Chapter 3
Chapter Three
DALLAS
Dallas had a weird pit in his stomach when the plane finally reached the gate. He’d never made a friend like this. He’d never felt this connected to someone he’d just met either. Kylen had talked him through his anxiety throughout the entire flight without making him feel weak or foolish.
He hadn’t talked down to him, and even if he was only pretending to be interested in what Dallas had to say, he didn’t make him feel that way. Once they were at cruising altitude, he’d even brought Dallas to the cockpit to meet the two women piloting the airplane.
He hadn’t realized how badly he needed that until they were about to part ways. He fidgeted, shifting his carry-on from one hand to the other, not sure how to say goodbye. Did he ask for his number? Was that weird?
He didn’t want to let go, but he also didn’t want to give Kylen the impression that he was interested in him. That wasn’t fair.
“Well, this has been—” Kylen started, but one of the flight attendants pulled him away before he could finish. He shot Dallas an apologetic look, but then the passengers began to disembark, and Dallas had to go.
He shuffled along with the rest of the crowd, lingering for a while, but there was no sign of Kylen again. It was over. Whatever chance he had to make this last was finished.
The pit in his stomach grew as he made his way to baggage claim. It felt deeper when he grabbed his suitcase. And the only reason it didn’t entirely consume him was because he hit the doors to the outside and saw Adele and Gage waiting for him. Gage was in the back seat, and Adele was leaning against the side of his car, grinning.
Dallas was home again.
Adele yanked him into a hug, holding tightly. “How was it?”
“About as bad as you expect,” he admitted. “Bronx is devastated, Lucas is blaming himself, and shithead is MIA.” He walked with Adele to the trunk and tossed his bags in before sliding into the passenger seat. He twisted around and smiled at Gage, who gave him the teenage chin-lift. “How are you?”
“Been better.”
Dallas raised a brow at Adele, who rolled his eyes. “Got turned down for a date.”
“Rough. Sorry, kid,” Dallas said. He hesitated, then said, “Hey, what does the ocean say to the shore?”
Gage looked up at him with a frown. “Uh, what?”
“Nothing. It just waves.”
“Oh my God, stop,” Gage said before putting on his headphones.
Adele snorted. “What the fuck?”
“A guy on the plane told me a dad joke to calm my panic attack down,” he said. A part of him wanted to say more— to tell Adele everything about Kylen—but for some reason, he felt weird about it. Like he needed to keep it a secret.
“I’m glad the flight was good. Your anxiety about flying any better?”
“No. But I got upgraded to business class, so it was at least a comfortable panic attack.” Dallas sat back and rolled his shoulders until they relaxed as Adele pulled away from the curb. His eyes scanned the crowds at each terminal pickup, but if Kylen was around, he was hidden.
His heart sank a little, but when he turned to look at his friend, he felt a thousand times better. He might have had a missed connection with a guy who would fit in great with their group, but at least he still had this.
“Well,” Adele said as he pulled into Dallas’s driveway, “tell your brother I’ll keep an eye out for cheap rentals. Renato’s brother-in-law is a Realtor, so he can probably help out. And he could use the commission.”
Renato’s brother-in-law had just moved after a breakup. It seemed to be going around, Dallas thought. It was bizarre the way people seemed to fall apart right around their age—or older since Auden was a good twenty years older than they were. But still.
It didn’t give him hope.
And it made him a little afraid for the people he loved who had just found each other. He didn’t really want to think of a world where Lane and Bowen were split up or Renato and Frey were dealing with a messy divorce. And they weren’t even married yet.
“Thanks,” he said quietly. He grabbed his things out of the trunk, then let Adele pull him into another hug. “Could you also maybe float the idea of Gage showing my nephew around?”
“High school, right?” Adele said.
Dallas nodded. “He’s a cool kid. Really into nerdy gamer shit. He’s going into his junior year, and he’s a little freaked-out because this will be his first time at a mainstream school.”
Adele frowned. “Uh. Was he, like, Montessori or something?”
Dallas realized how much his friends still didn’t really know about him, and he rubbed the back of his neck. “No. Um. He’s blind. From birth—it’s not like a new thing he’s figuring out. But my brother had him enrolled in the blind school, and he really wants to experience a mainstream thing before he goes to college.”
Adele didn’t get weird, bless his heart. He just nodded. “Got it. No worries, man. Gage will probably love having a new friend.”
