Page 47 of Irresistible Second Chance

“Are you going to charge me?” Robert asked, looking at me suspiciously.

“Hey, I’m all about billable hours,” I said with a smile, “But since Robin is so sweet and this bouncy house was probably her idea, I’ll cut you a break this time.”

“Everyone thinks Robin is so sweet, but they don’t see how she bosses me around and volunteers me to do stupid stuff,” he complained sounding like a bitter sibling. I bit back a laugh. It wasn’t too often that I saw Robert completely floundering. Actually, I’d never seen it. He grit his teeth as he tried to put the inflatable bouncy house back up.

By the time we finally got it up and fully inflated, the kids had gathered around, and they started cheering for us. It was cute. Then they climbed into the bouncy house and started having the time of their lives.

Robin came over and said, “You know you could have just gotten the guy who dropped it off to blow it up, right?”

Robert looked at her like he was ready to choke her. I fought back a laugh.

Then I heard someone say, “Syd?”

I turned. It was Mark. Of all the parks in the city, of course he was at this one.

Barely hiding my annoyance, I mumbled, “Hi, Mark.”

T.J. and Johnna stopped jumping and pushed their noses against the wall of the inflatable house.

“Uncle Mark! What are you doing here? Mom said you dumped Auntie!” Johnna yelled.

“That was soooooo mean!” TJ said.

I wanted to disappear. All the adults looked at me and then Starr came over to stand next to me.

“What do you want, Mark?” she said crossly.

He looked afraid of Starr, “I just wanted to say hello...” He turned to walk away, and I let out the breath I was holding, but then he turned back and said, “Actually, can I talk to you for a moment, Syd?”

I wanted to say no but I didnt’ want to cause a scene. Everyone was watching now, even all the kids.

“She doens’t want to talk to you,” Starr said quickly. The girls quickly backed her up.

“It’s ok,” I said, trying to avoid the very scene I was afraid of making. “I’ll be right back.”

“Is that her ex?” I heard Robin whisper loudly as I walked away with Mark. Yikes. Now everyone knew.

“Yeah, that’s the bastard,” I heard Starr say. The girls started to giggle.

Mark pretended he didn’t hear the whole exchange. “So, how’s everything going?” he asked after a few minutes when we were no longer in hearing distance.

“Great,” I lied. I was actually a little cranky from not getting enough sleep. I had gotten a little too used to spending my evenings and weekends with Chris and now I was lonely. Lonelier than when Mark had left me. “How’s life?” I didn’t want to think about how I was miserable.

He shrugged, “Good, I guess.”

“So, what do you want, Mark?” I asked stopping. I looked around while I waited for him to answer. It was a beautiful day, and the park was full of people playing tag football, frisbee, or just sitting on benches people watching. Chris and I used to come to this park when we were dating and kind of broke. My career hadn’t taken off yet and Chris was still hoping that he would make it to the majors. Our dreams had seemed so far fetched at the time, but we had both made those dreams happen. For Chris, they had been short-lived, but he seemed happy. But he was good at moving on. I wasn’t the best at it. I just pretended to be. I felt like I spent a lot of my life just pretending.

“I just wanted to know if you thought about what I said, you know, last time we spoke.”

“Nope.” I answered honestly. “Not even a little bit.”

The only guy I’d thought about lately was Chris. He was also the only guy I wanted to hear from, but I was too proud to admit that.

“Listen, Mark. I don’t mind being civil, but whatever you think “this” is, I just want you to know that it’s not happening. Nothing is happening between me and you.”

“Come on, Syd. Give me a chance. I screwed up. Let me fix this.”

“There’s nothing to fix, Mark.”

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