Jessica's Fate

Chapter 98

I'd deliberately not scheduled any catering or baking jobs over the weekend since my classes started the following Wednesday, so that I could have a few days to spend with Josh and get ready for school again. Those plans were derailed, well, except the fact that I was spending practically every waking hour with Josh.

Mom had insisted that he come do his initial week or so of recovery at our house. If I needed to go to the diner or run errands, then she would be home to tend to him. She also was able to change his dressing on his wound and was often a bit more forceful in making him take his meds. I had a tendency to not make him take them even though it was smarter for him to stay on top of pain management and not get behind on the meds because it would be harder to manage the pain eventually. So far, so good. Mom was pleased that he was a better patient than any of her cubs had EVER been and things were fine, we were spending a lot of time together, hanging out in the living room and watching movies or playing games.

For a computer guy, I guess I was pretty surprised when he was more than willing to play card and board games with me. I was so used to the guys playing video games all the time. "So, you really don't game much?" I asked, shuffling the deck for our next round of Uno.

He shrugged. "I do, if my brothers are around." He said. "To be honest, my job takes me away from our usual games because I'm at work when the rest of them are really getting into the game. So, I haven't done much as far as playing the games with them for a while now." He cut the cards and I started to deal out our hands.

"I guess that makes sense." I said. "I bake and cook at school... bake at work but I really don't just bake at home anymore, unless there's something I want to experiment with." I shrugged. "I halfway miss it."

Josh studied me for a long moment before picking up the cards that I dealt him and starting to arrange them. "But you get to work out your experiments at school or work, right?"

I sorted my cards for a moment, arranging them in numerical order and then by color. "True, and sometimes, when I really need to work something out in a small batch, then I bake here. Like the beet velvet cake recipe. Small batch first, taste tested and then I was able to create the larger recipe needed to bake it for work."

"Are you going to make it at school?"

"I haven't decided yet." I admitted. "I might, just because I want to get the opinion of my professors and some of my classmates. I might see if one of them wants to work for me when I get back, they could handle my catering business if I had time to train them on my usual recipes before I leave." I said, absently, waiting as he drew a card.

"That sounds like it might be a good trail to follow." He said, considering his hand before discarding.

"We'll see." I said, frowning because my hand was only 3 colors and of course, we were currently on the one I didn't have. And I didn't have any matches to the number either, so I started drawing.

Josh was in a good mood today because he was beating the pants off of me with regard to UNO as I continued to spend the game drawing cards after he tossed a few draw 4 wild cards on the pile, a skip card or two and kept me off balance with colors and cards that I couldn't match. "I give up." I rolled my eyes after he won yet another hand. "I can't play UNO any more today or I'll seriously have a complex."

He grinned at me. "Is that so...?"

"Yes, that's so. How about Monopoly?"

He shrugged. "I'd be happier with Candyland." He said. "I don't have much patience for Monopoly." He tilted his head for a moment. "Maybe Scrabble."

"We can do Scrabble." I said. "Let me grab us some lunch first and we can sort out the tiles while we eat before we play."

"Sounds like a good idea to me." He said, shifting slightly so he could continue gathering the cards up and put the game away without straining his shoulder too much.