kids in the practice looked like they were rounding up and about to finish. My eyes trailed to Dusty standing in front of them, his hands around a football, smiling at the boys as he talked. The man was everywhere. It didn’t seem like I could getaway from him—not that I wanted to. He was extremely respectful and, despite being crazy attractive, I hadn’t felt any sort of predatory behavior directed my way. He was friendly and kind of a tease, but he wasn’t a flirt.
Which made me like him, but it also made me wonder if I’d imagined him checking me out in the market that first day. It would make the most sense. I was constantly in some form of wrinkly clothing and hadn’t worn my hair in anything but a ponytail in eight years.
Not literally, but it felt that way sometimes.
There was that phase where I’d chopped my hair to my chin to make it harder for Ben’s pudgy baby hands to grab, but that only made it more difficult to get out of my face while I did chores or changed diapers or threw up thanks to my second pregnancy.
My phone lit up with a call from Trish, a woman who’d sat on the PTA board at my kids’ school in Manhattan. She’d called four other times, but I hadn’t bothered to listen to her voicemails. I knew I’d better answer so she’d leave me alone.
She’d been one of the moms eager to know how it had ended between Carter and me, and definitely didn’t believe me when I’d told her we’d drifted apart. He had been distant the last few years, but so had I. Two people could take blame for the end of my marriage, and I was one of them. Carter certainly hadn’t made it easy for me to try, but Ididstop trying.
Though I will—privately—forever maintain that he checked out long before I did, he probably thinks the same about me. The difference was that I was busy trying to be a mom, and he was just bored. I didn’t love watching him flirt with waitresses or people at office parties, but I never wanted to argue either.
“Hey, Trish,” I said, infusing my voice with such false cheeriness that Alice looked up from her game for a moment in confusion.
“Nova! Hi! I didn’t think I’d get a live version of you!” She trilled a laugh that made me clench my teeth.
“Just been busy, getting back into the workforce and all that.”
“I’ve heard,” she said, lowering her voice. “Things are different for you now. Howareyou?”
The inflection was meant to make it sound like she really cared, but I knew her. Our kids had started in preschool together, so we had five years of history. Trish was the queen of the parent association and the biggest gossip in the Upper West Side. She was good at shrouding it in enough empathy that I’d felt safe confiding in her, so I constantly had to remind myself that anything I told Trish would be around the entire school by the end of the next day.
“Great,” I said. Okay, that was probably too much. I softened my voice. “Things are going well. The kids have found friends already, which is a relief.”
“I can only imagine,” she said, slowly and sadly. “I saw Carter the other night.”
Everything went silent around me, except for the sudden strange ringing in my ears. “Oh?”
“At that new restaurant off Amsterdam. Pickle. Have you heard of it?”
“Yes, I have.” It was in my planner, still, under the To Do List section as a possible date night when it opened. I had circled it because early critics had nothing but nice things to say and the ambiance looked romantic.
Which meant Carter probably hadn’t gone to dinner alone. “He was with the blonde, I’m guessing.”
“No, a redhead.”
Oh. Had he left the lawyer, or was he dating around? It wasn’t any of my business, but I felt a wave of umbrage that he had time for multiple women but couldn’t seem to answer the phone when his kids called. I inhaled patience, tracking theteam on the grass and watching the boys disperse to waiting parents in idling cars. It was the end of twilight and dark, the lights over the park glowing orange on the grass.
The silence extended, and I didn’t know what Trish wanted from me. Crying? Raging? Dirt about the hot cowboys filling this town? My gaze flicked to Dusty, gathering cones with Brody, then fell to my lap. “Listen, I need to run?—”
“Did you get my messages?” she asked.
My cheeks went hot. “I’ve been so busy, Trish. I haven’t had a chance to listen to them yet.”
“Well, we have the spring science fair coming up, and a few of the parents mentioned those adorable cookies you brought last year. We were hoping you could make them again.”