Jessica Forever After

Chapter 4

I didn't sleep well after realizing that I had to host a game night for everyone that mattered to me.

I did manage to send an SOS to Sang about needing help with planning it and coming up with questions to ask the boys as part of the newlywed game. I just didn't have many ideas about how to pull off the evening to be honest.

I extended the invites to everyone in our family as well as to Raven and his family. As part of the invite, I asked them all to submit a question that they'd like answered. It could be about something I liked or something that I would say... I figured with over twenty people involved, it would work out as a good starting point for questions. I worked on desserts at my bakery while the messages were pinging in on my phone with the questions and I pulled up YouTube on the TV back in the kitchen and located old Newlywed Game episodes.

If a question intrigued me from that show, I wrote it down because the questions and answers were 100% hilarious. And I really needed neutral ground questions to have the guys answer. There was just far too much about me that Cam would be able to answer the best and that wasn't going to be fair for everyone else.

My goal was to bring them together and enforce... influence... the notion that I didn't need to choose and they didn't need to make me choose. Owen had made it sound like they were on the trail of answers for how to make things work and I hoped that was true.

Zack didn't build that big of a house... not that I'd seen very much of it while I was there... just to have it only be for them to live in as bachelors.

I hoped.

Sang popped in and out and we worked on a list of other games to play on game night while I worked and my employees filled my kitchen with happy sounds of happy bakers who were having their baking come out just right.

I tried to not think about it that much as I managed some sleep Friday night and spent the day at the farmers market stand instead of staying at the bakery for a Saturday morning. After I'd finally left the market and went home, I did what I needed to do to be ready for the evening and made my way over to the diner. I'd had all the baking delivered earlier in the day and I just needed to fix up a few other things we were going to be eating.

And set up the game tables.

I'd considered sticking each of my exes in a different booth and basically make it so they either had to get out of the booth to mingle or get pinned in by someone that wanted to talk to them about me.

But that didn't sound like very much fun so once the diner was closed, I had Luke and the guys move the tables and chairs around the middle of the diner. I set up a long table on the stage area with chairs so that they would have a place to write answers when we were playing the game. The tables in the middle of the diner were set up for eating and I put a different card or board game on each booth table.

It seemed like the best way to handle it because while there was not any Monopoly boards on the table, I'd included Clue and Candyland as well as Dominos, decks of cards for various card games like Hearts or Spades and if he found enough partners, I was certain that Owen was going to start a game of Pinochle. There were a couple cribbage boards in a booth and I set up a Cards Against Humanity booth and saved the final booth for the Cards Against Panem game that Cam was going to bring with him.

Everyone started showing up as instructed and I was happy that Raven showed up first with Corey. I was nervous already and desperately needed the hug he gave me. To my surprise, everyone in their family showed up, including Raven's wife. She appeared to be on her best behavior tonight and in a fairly good mood but I was planning on avoiding her anyway. I liked Kevin's wife Mindy much better than her. Mindy was awesome and never, ever made me feel like an outsider just because I was younger.