“Gretchen! Hey, gorgeous.” Jaz held her arms out for the baby, then dropped them immediately. “Sorry,” she said to me. “I forgot for a second.”
Gretchen squirmed wildly, trying to get to Jaz. “Ma! Ma!”
Fuck. I pursed my lips and handed her over to her. “She misses you,” I said quietly.
“I miss you too, Gretchen. So much.” She squeezed her in her arms until she squeaked and giggled. Jaz’s face was lit up, a smile spreading across her face… until she looked at me again and it disappeared.
I miss you too. I don’t want to be alone without you. Please, please come back to me…
“What are you doing here?” I asked instead. I frowned, unable to conceive of why a grown woman would come alone to story hour. “Are you following me?”
She rolled her eyes. “Yeah, Faye, I’m following you by showing up here before you even got here. I totally knew you were even going to be here. I’m psychic, in case you’d forgotten.”
“All right, all right. I guess we did only decide to come here at the last minute, but…”
“Excuse me.” The librarian was glaring at us. Apparently the story hour was about to start.
“Let’s talk after,” I whispered.
Gretchen bounced on my lap for the duration of The Giving Tree. For my part, I barely heard a word that came out of the librarian’s mouth. I was more focused on Jaz’s proximity to me. Even when we weren’t exchanging a word, being so close to her put all sorts of thoughts in my head. I ached to lean closer, to take her hand.
All right, I also wanted to drag her out of the room and somewhere private so I could ravish every single inch of her… but obviously that wasn’t going to happen.
When the story was over, I picked Gretchen up. Jaz followed me out to the children’s area, where I put Gretchen down and let her crawl around investigating the different books she didn’t know how to read yet. She became engrossed in one with especially pretty pictures, and I turned to Jaz.
“So why are you here?”
“I don’t really know, to be honest. I just find it relaxing. I haven’t been able to get much done, and I thought it’d be a nice break.”
“You haven’t been working on your thesis?”
She dropped her gaze. “Not exactly.”
But that was why I’d broken up with her. If she wasn’t getting her degree done, what was even the point?
If Gretchen missed her and she missed Gretchen… if she missed me, and Lord knew I missed her…
Stop thinking along those lines, Faye. That’s a dangerous road to go down. This is for her own good.
“You should be working,” I told her.
Before she could answer, Gretchen flopped onto her butt and looked up at her. “Ma! Weed!”
I frowned. “Weed?” Was I raising the world’s youngest pothead?
“Read,” Jaz said. “She wants me to read to her.”
“Oh.”
She sat on the floor next to her and picked up the book she’d been examining. Her face bloomed with happiness as she read the introductory words.
And I couldn’t deny it anymore. Gretchen loved Jaz. It was clear as day. As tiny as she was, she understood enough to know who she was and that she adored her. What’s more, the feeling was mutual.
Jaz hadn’t even reacted to Gretchen calling her Ma. I’d been so excited at the thought that she might see me as a mom. For Jaz, it seemed to be a given.
She’d been acting like Gretchen’s mom for the better part of a year. In both of their eyes, she was her mom. And I’d taken her away from her.
“Jaz…” I whispered when the story was over. “I’m sorry.”