Page 48 of Into the Mountains (Blue Grove Mountain #3)

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

CHARLOTTE

A fter hours of working in the office—and one or two not working—Elias and I are finally headed to our first official date.

Well, our first date this go around. The first second chance date?

I don’t know what to call it, but whatever it is or isn’t, it doesn’t feel like a first date.

I suppose it wouldn’t, considering where we have been before.

“You sure Ethan will be fine?” I ask again. The guilt of taking his dad away from him again so soon after him being absent for a whole weekend has been eating at me all day.

“Charlie, he loves being around his grandparents and the feeling is very much mutual. In fact, Isabelle has been begging that I bring him around more often during the weekdays. During school, she doesn’t get to see him as much and she loves to spoil him and help him with homework and anything else a grandparent usually does.

And George loves his company too. They’d adopt him in a heartbeat if anything ever happened to me. ”

He’s right and I should listen to him, but his words also don’t stop me from trying to think of ideas to include Ethan the next time. A realization hits me though and it feels like something I should have thought of before our date.

“Does he…what did you tell him about tonight?”

“What do you mean?”

“Did you tell him we were going on a date?”

He fidgets in the driver’s seat and adjusts his grip on the wheel. “I…wasn’t sure what to tell him. So, I said I had a business dinner.” He cringes as if he knows how horrible it sounds.

I laugh and he reacts by raising his eyebrows in confusion, looking between me and the road for a brief moment.

“What?” he asks, waiting for me to explain.

“I just think it’s funny that you think Ethan didn’t see right through that.”

He’s laughing now too and it’s warm and smooth. And I wish I could bathe in it. Sink down in its warmth until it completely envelops me.

“You’re probably right.”

“Do you think he will be okay with us dating?”

A long sigh escapes him. “Honestly, I’m not fully sure how he will feel about it.

But what I am sure about is he does absolutely love you and I can only hope he will love having you around a little bit more.

It just might be in a capacity he has to get used to seeing.

But let’s make sure we keep the PDA on the down low around him until we know how he feels about it.

Holding hands I think is fine, but I don’t want to be kissing in front of him or being too touchy feely until he feels okay. ”

I squeeze his thigh to reassure him. “Eli, you don’t have to explain your reasoning for all of that. I understand. I don’t want to hurt him any more than you do, okay? I am one hundred percent on board with you.”

He takes one hand from the wheel to grab mine from his thigh and brings the back of it to his lips. “Thank you,” he says against it and doesn’t let go as he brings our hands back down to his lap, his thumb rubbing soft lines back and forth across my skin.

“It is weird though.”

“What is?”

“The way that kid just latched onto my heart so quickly. I couldn’t imagine my life without Ethan.”

“He latches on to anyone very fast. Like a leech.”

My laugh isn’t pretty, but it is one nonetheless. “Did you just compare your kid to a leech?”

“In a loving way though,” he defends.

The restaurant he stops in front of is fancier than I expected. The lighting is soft and even though the building looks a bit older, its style is more refined, some people walking out in dresses, others walking in wearing slacks or flowy pants.

“No paintball?” I ask, referring to the last date we had that ended in the worst way possible.

He winces as if feeling the end of that date all over again. “I considered it, but we don’t have the best track record.”

“You were just afraid of losing,” I taunt. His eyebrows raise, surprised at my challenge.

Ushering me through the open front door, his hand comes to the small of my back and the warmth of it bleeds through the fabric of my dress. The hostess practically gleams as Eli walks up to her stand and gives her the name for our reservation.

“Wow, your sister is gorgeous,” she says and I’m so taken back by the fishing for information, I barely have time to register what Eli says next.

“My wife is extremely beautiful, thank you for noticing. I’m sure it made her night, even though I’m the one who she was waiting on when we were trying to leave the house.

Just couldn’t get my hair to sit quite right.

” He wraps an arm around my waist and makes the space between us disappear. “Isn’t that right, honey?”

I’m still so hung up on the fact that he called me his wife, all I can seem to do is stare up at him in complete awe. Or did I imagine it?

