You and Me Baby Read online

  You and Me, Baby

  Jenn Faulk

  Copyright © 2016 Jenn Faulk

  All rights reserved.

  ISBN:

  ISBN-13:

  Jenn faulk books

  Resolutions Anywhere

  Different Stars Happily Ever After

  Just Breathe Perfectly Pretend

  Best Day Ever Take Heart

  Even Still So Like Us

  Ready or Not Christmas Surprises

  A Little Faith Tis the Season

  Promises Kept The Plan

  Beyond the Game A Big Summer

  Just Friends Taking Chances

  A New Tune Destination Wedding

  Pure Fiction Crushed

  Home to You Run

  Something Better Childish Ways

  From Here on Out The New Girl

  CONTENTS

  Chapter One

  1

  Chapter Two

  31

  Chapter Three

  64

  Chapter Four

  85

  Chapter Five

  114

  Chapter Six

  140

  Chapter Seven

  168

  Chapter Eight

  183

  Bonus Material

  187

  For news on new books and giveaways, connect with Jenn at…

  Blog - www.jennfaulk.com

  Facebook – Jenn Faulk Books

  Twitter - @JennFaulk

  Instagram - jennfaulk

  CHAPTER ONE

  “So, I quit my job.”

  This was how Aiden Pearson gave his family the big news. He’d been planning this announcement for all of forty-eight hours, which was precisely the amount of time it had taken to pack up from his last trip to Tokyo, to finalize all the details with his exit papers from the company, and to arrange for his home in New York to be packed up and shipped out to Texas, which is where he found himself on Christmas morning.

  Forty-eight hours. He’d spent forty-eight hours thinking through how he’d explain it, and this was his very best attempt.

  Not that he thought the delivery of the news would matter as much as the reality of it. An hour into Christmas dinner, he was even wondering if anyone would care at all given the good news both of his siblings were bringing to the table.

  Very literally. They’d brought their bits of good fortune to the dining room table and slapped it down alongside his mother’s (overcooked) turkey and loads of casseroles and sides that he couldn’t even identify.

  Merry Christmas and good tidings.

  Yes, good tidings. Aiden’s younger brother, Adam, had been the first to spread the good cheer around by announcing that he and his wife, Eve, had accepted a new, more prestigious ministry position than the one they already had as dirt poor seminary students doing internships. Oh, yes, they were moving on up but not to the east side or a deluxe apartment in the sky either one. They were moving to Seattle to plant a church there, and the entire family was, as was to be entirely expected, thrilled to hear the news.

  Adam and Eve – they’ve finally got a piece of the pie and all. (Which was ironic, given their names and the whole issue of the fruit in the Garden and all.)

  Then, there was Aiden’s younger sister, Amelia, whose smile was so many megawatts bright that Aiden had nearly shielded his eyes earlier when she’d bounded into the house, holding her left hand out and shaking it in everyone’s faces. Maybe the wattage was less about her smile and more about that giant rock that her brand new fiancé, Caleb, had just put on her finger. Caleb was smiling pretty big, too, as Amelia spent most of the meal telling the whole family all about the wedding that she was planning for March, just three months away, right there in their hometown, at the church where their dad was still pastor, and glory, Aiden, it’s going to be EPIC, she’d chattered on and on.

  Everyone was so excited about the news from his siblings that the table had erupted in much merriment and celebration. His parents were asking all kinds of questions about demographics in Seattle, Adam’s plans for doing seminary by extension, Eve’s dissertation, the dress shopping Amelia had ahead of her, about the house she and Caleb were buying, and all the details for flights, for rooms, for all the planning that was ahead. Oh, what a Christmas! What a great holiday!

  Fa, la, la, la, laaaaa….

  They were good and distracted, in other words. So distracted and overcome with joy that Aiden felt it was just the right time to interject his own news. (Maybe they wouldn’t even hear him, huh?)

  “You quit your job?” his mother asked, regarding him with no little amount of surprise and blowing that possibility completely out of the water. “Glory! Are you insane?!”

  …. la, la, la, LAAAAAA!

  “I most certainly did quit, and I am not, to the best of my knowledge, insane,” he said, grinning broadly at them all, hoping his good attitude would soften the blow. “See? It’s a merry Christmas after all!”

  He didn’t feel so merry as he said it, though. But to tell the truth, he hadn’t felt very merry for a long while.

  Okay, so things hadn’t always been bad for Aiden Pearson. Not at all. No, once upon a time, things had been too good to be true. He’d been working for an electronics company during his first year at college, making enough cash to support his extracurricular activities (drinking mainly), and he’d been a natural born salesman. He was so good at selling gadgets, in fact, that he’d caught the attention of his manager’s manager, who passed his name along to someone even higher and so on and so forth until Aiden had been surprised by a phone call that had come from corporate one morning, offering him a job as a PR trainee in a very exclusive intern program. It had all been very surreal, especially since he’d answered the call in a groggy, half-inebriated state, carrying on the conversation as professionally as he could despite the fact that he was in bed with a girl he didn’t recognize, looking around a room decorated with kitten posters (what in the world?), and wearing no pants. Wearing nothing, actually, so things could only get better from that point on.

