I was also thinking that after the Fair, we were going to Toby’s to get his Xbox then home and making Christmas cookies then dinner. And after Brooks was down, we were bingeing on Christmas movies (he’d picked one: A Nightmare Before Christmas, and I’d picked one: Die Hard—we so totally had this together stuff tight).

I hadn’t turned Izzy’s TV on since I canceled the cable, and I was a little surprised how absurdly excited I was to munch homemade Christmas cookies in front of the TV with Toby.

We still hadn’t had our official “first date.” That was happening Thursday night at The Star.

But I’d decided to consider tonight our official first date because it sounded awesome.

“What does ‘yeah, whatever’ mean?”

I looked up to Toby at his question.

“Nothing.”

“It wasn’t nothing.”

“It was nothing, Toby.”

He glanced at me then turned forward and muttered, “Shit, you’re getting close to the rag.”

My body jerked, and I would have stopped us if Toby wasn’t taller, bigger and stronger than me and thus leading our charge.

“I cannot believe you just said that,” I bit.

He again looked down at me. “Are you getting close to the rag?”

I was.

Still!

“How do you even know that?” I asked.

“Babe, hello,” he called. “I’ve been into you since I first saw you. In other words, I noticed everything about you. Normally, you’re pretty laidback, but you get mildly pissy for no reason once a month. Two days, far’s I can tell. I didn’t know if it was when it was happening, or it was before it happened. Since I fucked you last night, and you hadn’t started, I now know it’s before it happens.”

It really was infuriating I couldn’t be annoyed at Toby when he was being outrageously annoying, because he was simultaneously being sweet.

“No one but men call it ‘the rag,’” I educated him, though that was probably a lie. I was just being snippy because I was about to go on the rag.

“Did you know what I was talkin’ about?”

“Yes,” I took my hand off Brooklyn’s stroller for a second to jab a finger in his face and order, “Don’t,” I put my hand back, “say it again. It’s crass.”

He grinned down at me. “Margot’s wearing off on you.”

Probably.

But again . . . whatever.

“Well, it’s not about me about to start my period,” I declared.

“So it was something,” he stated.

It was something.

“She sells a lot of my cards,” I told him.

“Macy does good trade,” he told me.

“Yeah, but she still sells a ton of my cards, Tobe. And they’re just cards. They’re pretty, but they’re just cards. So she sells so much because she tells folks I made them and people feel sorry for me.”

He stopped, and since he was taller, bigger and leading our charge, Brooks and I stopped too.

“It’s okay,” I said hurriedly when I noted his expression had turned to one that could be translated as getting ticked off. “If people feel bad about that poor woman who works at a grocery store that got her kid kidnapped, and it puts gas in my car, no skin off my nose.”

“Johnny had to deal with some issue at the garage in Radcliff, and the deposit to save the date for their wedding flowers needed to be dropped so he asked me to do it. When I walked in there, she knew we were tight, she probably guessed I was into you, so even though I didn’t ask that shit, she told me if I was looking for stocking stuffer ideas for you, I should buy you those grocery bags. She told me you had your eye on them and she could tell you liked them. So when I went to get you groceries, I remembered that, swung by there and bought her out of them.”

Whoa.

That was so sweet.

And he’d done it when he was angry at me.

That was even sweeter.

“I—”

“Her mother wanted a flower shop,” Toby spoke over me. “So she sold that earn-yourself-a-pink-Cadillac makeup until she could open a flower shop and she named it after her daughter.”

“Oh,” I said, not knowing why he was sharing Macy’s Flower Shop history with me.

“Babe, you gotta sell a lot of makeup to open a business with the profits. They taught her salesmanship, and the mother taught her daughter. She shared about those bags because she wanted me to buy those bags. And a couple weeks after she told me about them, I bought eight of those fuckers.”

“That was really sweet, Toby,” I said quietly. “I did have my eye on those bags. They’re great.”

“I’m not tellin’ you that for you to tell me it’s sweet. I’m tellin’ you that because it’s her business to sell shit. She told me you made those cards when I was in because she jabbers and is friendly and shares shit like that in hopes people will buy stuff and make her money. What she’s not gonna do is tell someone to buy a four-dollar card made by a woman they should feel sorry for. That’ll bum people out. You don’t go to a gift shop with cutesy crap in it to be bummed out.”

You actually didn’t.

And it was interesting to have the mystery of how Toby knew about my cards solved.

“And babe,” he kept at me, “we got folks who work in the city and live in Matlock because they think it’s country living and they feel better about their carbon footprint when they buy honey from Trapper’s hives at the farmer’s market to put in their designer yogurt, but they drive all the way to the city every day. Those folks buy a gorgeous handmade card for four dollars from Macy’s. The rest of Matlock is firmly blue collar and they wouldn’t buy a four-dollar card even if they felt sorry for you because they can’t afford that shit.”

“It’s nice you’re explaining this, Toby, but I didn’t really care.”

“You did.”

“I really didn’t.”

“I call bullshit, Addie, ’cause you did,” he returned. “Yeah, Brooks getting taken was extreme, but most folks were just relieved that had a happy ending and pissed as shit at Stu for bein’ his usual total asshole for pulling that goddamned lunacy. No one looks down on you and no one pities you. Half the folks you live around are you. They live paycheck to paycheck and save for a vacation on a beach in Florida at a shitty-ass motel, which is what they can afford. Only thing they think about you is that you’re a good mom and you got hustle, doin’ extra, makin’ cards to put gas in your car.”

I thought about this.

And I thought that was what I’d think if I saw a cute card at a place like Macy’s, the owner told me who made them, and I knew it was a single mom struggling to make ends meet.

I’d think she had hustle.

And I’d admire that.

“You know, I ever met your fuckin’ father, I’d punch the asshole in the throat,” Toby rumbled in his pissed-off growl as he set us to moving again.

“What’s that about?” I asked, looking at his angry profile as I walked beside him.

“Because that shit’s about you doin’ without when you were a kid and people, probably bullies at school, givin’ you shit about it and that dug deep and planted roots, and now you gotta put the effort into plowing those motherfuckers out.”