Jessica Forever After

Chapter 3

I spent my time wisely while snuggling a baby.

Well, as wisely as one can when wallowing in the feelings of loss and desperation that one could feel when confronted with every thought and every ex that one has ever had.

On Monday, I was able to work through some things while I worked on bread dough. I'd also had a few planning meetings with my staff as far as actually handing over control of some orders to them to let them test the waters. I was paying attention, of course, but much like Chef had in Paris, I allowed them to put their own spin on my recipes and what had been ordered by the client.

It helped a bit.

I didn't necessarily want to kill my ex-boyfriends as much by the end of the day.

I still wanted to go steal my cat from Cam but to be honest, I had no space for my Eiffel and I was in the middle of getting the apartment over the bakery set up so that I could move into it at some point.

It was just more comforting to be at my mom's house right now.

I'd at least unblocked and turned on my phone to allow for messages from the guys. I'd even put their names back in my phone on the numbers that had long since been ignored.

Not forgotten by any means.

Just ignored.

It was actually rather stunning that in the two years Cam and I lived together that he'd never found them in my contacts. We passed our phones back and forth all the time to look at things on social media or to research things and laugh at things we found.

We just never delved into each others contact lists or I'd have recognized phone numbers just as he likely would have.

Anyway, I'd gotten over my madness at him and had sent him a barrage of messages about how horribly he'd been acting since he ghosted me and that it was rude to not tell me he'd arrived as I would have been more than happy to pick him up at the airport.

I'd also spent a significant amount of time bugging him for pictures of our baby.

The downside of this was that I had absolutely no time this week to try and meet up with him so it was pictures and videos only as we tried to figure out how to meet up. I didn't ask about the guys and he didn't tell me about them either.

My feelings by Wednesday were a little stung by the simple fact that none of the ones I'd dated had actually reached out to me about ANYTHING. And what I'd also had time to analyze is that Josh, particularly, due to his team at work, absolutely knew that I was around and I still was in the dark as to if he was avoiding me because of the reasons we'd broken up or if he'd moved on. I was happy to be home that night.

Mom was working.

I'd pulled off a successful baby shower that came with at least seven bookings for more baby showers, large orders of announcement cookies after each baby was born and four birthday parties that were going to happen within the next two months.

I was exhausted emotionally and physically. It was so good to just have the house to myself for a night. I dashed upstairs and took a quick shower before dressing in my standard at home uniform of shorts and a tank top that would allow me to beat the Charleston heat that had settled in for mid-July.

Revived by the shower, it was time to find something to eat. I'd at least managed to not need to go into work until tomorrow afternoon so I'd be able to sleep in and sleep off anything that I decided to partake in tonight. The shower was great but I hadn't eaten since lunch and it always took a lot of convincing for my clients to get me to eat anything while I was at the shower. I'd stayed for this one because she had been one of my brides before I went to Paris and I was so excited for her about the baby boy she was having.