I have no clue where Jules lives and while I’m quite confident her manager would hand me her address without a care in the world, that’s definitely too stalkerlike. But I do know Tony’s is near her house because it’s only a few miles from Sweetbrier, and she told me Friday night that her commute was only like five minutes. So I know I’m in the general vicinity of where she lives.

As I sit in the parking lot of Tony’s, I pull my phone out and dial Jules’ number, my heart pounding hard as I wait for her to answer and slightly terrified she won’t.

She picks up on the second ring and answers with a tentative whisper, her tone of voice wondering who is calling her since I did not give her my number and she wouldn’t recognize it. “Hello?”

“Have you started on dinner yet for you and the kids?” I ask. I’m taking a guess she’s with the kids because I learned Friday night that she doesn’t work weekends except for watching a friend’s kid who watches her crew during weeknights when she’s working at the convenience store. It’s been raining all day today, so I hoped they’d all be there at Jules’ apartment.

“Max?” she asks hesitantly.

“Well, of course it’s Max,” I tease her lightly. “Or do you have so many men chasing after you that you can’t keep us straight?”

She laughs softly and it flows through my veins like a sweet lazy river. I like that sound so much, I immediately yearn to hear it again.

“You just caught me off guard,” she says by way of explanation.

“Didn’t think I’d call, did you?” I guess.

“Nope,” she admits candidly. “I’m not exactly a great catch.”

“I beg to differ,” I say, but I don’t want to belabor that point with her because I’m not sure I have enough breath in my lungs to have my reason penetrate her doubtful head. Besides, I intend to show her through actions that I’m interested in her quite a bit, despite the messiness of her life right now. Friday night was one of the best hours I’d spent in a long, long time. Fun, humorous conversation that was virtually effortless, and let’s not forget . . . she is not hard to look at.

I continue on. “So, I’m getting ready to order pizza. You cool with New York style and just pepperoni? It’s my favorite but I could be persuaded to order something else.”

“Huh?”

“Pizza, Jules. Pizza. I’m getting pizza for you and the kids, and going to deliver it to you. You’ll be nice, invite me in to eat with you, and then I’ll be on my way.”

“Pizza?” she mumbles.

“I might bring cannoli too,” I add on to tempt her further.

“You’re crazy,” she murmurs.

“Quite possibly. So what kind of pizza do you and the kids like, and what’s your address?”

“My apartment is a mess,” she warns me.

“Don’t care.”

“The kids are kind of wired today since it’s been raining and they’ve been stuck inside,” she warns further.

“We’ll stuff them with pizza and then put in a movie for them to watch,” I suggest. “It’ll be fine.”

She huffs out a breath, remains silent for a moment, then says, “Fine. We all love New York style and I’ll text you my address.”

“Awesome,” I tell her, and then I give a double fist pump inside my car. I can’t believe she gave in that easy.

This isn’t going quite how I expected, but it’s cool.

Totally cool that three little kids are repetitively whipping my ass at Candyland. I draw a card, note the blue square, and advance my gingerbread pawn and fucking land on a licorice drop.

Again.

At age six and the middle child, Levy—who I quickly realized is the true troublemaker of this crew—points a finger and laughs almost maniacally at me. “You lose a turn, Max. In your face.”

Little brat.

But I laugh back at him, watch as Annabelle—who proudly announced to me she is four and a half years old—pulls a yellow card and advances to the Candy Castle for her second win. She lets out a “yippee” as she smirks at Levy, who’s only won one game, while she’s won three. Rocco is the oldest at seven and you can tell he’s sort of an old soul. While he also only won one game, he praises Annabelle for her victory.

Yeah . . . not how I thought this would go.

I showed up with hot pizzas and my nerves on overdrive as I realized I was getting ready to not only spend time with Jules, which produced the good kind of nerves, but that I’d also be interacting with her niece and nephews. It suddenly hit me . . . I want Jules to like me, and if I want that, those kids better fucking like me.

I had hoped a nice bribery of gooey pizza and then the DVD copy of The Incredibles would be sufficient. I’d hoped after we ate, the kids would watch the movie and I’d be able to perhaps talk to Jules, or even stare at her a bit if that’s all I could finagle. But she informed me after we ate that she didn’t own a DVD player and even if she did, her TV didn’t work because of two active boys that may have knocked the TV over during a wrestling match.

Thankfully, neither one was hurt, but the TV didn’t survive, something inside having been jarred loose and Jules simply couldn’t afford to fix it.

So I got stuck playing Candyland with the kids while Jules finished up laundry, got their clothes ready for the next day, and packed the boys’ lunches. In between the second and third game, I found her in the bathroom scrubbing out the toilet. She just looked at me sheepishly and muttered, “Sorry . . . but I’m totally taking advantage of you keeping them occupied so I can get ahead on a few things that need to be done.”

Christ . . . it was a fucking punch to the gut as I realized Jules couldn’t even sit down longer than the fifteen minutes it took her to eat two slices of pizza before she was pressed into answering the call of responsibility. I wanted to pull her away, rip those nasty yellow rubber gloves she was wearing off, and make her go sit down on the couch to rest. Instead I asked, “Want me to help do something?”

She grinned at me and said, “Trust me . . . this is actually a nice break from having to entertain three rambunctious kids. You playing with them is doing me a huge favor.”

I nodded and started to turn away, but she called, “Max?”