Page 3 of Love It or List It
Oh.Right.
Joe Romano:Oh my God
Joe Romano:I’m muting this chat
He didn’t.He just put his whole phone on mute.
Then he frowned, looked at the time, and opened the chat again.
Meg Mitchell:He’s just worried about you cause you haven’t dated anybody since Assface
Alex Jones:You need to get over him.He sucks
Gavin Chalmers:And the best way to get over him is to get under someone else!
Jesus Christ.
Joe Romano:Aren’t you all supposed to be in class right now?!
He swore to God these children were going to make his hair fall out before he turned thirty, and then he’d have to kill them all.
They weren’t technically his kids, even if he loved them like they were.He’d been Meg’s first swim instructor, back when she was a little tadpole of a thing, seven years old and all arms and legs.Of the bunch, Meg had the best family life.Her parents worked a lot back then, but Grandma DeeDee was a steady presence; she’d supervised every lesson Joe gave.Meg also had the only house with a pool, so Alex, Gavin, and Will had gravitated to her place and often ended up waiting around for her to finish.Joe had clocked the way they watched the water, the holes worn in the toes of Alex’s sneakers, the fraying hem of Gavin’s shorts, and then he’d seen them all flailing in the shallow end, and—look.Meg was never going to become a Division I swim champ if she had trauma from one of her friends drowning in her pool.It wasn’t like it was that hard to teach the rest of them how to stay alive.
And if Grandma DeeDee suspected Joe did it because he was an only child of divorced Mexican Catholic and Italian Catholic parents, and all his cousins had gobs of siblings and he’d always been kind of lonely, she was kind enough not to say so out loud, and simply suggested she repay his kindnesses with lunch.
But lunch and swimming lessons turned into driving them home when it started raining or got too dark to ride their bikes on unlit county roads, digging out his old clothes for the boys, and sitting with the group and DeeDee to cheer Meg on at her first swim meet.It turned into a cheering section of his own at church-league softball games, a car full of kids to take out for ice cream after, and a house that sometimes rang with laughter.
Joe was furiously glad he’d lucked into these four siblings by choice.But like hell was he going to let Gavin fail grade twelve English.
Gavin Chalmers:Whoops gotta go bye Joe!
Joe sighed, checked the clock again, and opened a message to Starling instead.
Joe Romano:Remember when you said adopting four children as a teenager was a bad idea?
Starling Bell:Will asked you if the house guy is hot, didn’t he?
He really needed to get some friends who were less good at giving him shit.
Two thirty came around, and a door opened deeper in the building.A woman of fortyish came out, dressed in dark slacks and a purple sweater that looked like cashmere.She smiled.“Mr.Romano.Good to see you again.”
Joe shook her hand and she ushered him back to her office.“Hi, Ms.Kelly.”
“It looks like Mr.Taylor isn’t here yet.I’ll let Shawna know to send him in when he arrives.Just have a seat.”
Like Joe’s ass wasn’t numb from sitting already.But he sat.
“So.”He cleared his throat.“You found him, I guess.”
Ms.Kelly dropped into her wheely desk chair and rolled a few feet with the impact.“Do you know how hard it is to find people who don’t have Facebook these days?”
Joe snorted.He didn’t know from experience but couldn’t say he was surprised.Phonebooks were just a hazy memory of his childhood.Could you look up a private cell number?
“About four-months-long hard?”he suggested.
Ms.Kelly dipped her head in acknowledgement and smiled.“Something like that.There’s no point going through all this without Mr.Taylor.”She waved at the pages on her desk with an apologetic little shrug.“Can I get you anything to drink while we wait?”
Joe opened his mouth to decline, not wanting to put her out just because this Austin Taylor guy couldn’t keep an appointment, but now that she mentioned it.“Water would be nice.”
