Chapter 10 #2
Days go by. A week, maybe.
I lose track.
I’m crazy busy at work, fitting kitchens for everyone who wants them done by the big day.
I do my Christmas shopping and take Esme to get a tiny real tree for our living room, though we both prefer the one in the garden that’s probably confusing passing aircraft with the amount of lights she’s talked me into stringing around it.
I even talk to my parents. But it’s a conversation that’s a whole lot of nothing.
I love them. They love me. But we’re not that close.
They’re more interested in Esme than me and I’m okay with that.
But I’m not so preoccupied that I don’t spend every spare second thinking about Galen. We even talk some on FlingIt, but it’s nothing of substance. He doesn’t invite me to his place again, and I don’t invite him to mine. A stalemate has stretched out between us and I can’t unpick that either.
Another Friday rolls around and I’m still trying. At lunchtime, I fetch Esme from nursery and take her for a walk through the recreation grounds behind the high street.
Mistletoe Park is so fucking pretty in winter. Frost sparkles on the trees and robins dance on the ground. At least until Esme clatters towards them, chucking bread at their little heads. “Easy.” I take the bag from her. “There’ll be none left for the ducks.”
“Papa, y sont où les canards?”
“Where are the ducks?” I correct her in English. Loving that her sponge-like brain slips so easily between both languages. “Over there, see?”
I turn her towards the big pond. It has a track around it that runners and walkers use, and beyond it, the water is ringed by trees that seem ethereal in the silver winter light.
Maybe that’s what makes the flash of auburn so obvious to me. Or maybe I’ve just been searching for it since the last time I saw him.
Galen.
He’s walking with a bag tossed over his good shoulder, poking at his phone as he heads in our direction with no idea I’m right fucking here.
That we both are.
Me.
Esme.
I have time to evade him. To scoop my kid from the glittery ground and wheel away as if we were never here, haunted by the ghost of what if for the rest of my fucking life.
But I don’t move.
For whatever reason, I can’t, and I’m caught with my pulse pounding in my ears while Esme tries to climb me to get the bread back, digging her toy truck into my chest for purchase.
I’m snared like a trespasser in his world, and it shouldn’t feel like that.
I shouldn’t be thinking of all the ways I could still avoid him when all I truly want is for him to turn and see me.
He does see you.
And merde, he looks good.
Calm.
Easy.
His strong body rolling with natural grace as he drifts ever closer to where we are.
It reminds me of how he moved through the fire scene at the fête—when he didn’t know I was watching.
Like now, and it should feel wrong to track his every step like this, but it doesn’t.
I’m coming to realise nothing with Galen ever feels wrong—even the lurch in my stomach as he finally glances up from his phone and sees us.
Esme picks the exact same moment to voice her frustration that I won’t let her pelt songbirds with stale bread.
She screeches and I cringe.
Galen laughs and it’s like sunlight on my shoulders. He closes the distance between us and retrieves the bread bag I’ve had to drop while wrestling an indignant toddler.
I’m still crouched on the ground.
He gets low, joining us like it’s something he does every day. “Now, now, little lady. Don’t beat up your da.”
His melodic Irish brogue is brand new to Esme. She whips around and regards him with the curiosity of a kid who’s spent her whole life around men who look as menacing as my brother.
Unfazed.
Interested.
She puts her gloved hand to my cheek. “Papa.”
Galen nods. “I see that. What’s your name?”
“Esme.” She points at herself with her other hand, then flings it at Galen, breadcrumbs spilling from her little fingers. “Toi, t’es qui?”
I don’t know if Galen speaks any more French than Bhodi, but he figures it out. “I’m Galen and I like your hat.”
It’s a boys’ beanie. She stole it from her friend Lucian at nursery and won’t give it back.
Which means I’ve had to talk to Lucian’s mum every day for the last week and I can still smell her dizzying perfume lodged in my nostrils.