  And things had gotten better, so quickly that Aiden had justified dropping out of college, knowing that the more time he spent focused on selling those gadgets would reap greater dividends (i.e., money) and that it would be supremely stupid to waste any more time in class. The extra time made his climb up the ladder almost like a sprint, as he anticipated the day when he’d be in charge of the whole PR department. He knew it would happen, given his work ethic, his personality, and the way that he wasn’t tied down to anyone, any place, or anything.

  Over time, he’d earned that position. PR executive. What it earned him, though, was extensive travel all over the world, stress of a magnitude that had him staying awake with worry most nights, and the unique problem of having peaked in his career in his twenties, which was a depressing prospect, especially as he turned thirty, then thirty-one, and on and on, wondering in the back of his mind if this was all that life was about...

  This wasn’t a reason to quit. None of this was a reason to quit a job he was lucky to have, a job that most men his age would kill for, and a job that he never really felt qualified to do. There was no good reason to quit.

  Which is why Aiden hadn’t quit.

  No. He’d been laid off.

  As it turns out, all the PR spins and storying he managed couldn’t save a company that had experienced stock and shareholder corruption the likes of which Aiden had never fully comprehended. Through no fault of his own, he was out of work before he could even wrap his mind around what had happened to the company that had defined his adult life and who he was.

  You do the right things and work hard, and because people make selfish, dumb choices, your whole life gets thrown into upheaval.

  Such is life.

  Aiden was careful with the way he spun even this chain of events, though, determined to come out on top, like always.

  “Yes, I quit,” he told his mother.

  There was silence around the dinner table.

  “But why?” his mother asked, never one for letting silence linger. (He wasn’t one for letting it linger either, honestly.)

  “It was time for a change,” he said, shrugging, thinking that it was true enough. The change had been forced on him, of course, but there was no time like the present to branch out and see what else was out there.

  “You don’t have anything else lined up then?” his dad asked.

  He would have, had he quit like he said he did. Honestly, though, he hadn’t had time to do much of anything between losing the job and coming here. He was going to regroup as soon as possible, but he couldn’t do much when it was Christmas.

  He wasn’t irresponsible. Not when it came to work, at least. But he could tell as his parents watched him with concern that this looked bad.

  “I don’t,” he said. “But how hard can it be, finding another job? And, hey, I’m back at home, so that’s good, right?”

  No. No, it wasn’t good, judging by the look on his mother’s face.

  “You didn’t finish college,” she said. “How are you going to find a job without a degree?”

  Yeah, he’d thought about this. Which meant that he’d already prepared an answer for this very question.

  “Well, I found the last job without it,” he said. “How hard can it be?”

  “Yes, you found that last job,” she said. “A job you quit for no good reason!”

  “Yeah,” he said, nodding at this, not wanting to tell the real truth. “But that’s the thing. I ha
ve skills. Marketable skills. There’s got to be a place around here where I can put them to use.”

  “Small town,” his father murmured. “Might be harder than you think. Maybe you should look somewhere bigger?”

  The thought had crossed Aiden’s mind, but since he was coming home for Christmas anyway and couldn’t afford the rent on his place in New York without the salary he’d been making (there were financial incentives to be made in traveling all the time), he’d figured the smartest thing to do would be to move back here, where housing was dirt cheap and he could slowly spend what he had in reserves while looking for the next thing.

  “I may end up somewhere bigger,” he conceded. “But for now, I want to catch my breath. I don’t even know if I’m coming or going.”

  That was the truth, too. Life had been fast and rushed, and this, being here, felt like he could catch his breath, at least.

  Home.

  His mother frowned at him, then looked over at his father. “This is a thing, you know.”

  “What thing is that?” his father asked softly.

  “Grown men, coming home to live with their parents!” she exclaimed.

  Oh, this.

  “I’m not going to live here forever,” Aiden started. “Not even a whole week probably –”

  “That’s what you say now,” she said. “But I know how this thing works. It’s called a failure to launch. Extended adolescence. And I’m done raising children, Aiden. I’m just –”

  “I thought moms were supposed to be more welcoming,” he said, just a little insulted by this outburst. Not like his mother didn’t have outbursts all the time already (she was a piece of work honestly), but this was connected to him, about how she didn’t want him living here.

  “I was plenty welcoming for eighteen years,” she said. “But I’m done now. You can’t live here!”