“Well, your wife has amazing taste.” No, I didn’t imagine it. I also don’t think I made up the disappointed tone the hostess now had when she spoke. She recovered quickly though and placed our menus at the table and walked back to her place.

When we are settled in our booth near the back of the restaurant, my brain seems to have finally caught up. “Wife?” I half-whisper.

He just shrugs as if calling me his wife was the most natural thing in the world. “It was the easiest way to get out of her trying to slip me her number and continue to disrespect you throughout the night.”

““No, thank you” wouldn’t have sufficed?”

He shakes his head. “Not with women like her. She saw what she wanted and didn’t care that my girlfriend was there to stop her because she wasn’t going to let the fact that I was unavailable change anything. To her, girlfriend still means available.”

“So, I’m your girlfriend now?”

Eli starts to fumble over his words and it’s actually endearing to see when he’s usually so composed. He’s the one who called me his wife a minute ago and here he is stumbling over calling me his girlfriend.

“I figured we’d at least get to that after dessert.”

“Your dessert or mine?” I tease. If the lighting weren’t soft, I would be able to see the tips of his ears go slightly red like they did when we were in the clinic office.

The bedroom talk discovery is something neither of us balked at and have embraced.

It’s fun to tease him outside of the bedroom and see just how far I can go with it.

“Well, I’ll be freaking damned,” a voice I’d know from just about anywhere, mostly on Tuesday nights, comes closer to our table, closely followed by another figure behind him.

“Frank?” Eli asks, even though we both know it’s obviously Frank.

“In the flesh.” Eli stands to shake his hand and Frank pulls him in for a bro hug which is weird because I don’t ever remember Frank being the affectionate type.

When he pulls back, he gestures to the woman off to the side.

She has short black hair that’s pulled back into a low bun with streaks of gray taking over.

Her skin is tan and slightly wrinkled with aging spots along her forearms and I assume she’s around the same age as Frank.

“This is Bea,” he says proudly like a mother hen showing off her chicks.

Eli reaches his hand out to her and she takes it, even though she seems hesitant at first. Whether she’s nervous to meet new people or not, but the looks of the radiant smile that hasn’t left her face, she is completely smitten with Frank.

Which isn’t something I think I ever would have believed if I didn’t see it for myself.

“I’m Charlotte.” I stand offering my hand.

“Beatrice,” she says.

I furrow my brows and she catches on. “The old man over here always called me Bea to get under my skin back in the day and I guess old habits never die.” She shrugs. “Plus, I kind of like it now.”

Eli nudges me and I respond by rolling my eyes at him like a child annoyed with their overbearing mother.

“Back in the day?” I ask. “So you’ve known each other for a while?”

“Frank and I go way back and not all of it is pleasant.”

Frank pulls her in by the hip and plants a quick kiss to her cheek. “Let’s not go down that road again, please. I don’t think my old ticker can take that.”

She swats at his chest. “So dramatic.” Turning back to me, she explains, “We dated years ago and it didn’t end well.

I married and had kids, grandkids, the whole shindig and my husband passed away a few years ago.

No sympathies needed.” She stops me from doing just that as my mouth hangs open and my eyes soften.

“Anyway,” she continues. “Frank reached out when he passed and again a bit ago after we ran into each other, here actually, and we decided to get together again and here we are on our third date.”

“Fourth actually, but who’s counting?”

“You are, because you’re hoping to get lucky, darlin.’”

“I’m plenty lucky,” Frank responds and with the way he’s looking at Bea, I’d say he means it. “I get a second chance.”

Bea smiles and gently pats his cheek before turning back to us. “We’ll let you two get to your date. Have a beer for us, okay?”

“You got it, Bea. It was great to meet you.”

Before Frank walks to the front of the restaurant with Bea, he closes the distance between him and Eli and whispers something in his ear too low for me to hear. Eli pats his arm, in thanks I think, as he pulls back and follows Bea.

“What was that about?”

He shrugs. “Just Frank being Frank.”

We sit down at our table and the aroma from the lit candle in the middle of the table surrounds us. The woodsy scented smoke mixes with the aroma of the restaurant, the lighting dimmed enough to give it a very calming effect.

