Page 15 of Forgotten Romance

Payne: Shit. I fucked up. Don’t answer me.

Art: Do you want to tell them, Mack, or should I?

Mack: I already told them. Scribe. And nothing else.

Art: …

Art: …

Art: …

Art: Does pretending to type so the little dots come up increase suspense or what?

Keller: We’re already bored.

Art: Sex slave. Mack is our sex slave.

Griff: Why don’t I get to be the sex slave?

Keller: I seriously worry about you, dude.

Mack: Position is all yours.

Art: No it’s not. I make the decisions. I’m the universal leader, dammit.

Orson: You sure? You kinda sound like a toddler right now.

Art: That’s it. No positions. None of you will survive my takeover. You’re all doomed.

Mack: Oh, thank god.

Art: I’m so unappreciated in my generation.

5

Davey

“Hey, baby,” Mom says, pulling me into a hug when I step inside. Van and Kiera take off to find Pa while Mom and I head for the kitchen. Every day after school pickup, I stop in here to see them, and since retiring, Dad is the best source for town gossip. Between the golf club, his old construction friends, the fishing group, and the people he’s known for years, he’s always one of the first to know everything about anyone.

And today, I’d kind of like to know who the man is sniffing around my husband.

“Mack still at work?” Mom asks, filling a teapot.

“Yeah, I’ll grab him at four.”

“I tell you, the knitting girls love him. Now, I’m not old enough to be one of them yet”—I snicker, earning myself a whip from the dish towel—“but sometimes those ladies are on school pickup, and they’re always gushing about my son-in-law. The mothers too. Do you know he runs kids days at the library? Princess picnics and robot building and …” She waves a hand. “Very clever, that man. All these women lamenting that he’s gay.”

Well, that’s offensive. I don’t point that out to her, though, because my parents weren’t exactly thrilled with me over the divorce. Dad tried to be neutral, but Mom took Mack’s side, begging me through tears to quit my job and stay home with my family.

It hurt almost as much as when Mack did it.

I doubt my choice enough without everyone else putting their opinions in. I hate leaving my family, I hate what I’ve done to us, I hate that I lost the greatest husband in existence. But it was clearly going to happen either way.

Mack loves his job at the library. Dad loved the building industry, and Mom loves teaching so much she still does it two days a week when she could have easily retired when Dad did.

But me? I think I’m broken. I could live without the travel, but I fucking love what I do. The pressure-cooker contracts. The brainstorming. The putting together a package and seeing it transformed into something real. And now, I get to run a whole fucking team. My work keeps me busy. It keeps me social. It keeps my mind alive, and giving that up wouldn’t be good for me. At least with how we are now, Mack and I still get along. We’re still close and care about each other.

If I quit and wound up waiting tables at Killer Brew, would I still be the same guy without the job satisfaction? The short answer is no. That right there would ruin us.

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