Page 2 of Playing With Temptation

“Score,” Lucas shouted from the backseat. “Gigi’s lasagna is my favorite.”

No, it wasn’t. Food was his favorite.

It was like the day he’d turned double digits, his stomach became bottomless.

“Do you think Gigi will let me make pancakes in the morning?” He continued to prattle on about food but my attention went to another important landmark of my youth.

The Jesup Drive-In.

The very location of my first kiss. Well, the actual location was in the truck bed of Jase’s dad’s old Chevy, but we’d been parked at the drive-in—tailgate facing the screen, snuggling on a pile of unzipped sleeping bags under a sheet.

In the years since we’d broken up, I’d had the occasion to wonder what my life would’ve been like if we’d stayed together.

Not so much in the beginning. I’d been a deer-in-the-headlights freshman at the University of Florida struggling to find my way in my new reality when we’d officially broken up. And I’d still had Jase in my life, as a friend.

At some point during my senior year of high school, the first year he’d been away at college, we were still dating but our relationship had shifted from boyfriend-girlfriend to best friends. But all of that changed when I came home for the summer before my senior year of college. Jase had graduated and moved home to go to the police academy. He was taking the next step to realize his dream of becoming a police officer. I was in the middle of a crisis and was considering changing my major. Those were my over-thinking years and at the time, I’d felt like my world was spiraling and I didn’t know how to course correct.

It was bad timing when I saw him at a local bar. He looked…beautiful. He also had his arm around a stunning blonde. A reminder of a simpler time. A reminder that at one time I’d felt like the luckiest girl in the world to be with Jase. He’d been everything.

That blonde had tarnished the memory in a way I couldn’t see past. It wasn’t rational, it wasn’t fair, it wasn’t even nice, but after that, I’d ended the friendship. Not officially, organically, slowly, allowing more time to grow between calls, taking longer to return his calls, until eventually, there was nothing between us.

It was the year that followed when I began the what-if game, which had turned into regret. I’d lost my first love, but more than that, I’d lost a great friend.

“Mom!”

“Sorry, what?”

“Pancakes?”

Right breakfast, because… food.

“You know Gigi loves cooking with you.”

Satisfied his food cravings would be fulfilled for the next eighteen or so hours, he went back to the tablet he was going to lose as soon as we pulled into my mother’s driveway. In an effort to stop thinking about things best left in the past, I went through my mental to-do list.

Movers. Unpacking. Grocery store run that was going to break the bank. Target for new bedding for Lucas. The mall for back-to-school clothes. Soccer sign-ups.

I had one week to set up our new house before school started.

I was not fleeing.

I was moving home to give my boy a better life.

“Bless, child.” My mom watched Lucas carry his second helping to the table.

“What? I’m a growing boy.” Lucas told her the God’s honest truth.

My mother beamed a smile at her grandson that helped ease some of the lingering doubt I was still harboring about this move.

Guilt, really.

I brought Lucas home from the hospital to my one-bedroom apartment. When he was two, we moved into a two-bedroom condo in a nice area of Tallahassee and stayed. Not only because moving sucked, but it was in a good school district and close to…

Stop.

Don’t go there, Rainy.

I’m home. We’re home. Nice house with a backyard and a third bedroom I could use as an office instead of the nook off the kitchen I’d taken over in the condo, forcing my kid to eat all his meals at the breakfast bar on a stool.