10. Jude

TEN

JUDE

A week after the so-called sex practice with Brooke, I made plans with Youmna and George to drop off the kids for the weekend. I didn't tell Brooke that I had time to hang out, and I didn't know if that made me a bigger asshole or coward, but I was saved from deciding when Nate texted to come to his bar. Walt's was hosting some kind of local fundraiser with the money being donated to a charity for Huntington's disease. So Liam, Dylan, and I made plans to head there for a few hours.

I pulled up outside of the modest single-story house Mira had grown up in with a manicured lawn and flower bed in the front. As I stepped out of the car, the front door swung open, and George ambled out. He was a tall and broad man, though he really needed to get his limp checked out.

Amelia, always excited to see her grandfather, danced in her car seat until I unbuckled her so she could sprint toward him. "Jiddo!"

"Lulu!" He crouched down to catch her, waving his hand at Sebastian, who approached much slower.

He and I hadn't been able to get on the same page lately. It felt like in the last few weeks, he'd lost that little boy air about him, and I struggled to adjust to having a preteen, while he couldn't seem to shake his moodiness, let alone the whole not listening to me thing.

It was possible I was being oversensitive because he didn't want to cuddle with me anymore.

And that was the real problem.

The only thing to excite him anymore was baseball, and he seemed to like Dylan more than me right now because Dylan was his coach. I was the guy making him clean up his bedroom.

"Hello, Bissi," George said, wrapping his arm around Sebastian, who didn't return the embrace.

George raised his brow to me in silent question, and I shrugged, not letting on to my suspicion that Sebastian objected to still being called little kitten .

Mira had given Seb that nickname when he was born, and the whole family had quickly adopted it. But I guessed he was too old for that too.

Once Sebastian entered the house, George adjusted Amelia to his hip, so he could pat my back. "How are you?"

"I'm good." I motioned to his leg. "I see you still haven't gone to the doctor."

He let a familiar sound rumble from the back of his throat. The one that stated he did not want to discuss it, so I grinned in good humor and walked inside, where photos decorated almost every inch of the walls, chronicling Youmna and George's journey from Damascus, Syria, to West Chester, Pennsylvania.

The décor hadn't changed in twenty years. There were still doilies on nearly every flat surface, vases holding fresh flowers in the windows, and a cabinet containing fine china I had been allowed to eat off exactly twice in my life.

Youmna sauntered out of the kitchen and greeted Sebastian with a kiss to his forehead, her hands curved around his cheeks, speaking in soft Arabic. He let her hug him for a moment before rushing off to where they'd redone one of the bedrooms for my kids when they slept over. Then my mother-in-law turned her attention to me, greeting me in the exact same way she had my son. Pulling me to her with her palms on my face and her lips on my forehead. "Habibi," she murmured, smiling, eyes roving over me in inspection. "You look good today."

"As opposed to every other day?"

She whacked my arm with a cluck of her tongue. "Yes. Come on. Come eat."

I dutifully followed her into the kitchen, while Amelia sat on her grandfather's lap, playing with some kind of wooden puzzle.

"I'm going to eat out," I told Youmna, hoping to stop her before she started cooking.

"Have a snack." Then she proceeded to place an array of small dishes in front of me on the table, stuffed grape leaves, tabbouleh, and spinach pies. I stopped her when I noticed her reaching for the loaf of bread.

"This is enough, Mama."

She reluctantly sat down across from me, silently urging me to eat before setting her chin in her palm. "Now tell me, how are things?"

I filled her in on Sebastian's attitude as of late and asked if she could sew the mouth that had come undone from one of Amelia's unicorns, which she happily agreed to. Then she slid her hand over my hair, down the side of my face to my beard. "When are you going to cut your hair? You are too handsome for so much of it."

I covered her hand with mine, nuzzling her palm. "I will. I'll cut it soon."

She nodded in satisfaction. "You are doing what you promised. Finding someone?"

I bit into one of the small savory pies to buy myself some time. My mother-in-law, always patient, waited me out, smiling. As if she could tell something had changed.

I swallowed and cleared my throat. "I'm trying."

She couldn't have looked more pleased. "Who is she?"

"No one in particular," I said around the spinach pie lodged in my throat. "Just…trying to go on dates."

"You will find someone to help you and love the children."

I didn't want to confess that I wasn't interested in a wife, so I let her fantasize about my supposed someone while I tried not to recall the feel of Brooke's skin and the way her lips tasted. How she wrapped her hand around my cock and the way her breath caught when I entered her. The sounds she made when she came on my fingers.

I shook my head out of my reverie.

It had been happening more and more lately. The more days passed, the more my brain had demanded I remember.

At the most inopportune times. Like when I visited with my mother-in-law.

I finished the pie and wiped my hands on a napkin. "I won't be late tonight."

She waved me off. "If you are, they can sleep over."

I didn't like continually asking my parents and in-laws to take the kids, but these summer days felt like they went on forever. I thought they were as sick of me as I was of them sometimes.

"I have to work in the store tomorrow," I said, and Youmna tapped the table.

"Good. They will stay here tonight, and you can pick them up after you are done working tomorrow. Okay? Okay."

