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“Please come in,” her father said. “Can I get you a drink? Jax and I were going to have a beer. There are a few different Fierce ones in there.”
Roni smiled over that. Her father and brother weren’t fussy with their beer. They’d drunk Fierce beer before, but it was not like it was the only kind in their house. Once she started to work for the Fierces they were buying more of it.
It’s not like her job or her boss’s business had anything to do with the brewery in Charlotte, but she found it funny just the same.
“A beer sounds good,” he said.
“Mom,” she asked. “Are you having wine?”
“I do have a bottle if you want a glass. Why don’t you come with me to get the drinks and Trent can talk with your father and brother.”
“I’ll be fine,” he said, looking at Roni.
She smiled and moved to the back of the house with her mother.
“What’s going on?” her mother asked. “You don’t normally have wine. Everything alright?”
“I’m nervous. I’m never nervous. I thought this would help.”
“We aren’t going to bite him,” her mother said. “We just wanted to meet him.”
“I know. He was so funny driving here. He knew I was nervous and said that Jeff set the bar so low he’d be fine.”
Her mother grinned. “That’s a good point.” Her mother pulled the wine out of the fridge, opened it and filled their glasses. She’d done the same with the three beers and they carried the drinks in. Or she carried one and the tray of snacks and her mother carried the other two beers.
When they were back in the kitchen getting their wine, she said, “He’s really cute, isn’t he?”
Her mother laughed. “He is. Not your type.”
“I know,” she said. “Do you think that is part of it? That I’m attracted to him because it’s the opposite of Jeff?”
“You aren’t the type to do that,” her mother said. “You know that. You never even looked at men for years. There are things there for you to hold onto. Characteristics. Inside and out. You know that.”
“He isn’t pushing me to let Eli know. I can appreciate that.”
“And he shouldn’t,” her mother said. “That isn’t his call. It’s yours. It’s early yet and you know that you need to take it slow. The fact he’s aware you have a child and doesn’t have a problem with your time being split is important.”
“I know,” she said. “Let’s go back in there.”
When she and her mother returned to the living room, Trent was laughing. “What’s so funny?” her mother asked the room.
“Jax was telling Trent what you were like in school,” her father said.
“What’s so funny about that?” she asked. Roni thought she was pretty down the middle. She got along with everyone. She had friends but didn’t hang out with the popular groups and stayed out of trouble that way too.
“Your brother said that you never said much, but he was sticking up for a girl getting bullied one day on the playground and you came to his defense when the bully turned on him.”
She grinned. “Well, that is true. I was nine and Jax was eleven. I think he was in sixth grade or something. I don’t remember exactly.”
“It was Bethany Brown,” Jax said. “She was...not very active.”
“Overweight,” Roni said when Trent frowned. “Jax has a hard time saying bad things about people.”
“I have no problem saying bad things about people. Like your ex is a dick. But I don’t like to see someone knocked down because they are different. Bethany had medical issues. They weren’t her fault.”
She laughed. “I stand corrected. Other girls were picking on Bethany because she wasn’t just overweight, but she was obese. You don’t see a lot of obese girls that young. And you don’t know if she had medical issues or not. She said she did, but she could have been saying it to get people to leave her alone.”
Not that she cared one way or another, but this was where Jax was like Trent. Stepping in to help others.