Feel her unwelcome hand on my arm as she tried to persuade me her kid and mine needed a playdate and a pretend wedding.
Fuck that.
The beanie’s cool, though. It’s the same green as Galen’s eyes and it has another truck on it—a fire truck, I realise.
Esme tugs her hat off and tries to give it to Galen.
He laughs again. “No, thank you, Miss Esme. Your ears will get cold, and we can’t have that, can we?”
Absolutely not. Shit like that keeps me awake at night when I’m not thinking about auburn-haired firefighters doing unspeakable things to me. Things I can’t begin to picture right now, even with Galen so close I can smell that apple pie scent clinging to his pale Irish skin.
I wrangle the hat back on Esme’s head and rise, leaving her with her wellies planted on the ground.
Galen stays at her level another moment and hands over the bread bag. It’s a win for her, but I let it slide while I contemplate the dusting of crumbs Galen now has in his hair. As I lose the fight to reach out and brush them away.
The contact makes Galen smile. “It looks good on you.”
“What does?”
“Being a girl dad.”
“She’s wearing a boy’s hat.”
“Sab, that’s not what I meant.”
The way he breathes my name does something unquantifiable to me. Something that has no business in a public park. Or a soul as defeated as mine.
I reckon he knows it too, as his boyish smile softens and he holds my gaze with enough intensity that I have to call on Esme to rescue me. “We’re going to feed the ducks.”
“Les canards,” she echoes brightly. But instead of taking my outstretched hand, she reaches for Galen’s instead, treating him with the same mischievous authority she does Bhodi. “Tu viens aussi!”
You’re coming too. A command that needs no translation, but I still scramble to offer Galen an out. “Galen might be busy, mon petit c?ur.”
Beside me, Galen snorts. “I’d miss every dinner for a week to hear you speak French like that.”
“Like what?”
Galen grins with a sly spark in his eye. “That’s talk for another day, boy. Show me these ducks.”
And so we do. At least, Esme does, while I stand by and try not to melt into the icy ground at how good with her he is.
And let me fucking tell you, I’ve never felt this way watching Bhodi with my baby girl.
Never felt this longing in my chest that makes me want to simultaneously die and live forever.
It hurts. And yet I’m so locked into it, I don’t realise how much time has passed when Esme runs from Galen’s arms to mine to tell me she’s hungry.
Merde. We’ve been at the park so long we’ve missed lunch. We’ve fed the ducks, played on the swings and the slide, and explored the decorated bandstand.
Esme’s done all these things before. With me. With Tam and Bhodi. With my parents the last time they came to visit. But it’s not a stretch to believe her laugh is a little louder with Galen. Her smile a little brighter.
Or maybe it’s mine.
Regardless, as Galen joins us by the bandstand steps, hair mussed by the wind, cheeks flushed with cold, a fit of madness overcomes me.
“Do you want to have lunch with us?”
“Lunch?”
“Well, tea, maybe, by the time we get home. I’ve lost track of time.”
“Me too.” Galen straightens Esme’s hat. “I was heading home for a kip when I saw you.”
“From work?”
“Yeah. Car got a flat and I couldn’t be bothered to sort it. Hoping someone else will have done it for me by the time I go back.”
“When’s that?”
“Tomorrow morning. I’m covering the day shift for my fecking sins—oops, sorry.”
“Don’t worry about it. She hears all sorts from me and my brother.”
“Uncle Tam.” Galen nods, repeating what Esme’s told him over the last few hours that have flashed by like a whimsical fever dream. “Anyway, I was going to catch a nap, then try to stay up for the rest of the day, so if you can help me stay awake, I’m down for just about anything.”
He’s said that to me before, on FlingIt, and in person. But he’s not talking about sex this time, and as I dare myself to look closer than I have all afternoon, I see he’s tired in the same way Bhodi gets when a run of night shifts wears him down.
I see how to fix it, because I’ve spent a lifetime watching my brother be a better man than me. “Come home with us then.”