Fall by Winter

I could still see the kids stumbling around in diapers.

I blew out a breath and told myself not to get emotional.

This weekend when Brady came home for a visit, I’d treat him like the adult he was. William had reminded me that I spoiled him too much, so instead of helping him decorate the tiny studio above the garage, I was going to give him a budget. He was twenty years old. He could paint and buy his own furniture. Or so William kept insisting.

“Mom, you’re all sad again.” Aurora sent me a troubled look.

I mustered a smile and shook my head. “Not at all. I promise. It’s just bittersweet that I’ll never go through this again. My mommy days are gone.”

It made me feel a bit lost, if I was completely honest with myself.Two“Oh, I love this.” Sharon flicked my ponytail when we met up outside the gym the following evening. “Perfect color for you, hon.”

“Thank you.” I beamed and opened the door. “You’re sort of the first one to notice without my pointing it out.”

Aurora was as selectively observant as her father. They could pick up the slightest shift in someone’s mood, but if someone painted the world purple, they’d be none the wiser. She’d said she liked it once I’d mentioned it, though.

Sharon could commiserate. She had a husband and three sons. If she wanted her family to notice something new, she had to draw a map.

After getting changed in the basement area, we headed upstairs again and joined another fifteen or so men and women who’d signed up for tonight’s spin class. And Sharon wasn’t the only one who silently cheered when we saw who the session’s instructor was. Ethan Quinn. He owned the fitness center and only led very few group workouts, presumably when he needed an ego boost of everyone fawning over him.

I could admit, he was charming as hell. When he spoke to someone, he gave them all his attention.

But, too polished for me. He was also an obvious attention whore. If he’d been younger, I wouldn’t have cared. Brady was going through a phase like that at the moment. He wanted validation and attention. William and I were working on it.

Ethan was my age, and I’d never be able to relax around someone who constantly needed an audience to shower him with compliments. I had seen the man’s Instagram. He had many, many abs. I mean posts. Many, many posts. Of his abs.

“Imagine being married to that,” I muttered, finding a bike somewhere in the middle. “He’d wake you up at six every morning with a shot of some ginger-beetroot-kale-vitamin boost.”

“Right?” Sharon tossed her towel over her handlebar. “When all we really need is just a shot of the D.”

I let out a laugh—and shit. Sorry. I hadn’t meant for it to be so loud. Everyone looked over at us.

I cleared my throat and avoided Ethan’s quirked brow.I had a meeting in Seattle on Thursday, meaning I had a boring-as-hell two-hour commute on the way home. So I called a bunch of people to get that over with, checking in with my parents first, then deciding on dinner with Aurora before I made Friday night plans with Sharon. I was maybe twenty minutes away from home when I called William.

“Hey, I was just about to call you,” he answered. “Hold on, connecting to Bluetooth.”

I assumed he was on his way home from work too.

“There,” he said. “What’s up?”

I checked the rearview and switched to the left lane. Some people didn’t know how to drive in the rain. “Tell me I shouldn’t get a dog.”

He was silent for a beat. “Well, I mean…you could. If you do, we can watch it every now and then, and then maybe Kelly won’t want one too.”

I huffed a chuckle. “Does he?”

“He won’t fucking shut up about it,” he muttered.

“And you can’t say no to him,” I said knowingly. “Get a dog, William. I can watch it every now and then.”

“What the—how did we…?—no. You get a dog.”

“I like my idea better,” I replied. “I just want something to cuddle with sometimes. My job wouldn’t really allow for me to take several weeks off for puppy training right now.”

My job—I loved it beyond words, but it was a mess. I’d majored in design and minored in management, and when employment was scarce, I’d gotten creative. Now I had two part-time gigs, one that was taking up more and more time, and several smaller projects I ran as a small business owner. Most of my clients needed project managers for temporary assignments, and it was possible I’d signed on for more than a few lately.

“It could be a grown-up dog,” William pointed out.

“No, I want a puppy. They’re the cutest.” Then I shook my head and rolled my eyes at myself. “I’m not getting a fucking dog.”