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Chapter 8: Jaxson

Jaxson pulled up in front of his ex-wife's house.

A house that was suspiciously dark.

He stared at it for a moment. This was not a good sign.

He heaved himself out of his SUV and through the snow to her front door. He knocked on the door once. Twice. He raised his fist to pound a third time, but with a sigh, he instead pulled his phone out of his back pocket. He could continue to pound on Kendra's front door, or he could give up and call her.

"Hello?" she answered on the fourth ring. It was noisy wherever she was at, and Jaxson could hardly hear her over the shouts of laughter and loud music.

He did an about-face and marched back to his SUV. Wherever the hell she was, it was not her house. He might as well get back into the car and warm up while having this conversation.

"Where are you?" he demanded, sliding into the driver's seat and slamming the door behind him. He probably shut it a little too hard, but he was too pissed to care at the moment.

"At Jumping Off."

"With the boys?"

"Of course with the boys," she snapped. "Do you think I'd come to this godforsaken place for fun?"

Jumping Off was a roller-skating rink, arcade, bouncy slide, pool of balls "funhouse" that served over-priced and over-cooked food at astronomical prices.

In other words, a place that every child would absolutely love, and every parent would absolutely hate.

"It's my weekend to have them, Kendra. Why are you at Jumping Off?" He tried to keep the anger out of his voice, but failed miserably. If his ex-wife was trying to intentionally piss him off, she was doing a damn good job of it.

"It's their friend Isaac's 9th birthday party. What was I supposed to do - tell Isaac that he was born on the wrong damn weekend?"

"No, but you could've told me. I drove 90 minutes, in the dark, to pick them up. You "

"I put it into the calendar," she snapped. "Maybe you ought to learn how to read one of those!"

Jaxson ground his back teeth together as he started the engine. If he told her once, he'd told her a hundred times to tell him when she added shit to the shared custody calendar. She always somehow "forgot."

"I'm coming over there," he told her. "I can hang out and watch them play and then take them back to Sawyer for the weekend."

"Don't you dare. Ivan is here. You two would end up in a fistfight in ten minutes flat."

Jaxson ground his teeth together harder. She was right. He and Ivan...didn't get along. It might have something to do with the fact that he was drunk about 75% of the time. Or how he snapped his fingers whenever he wanted Jaxson's attention, like Jaxson was his puppy dog. Or maybe it was when he'd found Ivan and Kendra in bed together, signaling the end of his marriage to her.

No, he most definitely could not sit next to Ivan for hours on end without someone having a bloody nose by the end of it.

And it wouldn't be Jaxson.

"Fine. Tell the boys I love them."

He hung up before she could say anything else, and stared into the darkened residential street ahead of him.

He might as well go grocery shopping while he was there. Every time he went into the Shop 'N Go in Sawyer, he had a minor heart attack at the prices. He was going to drop dead at age 52 from grocery prices if that kept up.

A good run through Winco and Costco would be good. He could stock up on the essentials, then head back to Sawyer.

Alone.


Jaxson heaved the last of the groceries out of the backseat of his SUV. It was his eighth trip into the house, loaded down each time like a pack horse, which meant he'd had way too much fun grocery shopping.

It was possible that the sight of reasonably priced groceries may have made him go a bit overboard. Just maybe.

Turning to head to his apartment, he heard the jingle of a collar and looked up the street to see Sugar walking toward him with what looked like a small horse beside her. He did a double take. What the hell? He squinted.

Nope, Sugar wasn't taking a shetland pony out for an evening walk; just a Great Dane. Jaxson was willing to bet next week's paycheck that the dog weighed more than she did. Setting the grocery bags on the ground, he waved in greeting. It was surprisingly nice to see her; it felt like ages since he'd seen her last, even though it'd just been that morning.

It'd been a hell of a day, between inspecting fire hydrants and being stood up by Kendra and buying enough groceries to feed a small country...

"What are you up to?" he called out.

She smiled, her teeth reflecting the scant streetlight. "Taking Hamlet for a walk," she called back. Hamlet wagged his massive tail and began pulling her towards him, no doubt seeing Jaxson as another source of affection and attention that he could enjoy.

"Hamlet?" He blurted out the question. "You mean as in Shakespeare's Hamlet?"

They were now close enough that the Great Dane could begin nosing his way through the grocery bags. Hmmm...Maybe Jaxson wasn't a source of affection and attention, but rather, raw meat. Hamlet had gone straight for the bag with the t-bone steaks in it.

Sugar didn't ignore his behavior, nor did she yell at him. Instead, she simply tugged nearly imperceptibly on the thick leash and the giant dog responded obediently by immediately sitting down.

Jaxson was impressed.

"Yeah, Shakespeare's Hamlet," Sugar said, once her massive dog had heeled. "It comes from "

"Hold on, don't tell me," Jaxson interrupted. Their breaths were coming out as puffs of fog in the brisk winter air. As he paused, the mist dissipated, allowing Jaxson to see those beautiful brown eyes sparkling in the dim light. "Is Hamlet the one where he says, There is something rotten in the state of Denmark'?"

"Good guess!" Sugar said. "Wowsers. A man who knows Shakespeare and how to fight fires." Even as she was saying the words, though, her body convulsed in a full-blown shiver, shaking from head to toe. She looked about a half-step away from having her teeth chatter loudly.

Before he could second-guess himself, Jaxson asked, "Wanna come up for a cup of coffee and warm up?"

Why had he said that? He shouldn't have said that. She was a girl, and last Jaxson checked, girls had cooties. Or at least cheated on you with the next-door neighbor and then made it out to be your fault.

Which was pretty much the same thing as having cooties.

But still, inexplicably, he held his breath.

She bit her lower lip, her eyes flicking towards the ground before she looked back up into his eyes.

"I would love to," she said, the regret obvious in her voice, "but Hamlet has been cooped up all day. I can't force him to go sit in your apartment after spending the day sitting in mine. Hey, actually, why don't you walk with us?" Her voice was eager with excitement at the idea.

"Well, I have to get the last of these groceries into the apartment," he said, suddenly realizing how complicated it was to be spontaneous. "Do you walk Hamlet every night?"

"Yeah," she said. "I have to walk him every day after work. In the wintertime, I end up having to bundle up in a snowsuit worthy of a snowshoeing trip in Antarctica so I don't freeze to death, but hey, it does get me out and about."

"Welllll," Jaxson said, thinking quick, "if you can wait for just a moment, I'll run these upstairs," nodding towards the bags laying in the snow and ice, "and then I can join you two."

With a shy nod, she softly said, "Okay."

Bounding up the stairs two at a time, Jaxson realized that he was feeling happier than he had all evening. He snatched the thickest coat he owned from the hook, swapping it for his lighter jacket he'd worn to Boise, and then on a whim, grabbed his Elmer Fudd hat. He looked ridiculous in it, but being warm was what really mattered. Plus, he figured it'd be a good test to see if Sugar was willing to be seen in public with him with it on. If she told him to march back inside and change hats, well, he might just march back inside and not come back.

He clattered back down the stairs. When Sugar caught sight of him, she immediately began laughing.

"Hey, Mr. Fudd," she called out through her giggles, "wanna go on a walk with me?" She bent over, gasping for air as she laughed, and of course, Hamlet took that to mean that it was kissing time, since she'd conveniently put her face within range. He began slobbering all over her face as she continued to laugh.

Jaxson struck his best bodybuilder pose when he reached the bottom of the stairs. This only made Sugar laugh harder as Hamlet laid on even more kisses.

Yeah, Sugar was pretty okay. Maybe she didn't have quite as many cooties as other girls.

Maybe.

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