I was not going to be disappointed. He told me he would do absolutely everything he could do to be here today, but he couldn’t control when the foal was going to come. That’s right, I forgot to say—we were having a baby.

Well, not us. We weren’t having a baby because we weren’t having sex. No sex at all for us. No sirree Bob. I went to school and we worked really hard and we never ever considered having sex.

Jake didn’t, anyway. Me, not so much. I thought about it. A LOT!

A LOT!

Are you feeling me?

Anyway, Jake put Wyatt to stud on Isabella, who he’d bought just for that purpose, and now Isabella was due any moment. Javier and Gomez were back and living in the bunk house, but I knew Jake wanted to be there for the birth.

After all, this was his precious Wyatt who was about to become a father. Let’s face it. Jake was most definitely hoping for a boy that would one day fill Wyatt’s shoes when he was too old to carry Jake.

So I understood completely if he couldn’t make it to my graduation. It was a stupid thing anyway. Caps and gowns, long boring speeches, and then everyone having their name called out.

If he could make it, he was going to take me to dinner afterwards to celebrate and then we were going to go to Pete’s for drinks.

That’s right. I said we were going to Pete’s for drinks. It seemed as a high school graduate I was now mature enough to have a few beers.

If he couldn’t make it though, then plan B was to go out with Chrissy and her parents for dinner and then go with Chrissy to Pete’s.

Either way, Pete’s was happening. It was a Riverbend tradition that Pete officially started not caring about fake IDs once he knew you were no longer in high school. A bunch of kids from my class would be there tonight.

Then, if he could, Jake would meet me at Pete’s later.

Which was pretty much what it looked like was going to happen, because as I sat on the stage behind the principal and looked out over the crowd I didn’t see him anywhere. It wasn’t a large group. We were only a class of eighty-six, and since we all knew each other’s families it wasn’t hard to see who was here and who was not.

I noticed Bobby MacPherson’s dad was not. Just his mom. It almost—almost—made me feel for bad for him. I knew there was trouble there, and I knew Bobby had spent the last year basically being angry at the world.

He’d left me alone, so I shouldn’t have cared at all. I guess I knew what it was like not to have a parent in your life. His dad wasn’t dead, but sometimes it was harder if they chose to leave you.

For my dad there had been no choice. He’d be here now if he could be. I knew that. Or not. Because if he’d had a mare about to drop a foal, he probably would have told me the same thing as Jake.

I smiled and lifted my head to the ceiling of the auditorium and smiled at him and hoped somewhere in the universe he saw it.

Then, as we all stood for the Pledge of Allegiance, I saw him. He was jogging down the row of chairs, holding his tie against his chest. Still in his neatly pressed jeans, but he’d gone so far as to wear a tie and jacket.

He found an empty seat along the aisle and stood in front of it.

He looked up at the stage to find me, and when his eyes hit on me I waved.

He raised his chin and smiled.

He made it. To my graduation. Which meant we were going to get to have dinner and then he was going to take me to Pete’s.

I thought about my scale that I kept in full display on the kitchen counter, and mentally moved all my disks to the right side. (The right side was for good stuff. The left for bad.)

Then it occurred to me that Jake, just by being Jake, gave me a lot of ten days.

* * *

I was in my best dress. Blue with small white flowers all over it, a deep V in the front, and a wrap-around tie at my waist. I paired it with white wedges and I hoped, I thought, I looked anywhere as close to as nice as Jake did in his jacket and tie.

I mean, this wasn’t a Frank’s dinner. This was a real restaurant with cloth napkins and really nice silver and everything.

The Chop House was a legit steakhouse. It had taken us over an hour to drive here, but it was so worth it. I felt like… I mean, the whole thing had the feel of… a date.

Not that it was a date. It was my graduation dinner. Logically I knew that, but still I was going with it.

“You’re not eating,” Jake pointed out.

“I’m excited to see the baby.”

Jake smiled and it almost took my breath away. “Amazes me every time it happens. One minute I’m sliding this big ball of goo out, and the next it’s up on these little spindly legs, looking at them like what the heck am I supposed to do with these things?”

“I’m glad it worked out.”

“Me too. I would have been heartbroken thinking I missed your graduation.”

Heartbroken. Hmm. That was an odd word choice.

I cut into my steak and took another bite and closed my eyes it was so good. I must have made a noise too, because when I opened my eyes Jake was looking at me funny.

“It’s a steak, Ellie.”

“It’s a good steak, Jake.”

He smiled again, but a little tighter this time.

“And we still get to go to Pete’s after this.”

“Yes, I will happily buy you your first beer. Or wine. Or cooler. Whatever it is you drink.”

I shrugged. I didn’t know what I “drank”. Other than spiked punch and eggnog at Christmas, the only time I’d had a real drink was the day after the kiss… I meant the storm. The storm was the bigger event that day.

It burned my throat the whole way down.

The drink. Not the kiss.

“What if I like wine?”

“What of it?”

“You’re a beer guy.”

“So?”

Right. That was stupid. Just because he was a beer guy didn’t mean I needed to be a beer girl. It’s just that I always figured Jake would be the kind of guy to like hanging out with a girl who could sit back and drink beer with him.

Where a girl who drank wine he might consider snobby.

“What did Janet drink when you guys used to go out?”

He looked up at me like I was crazy. “Why are you asking about Janet?”

I shrugged. “I’m curious. When you guys went out, what did she drink?”

“She liked beer. Shots every once and a while, tequila. But mostly beer.”

See. Jake had previously been with a beer girl. I was drinking beer tonight no matter what.

He had a small smile around his mouth.

“What?” I asked.

“I think I always knew it,” he muttered.

“What?” I demanded.

“I think you’re a wine girl. I can feel it.”