I laughed since that was all settled and stood up with a kiss to her cheek. I called out to Seb that I was leaving, which he barely responded to, and left with a hug to Amelia and a handshake for George.

I arrived at Walt's to find a big crowd. The Anchormen, a band that sometimes played there, covered "Only the Good Die Young" by Billy Joel on the small stage in the corner, and I made my way through the throng of bodies to the bar. Nate, in the middle of pouring a beer at the taps, tipped his chin to me in greeting.

"Gimme a Blue Moon," I shouted to him, slapping some cash down before skating my gaze around until I found Dylan and Liam, Genevieve and Kennedy in tow. Nate slid me my beer and informed me he'd be over in a minute, so I wound my way to my friends, scooting in on the end of the booth.

"Am I old, or is it too loud in here?" I asked in a near shout.

"Old," Evie answered with a big smile, her side tucked up along Dylan's.

Liam, the oldest one out of all of us at thirty-eight, winced. "It is loud in here."

Which had Kennedy grinning. "Come on, it's for a good cause!"

"Too many damn people," Dylan grumbled, almost inaudibly.

"What's the deal anyway?" I asked, and Kennedy proceeded to explain the drummer in the band had opened a Huntington's disease charity, in honor of his brother who suffered from it. Kennedy knew all the inside information because her sister's boyfriend also played in the band and had been friends with the drummer since high school. I barely listened, too focused on my cell phone and the message from Melissa asking if I wanted to grab coffee.

Coffee didn't seem like a big deal. And yet I gaped at the screen as if she'd asked me if I wanted to go cliff-diving.

Because What? Are you nuts?

"Hey." Dylan pounded his fist on the table. "You lookin' at dick pics or something over there?"

I spluttered on a gulp of my beer. "Dick pics? "

"You look frightened. I assumed."

Evie leaned over, peeking at my screen. "What is that?"

"It's, uh…a dating app."

That had everyone's full attention.

"You took the plunge?" Liam asked, while the girls tossed each other confused glances. But before I could answer, Nate slid into the booth, enlightening everyone.

"Jude's finally going to get laid, if he hasn't already. So, where do we stand?"

" We stand nowhere." I set my cell phone on the table, so they could all view Melissa's latest message to me. "But I was asked to go out."

"What are you going to say?" Kennedy asked, and I shrugged.

"If you wanna have sex, you gotta say yes," Nate said, earning him an eye roll from his sister.

"Why are you even here and not behind the bar?"

"Because Tabitha's got it covered."

"You leaving her to fend off the wolves by herself?" Evie scoffed, referring to the dark-haired female bartender.

All of us turned to the bar, where Tabitha simultaneously took a payment, filled a drink order, and tossed a towel onto a spill. All without breaking a sweat.

Nate lounged against the back of the booth. "She's earning her paycheck."

Liam eyed Nate. "What's that mean?"

"She asked for a raise."

Evie sat up tall, interested. "What'd you say?"

"I'd think about it."

She threw a balled-up napkin at him. "Don't pretend you're not gonna say yes. She's been your manager for, what, five years?"

"Six," Nate said, his gaze toward the bar, presumably on Tabitha.

"And she's been here since you opened the bar," Evie went on. "You wouldn't be able to keep yourself afloat without her."

"I know that." Nate frowned at his sister. "But I don't want her to know that. These are how negotiations go."

"I didn't know this was a Fortune 500 company. Excuse me."

"Listen, Little Miss Sassypants, I don't need any of your lip."

We all busted out in laughter, with Kennedy saying, "Okay, Dad ."

Nate shuddered. "Please don't speak that into the universe."

"What? I think you'd be a great dad." She looked between all of us at the table for agreement. I would have if I didn't know all of Nate's hang-ups from his childhood about his own father.

Evie pointed to the bar, telling her brother off. "Go help her. And then go give her a big raise. She deserves it for all the shit she puts up with from you."

Nate slanted his head toward Dylan. "You gonna let her talk to me like that?"

Dylan merely slung his arm around her shoulders.

Nate huffed. "What happened to bros before hoes?"

"First of all, if you call your sister a ho, I'm gonna crack your jaw."

Nate grinned. "As if you could."

"And second of all, she's right. Tabitha deserves all the money she wants."

"Of course she does," Nate said easily. "But I have to make her sweat it out for a little bit. That's good business sense. Now…" He extended his arm along the back of the booth. "What's the plan with sweet Melissa?"

I palmed my phone, scrolling back through the messages with her. Sweet would not be the word I'd use to describe Melissa. "I don't have one yet. "

"You want to see her?" Liam asked, and my mind flashed to Brooke and how we'd agreed to never talk about what happened last week.

So I dropped my head back to my shoulders and blew out a breath. "Yeah, I want to see her."

"Hey, man, it's only coffee," Dylan said. "If you're not feeling it, you could leave. No big deal."

All my friends nodded, including Evie and Kennedy.

Only coffee. I could totally do that.

"Yeah," I mumbled to myself, forcing my thumbs to type out the words. I'd love to grab a coffee with you. Let me know when you're free.