Hot?

Nope.

Scorching.

Totally.

Of course, at the time, I didn’t think that (well, part of the time I did but most of the time I didn’t think at all, which turned out to be a disaster).

But in the five thousand times I replayed it in my head since it happened, I so totally did.

I gave her a look that shared this without words.

She returned a dreamy look before she smiled.

I smiled back.

Then she got serious.

“I’m sure it won’t surprise you that the chain has been passed along verbatim of what anyone heard you two say. And you are losing weight, you know. I see you like, once every two weeks or something, and I noticed.”

I went back to scanning. “I just got shot of a deadbeat husband. Once I get things together, it’ll get better.”

“I wish I could say I had a breakup and lost twenty pounds. My last breakup, it was the other way around plus ten.”

I glanced at her out of the sides of my eyes and gave her a small grin.

“And don’t stop making those cards at Macy’s,” she advised, and that got all my attention as this possibly answered the question about why my cards sold so well at Macy’s, as well as the question about how Toby knew about them. “They’re sweet. I love them. My last two birthdays I had to get cards for, I got yours and they were a hit. And a girlfriend of mine has had a rough go of it lately, health wise, and I got her one and it totally brightened her day.” She leaned across the check desk again. “Though she thought I handmade it myself, and I will admit, I didn’t disabuse her of that notion.”

That had me laughing. “Be my guest and take the credit if it brightens a friend’s day.”

She leaned back with a smile. “Thanks, hun.”

I looked to my register and told her, “That’ll be one hundred and seven, thirty-two.”

“You know the best part of that,” she declared, pulling out her credit card and shoving it in the reader. “I got twice as much stuff as Jocelyn, and all of it I want to eat, and my bill is practically the same.”

“Unhealthy food, healthy budget,” I remarked.

“Thank God that’s the way,” she replied.

She could say that. She didn’t have a kid now mostly on solid food whose mother wanted what went in him to be healthy.

She pulled her card out when the machine was beeping and looked again at me to take her receipt. “You ever wanna go to Home, have a glass of wine or something, that’d be fun. I have a posse in town and I reckon you’d fit right in. My last name is Merriman. Look me up on Facebook. Friend me, send a message, and we’ll set that up.”

It’d take a while for me to have the cash or the time to go have drinks with the girls at the local watering hole, if that ever happened at all.

But I didn’t share that.

I said, “That’d be fun. Thanks for asking. Maybe after the holidays. I’ll get on Facebook later and find you.”

“Awesome. Take care, Addie.”

“You too, Lora. And thanks for the entertainment.”

“Be warned, I’m a public servant that way. Ta, darlin’.”

“’Bye, Lora.”

She motored off with a “Thank you” to my bagger and I turned to the next person in line.

Fortunately, any indication someone knew about Toby and my fight began and ended with Jocelyn and Lora, so the rest of my shift went without incident. I was able to clock out, get home and let Iz off the hook of hanging with my son without any further drama.

I parked beside Izzy’s Nissan and hauled my tired self inside.

“Hey,” I called with Dapper Dan nosing my legs as I took off my coat and hat in the entryway.

“Hey,” Izzy called back from the family room.

I stowed my stuff, gave my dog a rubdown and then he and I moved to the living room.

Izzy was on the couch with what appeared to be a Christmas explosion around her.

She was doing cards.

I didn’t do Christmas cards.

This, I told myself before my recent life change, was about being environmentally conscious, when really it was about being lazy.

Now, I kind of wished I could send cards, especially those year-in-the-life photo ones because Brooks was all kinds of photogenic, but I couldn’t afford to.

Before, everyone who didn’t get a card from me probably knew I was being lazy.

Now, they probably knew I couldn’t afford them.

Damned if you don’t, damned if you don’t.

“Make a dent in it?” I asked, easing down into the white, slipcovered loveseat by where Iz was camped out on the couch.

One thing I knew about my choice of décor, I would never choose white for furniture.

But damn if Izzy’s stuff wasn’t comfy.

“Almost done,” she answered.

“Sorry I don’t have TV,” I murmured.

“Dapper Dan and I enjoyed a little quiet.”

I looked to the ceiling then to my sister. “He down?”

“Yeah, all good.”

“Thanks, Iz,” I muttered, putting toes to the heel of one of my not-so-white-anymore Keds and pushing it off.

Ah . . .

Nice.

“Doll, do we need to talk?” Izzy asked softly.

In the process of taking off my other shoe, I looked to her and saw the expression on her face.

Well, I guessed that meant I wasn’t going to get through the rest of the night without having a chat with someone about the Toby Incident.

“Iz—” I began, shoving off my other shoe.

“If it’s not my business, it’s not my business,” she said. “Johnny called Toby today about it, and Toby told him it was private. It’s just that it kinda wasn’t private in a fairly public way.”

I honed in on one part of that.

“Johnny called Toby about it?”

“Big brother stuff,” she muttered.

I bet Tobe loved that.

He never said anything, but I’d been noticing, especially lately, that some of Johnny’s Big Bro Know-It-All Attitude was rubbing Toby the wrong way.

Johnny was good people and just cared about his brother.

But I was half in love with Toby, so maybe someone else might disagree, but I thought it was a bit much.

Onward from this, it was cool Toby said our incident was private. It meant a lot that he didn’t share my business.

Of course, I’d made it screamingly clear how I’d feel if he did.

It was still nice he didn’t.

But Eliza was Eliza.

She was my big sister.

And she wasn’t about razzing and being a know-it-all.

She was about love and support and nurture and beauty.

Like Mom.

Just like Mom.

Which was why she started, “Addie, just to say, if you ever need—”

I looked her right in the eye and declared, “I’m gonna need to talk to Johnny about deferring the loan for a few months.”

She stared at me with open surprise, and even I didn’t know where that came from.

Though, I did.

Flipping out about Toby’s assertion that if he was fucking me, he’d get a say in my life, I had not fully processed all the other stuff he’d said.

But it seemed in that microsecond, that happened.