Chapter 29
WYATT CHASE
Ithought that I was joking a few weeks ago at our away game, but I really have created a monster. Asher’s hand is on my leg, dragging his fingers along my inner thigh. He’s dangerously close to starting something that’s going to require me to pull over.
I guess I should at least be grateful that his panic in the car is all but gone, though his pendulum swing is testing my resolve.
Yesterday, he was fully cleared to return to play.
That means technically, he’s not under my specific care anymore.
He’s just like any other player on the team, and his fate is no longer in my hands.
It doesn’t make what we’re doing okay or appropriate in any sense of the word, but I’m clinging to whatever shreds of sanity that I can find.
We’re on the way to Lyla’s winter show, which she insisted that he attend. The way that he’s touching me almost makes me forget what a dangerous path I’ve been going down, especially now that Lyla’s gotten so attached to him, too.
“How are your finals going?” I push out, trying to keep my focus on the road and not how his fingers are trailing up the seam of my pants.
“Good. I had a conversational final with one of my philosophy professors, and the rest were papers that I submitted on Monday,” he answers, lazily brushing over my tip.
Heat rolls through my body, even as I don’t close my thighs. I could stop this, too, but it just feels too damn good.
“Asher,” I warn weakly, worried that I’ll leak through my pants. That would not be a great way to show up to an event teeming with parents and teachers and my parents, too. Actually – “Hey, can you check my phone? I want to see if my Mom messaged me back.”
I know that it’s not sane to have let Asher into every facet of my life, but he’s made it so easy. The first time that I gave him my passcode, two weeks ago when I wanted him to order us something for dinner after a game when Lyla was with my parents, I didn’t even think about it.
He’s become an important part of my life, and the craziest part is that he seems to want to be here.
He’s meeting me beat-for-beat, and even though things are moving quickly, it also feels like we have the most grounded…
relationship–which is not a word I’m using in the technical sense–in the world.
I can’t ever remember feeling so relaxed with someone. So seen. So supported. So…
I don’t let my mind finish the last one. It’s too soon, I know that. Only, where my head is at compared to where my heart is at doesn’t seem to align as well as I’d like.
I exhale deeply when he picks up my phone, resting in the center console, and checks my messages. “I don’t see anything from your Mom. Do you want me to text her again?”
I shake my head. “No, it’s all good. I just wanted to see whether we needed to save them seats, but I trust that they can fend for themselves.”
The school comes into view, and I put on my blinker. It’s already dark, even though it’s barely five o’clock, and there are light flurries floating down while we drive. We had a freak snowstorm last December, but so far, it doesn’t seem like history is repeating itself.
Even though I wouldn’t hate a snow day with Asher and Lyla by a longshot.
We could go sledding and then cuddle up on the sofa with cups of hot chocolate.
I know that I shouldn’t be fantasizing about a domestic life with him, but it’s just so easy for me to picture, in a way that my life hasn’t been for a long time.
I think I’m also a little more in my feelings than normal because on Saturday, he’s flying back home for the holidays.
Sure, I’ll get to see him when the team heads to Michigan for the Blizzard Cup in late-December, but I can’t stand the idea of not seeing him for ten days.
The parking lot is full, so we have to circle and then head to the adjacent lot to find a spot.
“I thought that we were doing the most by getting here thirty minutes early,” Asher says from next to me.
“You’re telling me. I already feel like a terrible parent for not sending the cookies that we baked with Lyla this morning.
” And I would have, honestly, but Dutch did such a great job on them, and while I love Lyla to death, I know that keeping things safe isn’t her best quality.
So, I decided that we would bring them instead.
He grins at me and looks behind him, making sure that the snickerdoodles are still on the seat. “Heaven forbid they have to add them to the dessert table after the show instead of having it Instagram ready ahead of time.”
“Well, they’re going to be the best fucking cookies there,” I say seriously, “so it’s probably best they don’t all get eaten before the kids even have a chance to try them.”
That’s another way that we just work. He doesn’t seem at all alarmed or overwhelmed by the fact that I’m a single dad.
If anything, I think that it’s almost a bonus for him.
He was the one who insisted that we bake cookies last night instead of picking some up at the store today.