  Aiden looked around the table, his mouth slightly open. “Did I say I was going to?” he asked. He looked over at his siblings. “Did you hear me say that?”

  “No,” Amelia said diplomatically. “But I can see where Mom’s coming from. I’d be done with you, too.”

  Wow. What a welcome.

  “Well, now I know how the Baby Jesus felt,” he said sourly. “No room in the inn and all.” He shook his head at this. “Right in the feels. You and me, Baby Jesus.”

  “That’s just a little blasphemous,” Adam murmured. “But nicely done, Aiden. You know, what with it being Christmas and all, and you using that story like that.”

  “Thank you,” Aiden muttered. Then, looking back at his mother, he sighed. “Well, Mom, can I at least stay here until I can find a place? Or do you want me sleeping in the rental car?”

  “You don’t even have a car,” she said as if this further made her point.

  “I didn’t need one in New York,” he explained.

  “How are you going to afford rent and a car payment when you don’t even have a job?!”

  How indeed.

  Maybe coming back home hadn’t been smart after all.

  “I have enough money to buy a car outright, so there will be no payments,” he said. “And rent houses around here are cheap. Dirt cheap. So, no worries there. And I’m going to start looking for work first thing tomorrow morning.”

  Surely this would be comforting to her, to them all, as they watched him with concern.

  He’d just lost his job. No big deal.

  Quit, he reminded himself. He’d just quit his job. That’s what they needed to know so that they wouldn’t start feeling sorry for him, for coming back home, without even a car to his name or a place to live either one…

  They already felt sorry for him, judging by their expressions.

  Well, everyone but his mother felt sorry for him.

  “John, where did we go wrong?” she asked, looking over at his father for help. “Where did we go wrong with this one?”

  Wonderful. Welcome home, Aiden.

  He took a breath. “I think I’m going to go out for a while.”

  Before anyone could stop him, he got the keys to his rental car and made his way out into the chilly night air.

  Where to go in a town with nothing?

  Aiden wasn’t entirely sure when he started driving.

  Granted, the town wasn’t that big. Once he got out of his parents’ neighborhood, he found himself facing the only real major roadway in town. There were plenty of residential areas to turn off onto, a tiny downtown with failing businesses, and even an industrial side of town, but for the most part, the entire town was on this main road. His choices at the intersection were limited to going west and driving over an hour until he got to a real city or driving east, where his hometown had claimed all of two miles.

  Yes, the town was two miles long. Big time, in other words.

  “I do believe I’ll turn east,” he told himself, pushing buttons to stop the endless chattering of the GPS lady who kept trying to re-route him back to the airport. “Maybe you know something I don’t,” he told her as she demanded he make a U-turn. “Maybe I should get out of town, but –”

  He stopped talking when he saw the billboard.

  Oh, no. Really?

  He recognized the guy on that billboard. Travis Collins, one of his old buddies from high school. They’d been on the football team together, the baseball team, the wrestling team, the basketball team, just about all the teams their small town boasted. When you came from a town this size, you played it all, and Travis, though not the greatest athlete, had been the funniest guy ever. Crude jokes, vulgar speech, and lascivious thoughts – the guy was a real winner, in teenage boy terms. He and Aiden would sit on the back row of church together all through their high school years, keeping count of every phrase or word that Aiden’s father used from the pulpit that could be taken in a dirty way.

  Their minds were so far in the gutter that they usually got up to ten in thirty minutes.

  Of course, Aiden never let anyone know what he was thinking. Preacher’s kid. Have to act a certain way, say the right things –

  “Travis, you buttface,” he said to the billboard as the car inched closer to it, “what are you doing wasting away in this town?”

  Perhaps he wasn’t wasting away though. The picture was from the waist up, with Travis leaning against a brick building, his arms crossed over his chest, and a grin on his face, the words Collins Construction right next to him.

  Did he own his own business now?

  “Crazy,” Aiden murmured, suddenly feeling even worse about himself. If his idiot high school buddy owned his own business, that made it even more pathetic that Aiden was unemployed now and living at home.

  Temporarily. Aiden could hear his mother screeching her protest even now.

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah,” he said, wondering again how he was going to find work here. There was a great possibility that he’d have to commute into the city because who around here would be hiring? And what kind of skills did he even have that would be helpful, even in the next town? He was made for international business, for big important client meetings in a huge city. What had he been thinking when he’d packed his bags and come here?

  There just wasn’t another place to land. Friendships and relationships were shallow everywhere else, and in a very real sense, Aiden had realized, with the loss of this job, that he didn’t have much of anything or anyone. Because of some stupid mistakes by other people at work, he was facing a crisis of sorts in his own life.

  He turned the GPS lady back on.

  “Anything is better than the soundtrack I’ve got running through my head,” he muttered, as his new companion told him, in a very proper voice, to turn left on Maple Street so as to make a U-turn.