“I’m not!” I insisted. Ridiculously. This was the stupidest conversation ever. And I was not the type of girl who drank something or ate something because the guy I was with liked the same thing.

It was horseshit. You were who you were, you liked what you liked.

“Okay, so maybe I am. I don’t know. We’ll have to wait and see tonight when I try both.”

“That’s fine. We’ll see. But I’m still going with wine.”

I had the urge to stick my tongue out at him, but we were in a really fancy place and I was an adult now so I resisted.

* * *

Beer was gross. Cold white wine was delicious. I hated that Jake was right, but as I said I wasn’t going to change what I liked to match what he liked. After all Jake loved blondes, and at best my hair could be called honey brown. It’s not like I was going to dye it.

Wait, should I dye it?

Ugh. Boys. They messed with my thinking. Or at least Jake did.

We were at Pete’s and I have to say it was a little strange. When we walked in a lot of my friends from high school were there, but I sort of stuck by Jake’s side. I didn’t want to leave him to hang by himself and, well… I didn’t want to leave him. We were having a really nice night hanging out together.

So when he asked me if I wanted to sit at the table with Chrissy and some of the other girls from school, I shook my head and we went to the bar instead.

I’d had my first beer, hated it. Now my first glass of wine, loving it and Jake was sipping on his beer.

“This is fun,” I said.

“Yeah. I knew hanging with you at Pete’s would be a trip.”

“You want to play pool?”

Jake’s eyes shot up. “You can play pool?”

No. But how hard could it be? You poked at the balls with a stick. I was fairly certain I could do that. “Sure.”

“Okay. What are we betting?”

“Wait, there are stakes in this?” I asked. This could be interesting.

“It’s the only way to make it fun.”

I ran through several scenarios in my head.

If I won, Jake had to have sex with me.

If I lost, I would have to have sex with Jake.

I was fairly certain he wouldn’t go for it.

I shook my head. “You decide.”

“Loser has to grocery shop for a month.”

Typical Jake. There was no sex in any of that. I huffed. “Fine. But if I lose, I’m buying everything you hate. Vegetables. Lots and lots of vegetables.”

“I don’t care. I still won’t be doing the shopping. Let’s go.”

He led me to the back of the bar where the pool table was. He put a dollar of quarters on the table and after the last group finished we were up. He allowed me to break, which I did and actually got one ball in. It was solid, so he was stripes. My second attempt was not so great, and then Jake took over and cleared the entire table.

Snickering… because there was no other word for it… the entire time.

Apparently Jake was good at pool. Sometimes it freaking seemed like Jake was good at everything.

And he was my husband. Mine.

“Best two out of three?” he offered.

“No thanks. You’ll have me doing the shopping, cooking, cleaning, and laundry. Not a chance.”

He laughed. “You want another glass of wine?”

“I can have one?”

“Yes, you can have one.”

“Then yes, my dear husband, I would love another glass of wine.”

“You’re a goof,” he said as he brushed by me, but I knew it was a compliment.

I was distracted by rolling the ball along the felt when I could feel someone approaching. I looked up to see Bobby MacPherson standing in front of me, and it probably showed on my face that I wasn’t thrilled to run into him because he started by raising his two hands in the air as a surrender.

“Hey Ellie, just hear me out.”

“Okay.”

“Look… I know was kind of an ass to you last year…”

“Kind of?”

“Okay, I was a major ass. I’m not making any excuses or anything but I was going through a lot of shit with my dad… and I was angry. A lot. I don’t know why I took that out on you. But I wanted to say… sorry.”

Wow. Bobby MacPherson was apologizing. That was something I never thought would happen. Which meant I had to be classy.

“Apology accepted.”

“We’re cool?”

“We’re cool.”

He smiled and nodded his head. “Then maybe I can buy you a beer?”

“She prefers wine,” Jake said, coming up behind him. He moved around Bobby and put the glass in my hand. Then he stood next to me and basically glared at Bobby until Bobby got the message.

The message I read was back the hell off. Bobby must have gotten the same message because he eventually did.

“Right. See you, Jake. Ellie.”

“See you, Bobby.”

Jake waited until he’d left to growl in my ear.

“What the hell did he want?”

“He actually came to apologize,” I told him. “You know, all that stuff happened a year ago. He could have grown up.”

“Maybe, but I’m not buying it. Watch yourself with him. He’s got a thing for you.”

“A thing for me? Hardly.”

Jake looked at me then with a hard expression. “Ellie, why wouldn’t he have a thing for you? You’re beautiful, smart, funny… and he looks at you… Well, let’s just say I know the look. He’s got a thing for you.”

OH. MY.GOD.

Jake thought I was beautiful and funny and smart. But beautiful came first on the list. Which as a feminist I should be affronted by, but as a woman I knew how important that was to guys.

It made me think maybe I had this all wrong. For the last few months, since the storm… the kiss, I thought he wanted to go back to the way things were before. Because of that I had been trying really hard to not make any moves.

Seriously, just because I thought about sex with him all the time, didn’t mean I wanted him to know I thought about sex with him all the time. If he did want things to go back to the way they were, then it would make him uncomfortable to know I was super attracted to him.

Mostly I pretended that I was cool with our situation. But what if that was the wrong approach? What if he was waiting for me to let him know what I wanted? That I was okay changing our relationship?

Today felt special. For the first time, we were acting like a legitimate couple. Doing things like a couple. We had the nice romantic dinner, now we were hanging at Pete’s.

He made Bobby go away in a quick second, and now he seemed…

Jealous?

“I still think you’re crazy,” I told Jake. “But since I don’t want to talk about Bobby anymore I’ll let it go.”

“Good idea,” he grumbled.

I sipped my wine and decided then and there that tonight was it.

Tonight I was going to make a play for my husband.

I was probably going to need another glass of wine.