14. Dana #2
“What?” I blurted, turning in my seat and wincing from the seat belt digging into my rib cage.
The light turned green and he took off, the car revving in anger as he picked up speed far more quickly than necessary.
“You can’t apologize for what happened last year and then try to say that you didn’t get insanely drunk.
You were drinking fistfuls at seven in the morning?—”
“Yeah, because my friends had just gotten married and I wanted to keep celebrating into the next day,” he interrupted, glancing at me briefly with a warning in his eyes. “I wasn’t proud of that. But you don’t have to make it sound like I did that all the time.”
I stared at him in disbelief, my lips parted, my nostrils flaring. Why was he avoiding the obvious? Or worse, was he being truthful? Was that genuinely just a one-time thing that got out of control, and all the talk about him being an alcoholic was completely unfounded?
“Why did you stop drinking then?” I asked, deciding that confronting him head-on was the best solution.
Another glance, another warning. “Who said I stopped?”
“Like, half the girls at work,” I snapped. “They think you’ve either been in rehab or went on a binge in Vegas for six months.”
His nose scrunched, a scoff echoing in the small space, but I caught how white his knuckles were as they gripped the steering wheel. “And you honestly believe there’s truth in their gossip?”
I didn’t know what to say. A part of me wanted to push him more, tell him how I’d heard story after story about how he’d shown up drunk to work on more than one occasion.
Or the time he tried to lead a tour when he could barely walk.
But there was a part of me that wanted to trust him, wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt.
But I also knew how fucking good alcoholics were at hiding their addiction.
“Can you drop me off at Safeway?” I asked, killing the conversation. “I’ve got to pick up a few things then I can Uber home afterward.”
He glanced at me again, that air of warning wiped away. “I’ll just go with you.”
————
“Since when is milk this expensive?”
I glared at him as I leaned over the handle of the cart.
The casual conversations going on around us while we communicated in tight, irritated sentences was definitely odd.
It felt like we were some old married couple that hated each other’s guts, forced to work together on a grocery trip before spending the next week avoiding one another in our own house.
Either that or just two people who almost dated and had a baby together but one of them didn’t know.
Guess which one?
“Do you not do your own shopping?” I grunted, plucking the gallon with the latest expiration date off the shelf and dropping it in the cart.
“Not really.”
“Shocking,” I mumbled. I glanced down at the list in my hand, filled with necessities, and knew damn well that this would leave me strapped for cash until the end of the month. Exhaling an annoyed sigh, I noticed him looking at it before pulling the front of the cart toward the meat section.
“Is all of that just for you?” he asked, glancing back at me warily before staring down at the selection of ground beef I had placed in the cart.
“No, my sister’s staying with me at the moment.”
“To watch your son?”
I swallowed. We hadn’t brought him up until now. I wondered if that was on purpose, if he had planned to discuss it here, in public, where I couldn’t openly berate him if he pissed me off. “Yes. To watch Drew.”
His gaze lingered on the pack of ground beef. “That’s his name?”
And there it was again, that feeling of wanting to hurl my guts all over the floor of Safeway. “Well, it’s Andrew, but I call him Drew for short,” I explained, my throat closing, forcing my voice to come out as a squeak.
“It’s cute,” he said as he pulled me and the cart toward the other end of the store.
To the fucking baby section.
He’d either read further down the list than I thought or decided to head there on his own. I wasn’t sure but either way I felt unsettled, and the heat in my cheeks was nearly burning as we turned down the aisle.
“What do we need?” he asked, his voice a bit gruff as he met my stare over the cart.
We. I knew he didn’t mean it like that, but god fucking dammit, the brief idea of my son having two parents made my chest ache. Clumsily, I unfolded the list again. “Two boxes of diapers,” I said, pointing toward the massive boxes on the shelves.
“Size?”
“One in size two and one in size three.”
“He’s growing?”
“Well yeah, Cole, that’s what babies do,” I sighed, helping him load the boxes to the bottom of the cart. “He’s almost grown out of size two, so I need to be prepared.”
“Right, yeah, that makes sense.”
“Can you grab a couple of boxes of baby wipes? Store brand is fine.” I kicked the box of size three a little further back and grabbed for the list again. I couldn’t remember if I’d put diaper cream on there, and for the life of me, I had no idea if I had any left at home.
A few packs of baby wipes landed in the cart, my attention barely picking it up.
“Can I get him this?”
I glanced up from the list. Cole stood with a box in his hands roughly the size of his torso.
On the front of it was a baby about Drew’s size, sitting on a play mat in front of a short tower with buttons covering the front.
Music With Me, it said across the top, and the more I looked at the nautical-themed item, it looked like something he could press buttons on to make different sounds.
Then I glanced at the price tag on the shelf.
“Cole, that’s a hundred and fifty bucks.”
He shrugged. “So?”
He didn’t wait until I’d said yes to find space for it in the cart. He took the time to move things out of the way gently, carefully shifting them so he didn’t damage any items and slipped it into the empty space.
“Okay,” I breathed.
I stared at the massive toy knowing damn well I wouldn’t have been able to afford that on my own.
I hoped he hadn’t already put the pieces together and was buying it as a gesture of goodwill or an offering of a truce.
I needed to tell him, needed to just spit the words out, but by the time they’d barely formed in my mind he spoke again.
“What’s next on the list?”