Plus, it’s become very clear over the past few months that his perfect night is snuggling up on the sofa in comfy clothes, followed by giving me puppy dog looks when I send him back to his apartment if Lyla’s home, too.
And if Lyla isn’t home… Those nights are a whole other sort of magic. Us, in my bed, exploring one another’s bodies for hours.
But I can’t focus on that right now.
I pull the car into a parking spot and take a few blissful seconds of quiet before I’ll be around hundreds of parents, all of whom think their child is the best.
Which is categorically false because my baby is the best. And if the practice that she’s put in with Asher on her parts for the show are any indication, she’s going to knock their socks off tonight.
I catch Asher smiling at me, and I turn to face him, taking his hand in my own across the console. This is the last time that I’ll get to touch him like this for the next few hours. “Something funny?” I ask to distract myself from that annoying fact.
“Just you. Are you nervous about tonight?” He picks at thoughts that I didn’t even know that I was having.
But, as usual, he’s right. I don’t try to hide it with him. At least not anymore. “I just feel like I’m not great with the other parents. Sometimes, I feel a little awkward around them.”
Radford U is settled in a relatively expensive Boston suburb, and most of the parents don’t end up here by chance. It’s a coveted school district and commutable into the city, so there are a lot of professional, dual-income households. People a lot like my parents, I realize at this moment.
They’re usually older than me, not couples who had an accidental pregnancy in their early twenties.
Add on the fact that I’m a single dad who, until recently, lived with my parents, and I feel a little out of my depth.
Not to mention that I do still get recognized sometimes, and people don’t always know how to act when they find out that I’m just a regular guy now.
It’s like it breaks some idea that they have about celebrities.
Or, former celebrities, at least.
He gives me a soft look and squeezes my hand, and I love the feeling of the heat flowing between us in the still-warm car. “Anyone can tell how much you love her. And just because you don’t have the extra time to be PTA dad of the year doesn’t mean that you’re not an incredible parent.”
“Tell that to Jodi and Samantha.”
His eyebrow lifts. “Who are Jodi and Samantha?”
“They’re the PTA parents for the entire grade,” I explain, thinking of the almost daily emails it feels like I get from them. And sure, I’m grateful that Lyla goes to an incredible school where parents care so much, but god is it a lot.
“Have they been giving you trouble?” he asks, squaring his shoulders. “Point them out when we get inside, and I’ll take care of that.”
I laugh, and it feels good, the way some of the tightness in my chest dislodges. “Let’s hope that it doesn’t come to that, but noted.”
Instead of responding, he leans forward and kisses me. When he pulls back, he presses our foreheads together, and I try not to think about how right this feels. How gone for him I am, and there’s nothing that I can do to pull myself back anymore.
Finally, remembering where we are and what we’re supposed to be doing–watching a hundred kindergartners with various levels of talent sing and dance their way through a medley of non-denominational holiday music–I open my car door.
At least in a few hours, it will be just the three of us again, and maybe I’ll get my dream of all of us cuddling up on the sofa with hot chocolate after all.
We managed to get seats about halfway back in the auditorium, near the middle aisle.
I looked at my phone one last time before turning it off when the lights dimmed, but my mom still hadn’t texted me back.
Sometimes, she forgets her phone at home, so I figure that she and my dad are somewhere else in the two-hundred-person auditorium, which can just barely fit all of the parents and relatives that showed up tonight.
There’s a brief moment, about ten minutes into the performance, when one of the kids–a boy with short, curly hair and chubby cheeks–looks like he’s going to fall over after an especially out-of-tempo clap and take down the rest of the kids in his vicinity.
Luckily, disaster’s averted. With the level of coordination that I’m seeing, those kids are a dangerous line of dominos that would fall in rapid succession.
The snowman song is last, and along with all the kids on risers, Lyla comes out in a snowman outfit and sings in the front, doing a more in-depth dance than the other students, who are managing varying degrees of moving to the beat, singing the words sort of accurately, or some, who are just picking their noses or looking around confused.
The show is about thirty minutes long, but I could watch Lyla for hours. Up on the stage, she’s magnetic. Loud and brave and so, so excited to be there.