“I can’t believe he’s out.”

A dark-haired waitress comes by the table and takes our drink order while we decide to take a few minutes to figure out what we want to eat for dinner.

“Yeah,” he agrees. “I don’t really remember the last time I’ve seen him outside of his bar to be completely honest. But I’m happy for him. The two of them seem like a good match.”

“They really do. And this is their second chance.”

The words that resonate with them and us. Neither of us say anything about the coincidence. I don’t think it’s necessary. A second chance is a second chance at any age and I think we are both happy we get ours now.

After our drinks come and we order our food, I grab my glass. “To Frank and Bea?” I ask, raising my glass of beer.

“To Frank and Bea,” he echoes.

A buzzing sound interrupts Eli’s sip of beer and he fishes his phone out of his pocket. He answers and I catch the smile playing on his lips. The one he automatically gets when he’s talking to or about his son.

“Ethan,” his voice is stern, but his smile doesn’t falter. “Three is plenty. Hobbles doesn’t need a three-legged friend. He has two four-legged friends that treat him just fine.”

He pauses and listens to his son explain all the while trying to hold back his laughter at whatever explanation Ethan is coming up with.

“You’re right, Sable and Erebor don’t know what it’s like to be a…tripod. But they still love Hobbles and don’t treat him any differently.”

I don’t think Ethan took that answer either, because I can almost hear his negotiation skills from here and I can see them working. To have the negotiation skills at his age, I don’t think I would have known what to do with myself.

“I do see what you’re saying. Okay, let me at least talk to Jacob first before we decide, okay? I do appreciate you calling me first this time. I promise I will talk to Jacob and make sure he doesn’t let her get adopted until we make a decision. Does that sound good? Okay. I will see you tomorrow.”

Ethan says something that makes Eli laugh and rub a hand down his face in disbelief or hilarity or both. Either way there is so much love behind it, I already know, with or without him talking to Jacob, Eli is going to cave and they are definitely a four kitten household now.

When he hangs up the phone, Eli takes a long swig of beer.

“Everything good over there?” I ask.

“You were right?” He says it like a question.

“Ooooo, please say that later, but naked.”

“But naked or butt naked?” His smile radiates to his eyes and I want to trace the lines that appear in the corners there.

I roll my eyes at his sad attempt at puns and ask, “What was I right about?”

“Ethan catching on. The last thing he said was to have fun on my date with Charlie.”

We both laugh and I point in his direction. “Your kid is so smart sometimes, it’s scary.”

“Trust me, I know. And he’s probably going to be a hostage negotiator when he grows up at this rate.”

“Convinced you to get another cat, huh?”

“Another three-legged one, because he thinks Hobbles feels lonely with siblings that aren’t really like him. Says he would feel more comfortable and safe if there was a kitten there that was like him.”

I nod my head to the side, considering. “I mean, he does have a point. Everyone likes to be seen in someone else. Likes to feel seen or relatable in some way and it must feel lonely to not have that.”

“Which is why we are more than likely getting another one. But this is the last one.”

“Sure it is.”

Our second first date flows smoothly and even though we’ve been technically seeing each other again for the past week or so, it feels natural.

Like this is where I was supposed to be all along.

But the universe has a way of meddling and exposing the path She wants you to take as we go along.

Even though we lost years that we could have spent together, I wouldn’t change the way it’s turning out now.

I feel like I’m floating on a cloud. Practically weightless, being whisked off to magical worlds I’ve never seen before while we sing in harmony together about all the sights we see. A lot of time has passed since I have felt anything close to this feeling.

We walk hand in hand to the car and I can’t help but ask again. “What did Frank tell you earlier when he whispered in your ear?”

“He told me not to squander my second chance,” he answers.

“Oh did he now?” I twirl my body around toward his and almost crash into his chest as he tugs me in.

“He did.” Skin to skin, heat sings through my body and it’s a chorus I wish could be a never-ending one.

“And are you going to take his advice?”

With a firm press of his lips just long enough to coax that little fire inside a bit more, he responds, “I’d be an idiot to do otherwise, honey.”

And just that one little word brings me back to a past I thought I moved on from.