“Don’t volunteer me for shit,” Gage said as he leaned out the car window, and then he paused. “But yeah. If your nephew’s into tabletop gaming, he’s cool by me. Give him my number if you want.”
Dallas felt settled all over again. “Thanks again.”
Adele gave his cheek a rough pat, then walked off as Dallas put his key into the lock and stepped inside. His house smelled like it always did—a little more stale, having been gone a week, but it was fine. It was his own, anyway.
There wasn’t enough evidence of his daughter though. Her chair and a few toys in the corner, and a swing, but that was it. His chest ached. He wanted more. He knew full-time was off the table, but he hadn’t signed up to be a weekend dad.
Katie was punishing him for demanding a paternity test, but she couldn’t get away with it forever. At some point, something would have to give. He wasn’t going to be relegated to the sidelines with his own child.
Fuck that.
Dropping his keys on the counter, Dallas immediately walked into his bathroom and started the shower. It steamed after just a few moments, and then he was undressed and under a hot, calming spray. He soaped off the airport smell, but as he ran the cloth over his fingers, he had a sudden, almost visceral memory of what it felt like when Kylen had held his hand.
His cock twitched.
That was…weird, considering he rarely got hard, even when he was in a relationship. His low sex drive was the main reason Katie said she stepped out on him. But it had been a while. Like, over a year. It probably had nothing to do with Kylen.
The half chub he still sported when he walked out of the shower meant nothing. At all.
Audra giggled and kicked her feet as he spooned squash past her gummy smile. She clapped as she swallowed it down, showing off her two teeth on the bottom and the two lumps on the top that were about to become four.
She was growing too fast. Time was passing—months felt like a minute. He was missing too much. And now the school year had started, so he had even less time. Katie was becoming a little more lax about his weekends and was letting him keep her until Monday morning. It meant dragging his ass out of bed early to get her fed, changed, and dropped off, but it was worth it .
“Daddy’s going to miss you,” he cooed at her, wiping her face clean.
She giggled. “Dadadada!”
His heart twisted in his chest. Katie was pissed about that too, even though all the books said that babies said “dada” first. It was just easier, she told him. It meant nothing. But the way Audra smiled at him, he didn’t believe it.
Kissing her forehead, he lifted her from her chair and set her on his hip as he grabbed her bag and headed for the car. She didn’t put up any fuss as he got her into her seat.
The drive to Katie’s house was shorter than he preferred but longer than he needed to get to work. He had almost no time, so he handed Audra off to her mom, kissed her forehead, then hurried to his car.
“Nice to see you. Good talk!” Katie called after him. “Way to Dad, Dallas. A-plus!”
He ignored her sarcasm. It wasn’t worth it. The only comfort he took was that he’d found her cheating before they settled into a routine. They weren’t an epic love story. They hadn’t been high school sweethearts or anything like that. They’d met on an app, and they got along well enough that after two years and seven months, when she started dropping hints about engagement rings, he bought one.
It was a synthetic diamond because he’d been a broke grad student at the time, but she hadn’t complained. They got married at her parents’ estate in Savannah, in the backyard next to the horse paddock, which smelled like grassy piles of shit. But the photos had come out spectacular, and he’d had fun that night.
But the last time he ever felt connected to her was on the honeymoon. Her parents had paid for it—their gift to them. A week in Cabo in an all-inclusive resort where they had too much booze and enough sex that her birth control hadn’t stood a chance. At least, that was the joke she made at the doctor’s office two months later.
Bronx had wondered aloud once if Katie had skipped her pills on purpose. Dallas didn’t much care, if he was being honest. He got his daughter out of it, so he couldn’t bring himself to regret how it all went down.
He just wished he wasn’t some sort of social pariah because he loved his child and wanted to be an active father. The world seemed to expect him to fall into the role of part-time parent, and people seemed almost disappointed when he hadn’t.
Pulling into the staff parking lot at the school, he thought about Kylen and how he’d said the same thing. He’d been thinking about him quite a bit since the flight. He couldn’t help his wandering gaze whenever he was in public. It was a small town, after all. He’d have to run into him at some point.
But Kylen was starting to feel almost like a figment of his imagination. Maybe his stress had caused him to hallucinate the kind, gentle man who worked him through his fear. Or maybe he really was just losing his mind.
“Enough,” he told himself aloud, then stopped because talking to himself was not a good look. At all. He needed to get his head in the game.
