Page 44 of Room 1212

“What? What did I do?” she asked with forced innocence. It wasn’t a cat she was trying to hide under her sweater this time, but a baby, and it was nearly impossible to mask the squirming bundle.

When Kris started to giggle, Lavender’s mask cracked. She laughed and threw back her sweater to reveal my son. “What? How did he get in there?” she said. “Peek-a-boo!” She tickled his belly, and he nearly wiggled straight off her lap in his glee.

I snatched my son up and swung him around. “I found you!”

“My turn,” Betty said, angling her wheelchair toward us, the motor whirring. “Lavender has been hogging him all afternoon.”

Betty reached her hands out, and Kris leaned toward her, indicating that he was ready for his next cuddles. He loved coming to work with me, and the residents loved it even more. They said it made them feel young again.

It was bingo night, so the entire room was set up with long tables, and the residents were seated in front of their cards. Davis had a full dozen cards lined up in front of him, a bingo dabber in each hand. He got pretty competitive, even though the game was largely chance based. The prizes weren’t anything special, but try telling the residents that. There was a box of Girl Scout cookies, an econo-sized bag of Doritos, and a hand-crocheted lap blanket that one of the seniors had donated.

I'd brought Kris with me while Jordan had an appointment with his therapist. They'd been working through his anxiety and self-esteem issues, not to mention the trauma inflicted by his parents, but it was an ongoing process. I'd offered to keep Kris for the rest of the night to give Jordan some quiet time after his appointment to get some writing done, but I suspected he would show up here within the hour. He couldn’t stand to be away from his son.

Sure enough, we were only halfway through bingo when Jordan peeked through the doors to the multipurpose room. He scanned the room and quickly zeroed in on where I was standing at the front of the room, calling numbers.

I waved to my mate, and heads turned to see who’d arrived. There was a chorus of “Hey, Jordan!” from the seniors. Roger waved him over. “Come sit by me. I’ll give you one of my cards.”

Jordan looked to me with a question in his gaze, and I pointed to where Kris had fallen asleep against Noelle’s shoulder. The seniors had needed both hands for bingo, so she had taken a much-deserved break to hold Kris for a bit.

Seeing that our son was in good hands and wouldn’t want to move just yet, Jordan sat down beside Roger. “Here, you can use the pink dabber,” Roger said. “When Drew calls a number, you check your card to see if you’ve got it, then dab it with the marker, and then when you get a row, you yell out bingo. But you gotta be quick if you want to beat Davis.” Roger glared at Davis who smirked right back.

“Enough lollygagging,” Betty scolded. “Come on, Drew, get to calling those numbers. I’d like to win the game this century.”

“Ha! You wish you could win,” Davis goaded her. “You’re too slow to beat me. You’re slower than ketchup comin’ out of a glass bottle.”

Betty, never one to be outdone, said, “Oh yeah? Well, your mama was so slow, she took nine months to make a joke.” She stuck out her tongue at him.

The spectators all said, “Ooooh,” and Davis chuckled, shaking his head. “Mama jokes? Really? You went there?”

I quickly called out the next number before a brawl could break out. These two were probably teasing each other, but you could never quite tell. Sometimes I wondered if they liked to fight just for something to do, and they were stronger than they looked.

“B-12,” I shouted over the rising din. Everyone quieted straight down and squinted at their cards. Some of them even used a magnifying glass—we’d had to take a vote on whether or not that was cheating, but in the end, it was allowed.

Another ten minutes passed in near silence. Tension was starting to rise, like the buzz of an electric storm crackling through the air. Someone had to win soon. “O-66,” I called.

“Bingo?” a voice said. “Oh my gods! I got bingo!” Jordan stood up and waved his card around. Everyone else groaned.

“You cheated,” Davis grumbled. “You two are in cahoots.” Luckily, he didn’t really look upset. He had a soft spot for Jordan, and he would never begrudge him a bingo win.

Jordan jogged up to the front of the room. “What do I win?” he asked, his hands clasped under his chin, his eyes sparkling. Gods, I loved this man.

I indicated to the table where the prizes were laid out. “Your pick.”

“Ooh, I do love Doritos, but… can I take the blanket? It’s so soft, and I know that Kris would love it.” He gnawed on his lip, his eyebrows dipping in a frown. I knew he didn’t really want to take a prize from the residents, but he also knew there was no way they would let him pass on it. He seemed to come up with a plan and quickly snagged a pen from my breast pocket. He leaned over the table and flipped over his winning card to write something on the back of it. I leaned over his shoulder to see what he was writing.

IOU one pre-release Jordan Kepler book

“There,” he said, picking up the blanket and putting the note in its place. “I think I’m getting the better end of this deal, though.”

When I announced to the residents what he’d put in the prize pot, they got extra excited. “You’re all going down,” Betty said.

“Wanna bet?” Roger called across to her.

“Oh boy, look what you’ve started now,” I teased Jordan.

He shrugged sheepishly. “Sorry?”

The commotion startled Kris awake, and once he saw his daddy was here, there was no way he was going back to sleep. He let out a loud bleat, and Jordan went over to scoop him up. He held him tight, eyes closed, breathing in his warm scent. “I missed you,” he told him. It had been three hours tops since he’d last seen him.

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