It was parents’ night at the school, which he was looking forward to because he’d missed the Kindergarten Round-Up, where all the parents got to tour the classrooms. Audra had come down with croup, and he’d been in the ER with her and Katie for forty-eight hours.
He’d met a few parents at drop-off, but he was looking forward to seeing the rest of them. Their children were often little windows into their homes, and while some of them were total nightmares, several were pretty cool .
He already had a little teacher’s pet—a little girl named Flora with big, bright eyes and dark curls she always wore in intricate braids. He knew she had a dad, a mom who didn’t live with her, and an auntie. He’d met the aunt—a woman named Grace who didn’t seem to like him very much. She’d caught a glimpse of his tattoo once and asked if that was against district policy.
She hadn’t liked his answer that if it was, he hadn’t gotten the memo.
He had a feeling she probably called about it too, but since he hadn’t been dragged into admin to talk about it, he figured he was good to go.
A lot of parents didn’t like the idea of a man teaching kindergarten though. Hers wasn’t the first side-eye he got. No matter what answer he gave them when they asked why he wanted to teach little kids, they always thought he was a creep. Usually, it took him to the end of the year to gain their trust.
But the truth of the matter was he enjoyed it. He liked knowing that he was part of shaping who these kids would grow up to be. He wanted to start them off on a good note—to support their tiny little passions, to see how it started so in twenty years, he might run into someone at the store, and he would get to see their wild successes.
And maybe even a few failures because that was life.
But he wanted them all to look back on their first year of school and think it was one of the best years they’d ever had.
He’d take all the side-eyes and scoffs if it meant he was making a difference.
“Morning, Dal.”
Genny, the receptionist, was the only one brave enough to shorten his name. He gave her a head-nod and hurried over to the coffeepot to pour himself a cup. He had exactly twenty minutes to set his shit down and get to the playground for lineup.
“Please, God, tell me this is full caf.” Two of the teachers were pregnant and had been swapping the morning coffee with half-caf, which was killing him.
“You’re good,” Genny said with a wink. “You need anything for tonight? I’m making a run to Costco later.”
He frowned in thought. “Uh. Maybe some water and…pretzels? No, packs of chips? I don’t know. Some kind of snack that doesn’t suck.”
Genny laughed. “I’ll check back in at lunch.”
“Thanks.” He sipped his coffee as he walked across from the office to his classroom. Luckily, the kinder rooms were all by the front gate, which meant he could leave things to the last minute. He could hear the kids screaming and playing, and he tried not to sigh. A headache was pressing in on his temples, but he had to keep it together. It was going to be a long day and an even longer night.
He set his bag down, his knees bending in a half sit, when he heard a faint tapping on the classroom door. His back ached, and he wanted to cry and maybe go back to bed. Instead, he walked over and opened it, peering down into the face of his little classroom shadow.
“Mr. Reed.” Flora looked like she was on the verge of tears.
He opened the door for her, and she shuffled in. “What happened?” When she turned, he saw she had a little red mark on her cheek, and he dropped to a knee. “Did you get hurt?”
She nodded, biting her lip.
“Was someone being mean to you?”
She nodded again .
“Someone from our class?”
“No. Some big kids.”
The playground she’d been on was for kinders only, but some of the fifth graders were getting their kicks in breaking the rules. It was senioritis, he knew. They felt like consequences didn’t apply to them this year because they’d be done for good at the end of summer.
And he only took a little pleasure in knowing they were in for the hellscape that was middle school next, which was punishment enough.
“Do you want me to walk with you out there? You know you can’t be in here until the bell rings.”
She bit her nail, then sighed and shrugged. Something about her face triggered something in him—something familiar. He just couldn’t place it. “I’m a big girl. I can do it.”
He walked her to the door. “Go tell a monitor if they’re still there, okay?”
She nodded.
“Oh, and am I going to meet your parents tonight?”
Flora looked back at him, halfway out the door. “Auntie,” she said, then paused. “And maybe Daddy.”
Good. He’d try and talk to them. Flora was smaller than most of the other kids and more passive. She was a little fussy about stuff and liked a strict routine. Dallas had seen it before, and it put a target on her back that left him worrying about how the rest of the world would easily chew her up and spit her out.
He didn’t want to see her little spirit crushed like his own had been. He wanted better for everyone else in the world, even if he couldn’t have it for himself.