Chapter 4
Four
Victor
I pause a few yards away from our casita and snap a selfie with the rainforest in the background.
The grounds are gorgeous, lush foliage surrounding me, flowering trees and bushes every few steps.
Our casita is one of a line of similar buildings, spaced several feet apart, tucked amidst greenery that provides a bit of privacy for each one.
I add a caption about serenity in nature and some appropriate hashtags and post the pic to my socials. I don’t post anything very personal on the Internet, but I’ve spent a lot of time and energy building an audience and I can’t just disappear for a week with no explanation.
Guess I’ll wander the grounds a while until I can head back to the casita. I knew when I checked in and found out we’d be sharing that Jay would lose his shit about it.
Jason, I mean. Dammit, I’ve got to start using his full name.
I’ve no idea why he’s so opposed to the nickname. I mean, okay, he’s always hated it, ever since Leah introduced us. To be fair, I should have clocked the way his jaw tightened when Leah said, “Victor, meet my husband, Jason Perez,” and I stuck my hand out and said, “Nice to meet you, Jay.”
At some point, it became kind of a game, I guess. How long could I get away with using a nickname Leah told me over and over that he hated? When would he snap and demand that I stop?
Today’s the day, I guess.
Though, honestly, we don’t talk all that much these days, so it’s not like I’ve been calling him anything recently.
Not since Kelsey went to college and we stopped needing to do much active parenting.
I haven’t even seen him in, I don’t know, five years, maybe?
It’s not like we spend holidays together, Kelsey in footie pajamas and the two of us sharing indulgent glances while she exclaims over what Santa Claus brought her this year.
I could have had all that. Not with Jason, of course. But with Kelsey and Leah. Before Jason.
But Leah and I were so freaking young when she got pregnant. I wasn’t remotely prepared to be a father at seventeen.
And Leah’s father made sure that I didn’t have to worry my head about it at all.
Shit, I didn’t even know she’d had the baby until Kelsey was six months old.
Leah’s dad sent her to live with an aunt and paid for private tutors so she could finish high school without the “shame” of his only daughter being seen around town or in school hallways pregnant.
So I was actively discouraged from having any part in Kelsey’s life until Leah turned twenty-five, got full access to her trust fund, and got out from under her dad’s thumb. By then, she’d already married Jason.
Ironically, it was Jason who encouraged Leah to let me participate in Kelsey’s life.
He believed Kelsey should know her biological dad and, when I declined to terminate my parental rights so that he could adopt her, he said that not all kids were lucky enough to have three adults to care about them.
Until Leah got sick and left Kelsey with the best dad she could ever have had. And me.
We’ve never talked about that night of Leah’s funeral. Shit, I was so drunk, I barely remember it. I do remember how forceful Jason was. And how right that forcefulness was.
I would never have made the first move on him. His wife had just died. My best friend. The mother of my kid. And his.
He was a straight, grieving widower.
I’m a…well, let’s be honest. I’m a flirt.
I talk a good game, and I’ve had my fair share of fun, but I’m far less of a slut than I pretend to be.
Case in point: minutes ago, I made a crack about Jason kissing something other than my jaw and spread my knees like an invitation.
Just to see him blush? It’s not like I expected him to do anything about it.
I travel a lot. I lead yoga retreats all over North and Central America and I’ve worked as a personal trainer to a number of celebrities who are household names.
In my world, there is no shortage of available pretty boys or gorgeous women.
I’ve learned since knocking up Leah that I like dick far more than pussy and since co-parenting with Jason that I prefer people who are smart and steady.
Not as superficial as nearly everyone I interact with on a daily basis.
But I’ve never really found the right person, you know?
Not like how Leah found Jason. They were perfect for each other.
She was the smartest person I’ve ever met.
She’d have been valedictorian of our high school class if her father had let her graduate with us.
She did speak at her undergrad commencement, then graduated summa cum laude with a dual degree in law and public administration.
All after having a baby at eighteen.
Jason’s also really smart, if in a different way.
He was always the one to help Kelsey with her homework.
I’m totally useless at that kind of shit.
He’s built the music program at Saint Sebastian into something way more than directing a choir and leading a congregation in a few songs during church services.
I’m not much of a church-goer, or a classical music aficionado, but even I know that when a Catholic church’s music director is profiled in the New Yorker and the New York Times and the Lincoln Center set is willing to travel all the way into Brooklyn for a concert at Saint Sebastian, that’s not nothing.
I suppose you could say they were an odd pair to start out with. Leah told me once that Jason seriously considered becoming a priest. And Leah, well, her family was nominally Catholic, but there wasn’t much about her father that was actively Christian, if you get my drift.
But Jason doesn’t push his faith on others. He just lives it, in his music mostly, but also in the way he takes care of people. Leah, when she was diagnosed with breast cancer at fucking thirty-one. Kelsey, from the moment he married her mom. The members of his choirs and music ensembles.
Even me, from time to time. The whole thing that night started because Jason was trying to comfort me. Which was a little unfair. He’d just lost his wife and, while Leah was my best friend and the mother of my kid, it’s not like we lived together or shared a life or anything.
But I was a basket case that night. I’d tried to be strong for Kelsey through the funeral and the wake afterwards. I stood at Jason’s side while an endless parade of people—Leah’s extended family, colleagues, friends—came up to him and offered meaningless platitudes.
An aunt threw herself at Jason and sobbed a wet spot into his suit jacket. She might have been the aunt Leah stayed with while she was pregnant but I’d never met the woman before. Jason held her upright by the elbows and said something to her that made her smile through her tears.
It went like this for hours. And then, after everyone left, and Kelsey was tucked into bed, I lost my grip and broke down in harsh sobs while I was trying to do the dishes.
I thought Jason was in the living room and I could cry in peace under the sounds of running water. But then I felt a hand on my back and turned blindly into a solid, warm embrace.
Jason held me while we both cried. Then we drank a fuckton of whiskey. Then we—
“Daddy!” Kelsey waves at me from a spot across the parking lot near the reception desk. She gestures at me to come her way.
There’s a small knot of people huddled at the concrete barrier between the parking lot and the grounds, staring up into the trees.
“It’s a sloth,” Kelsey says with the same bubbly excitement she exhibited as a child. “A mama sloth with a baby!”
I follow the line of her arm and hand pointing to a spot near the top of the tree. It takes a while for my eyes to distinguish the brownish huddled mass among the brown branches and the dark green leaves. “Oh wow.” I finally see the sloth. “Look at that.”
Someone offers me a pair of binoculars and I get to see the mama sloth slither a couple of inches up the branch, then reposition her baby snuggled against her chest. I hand the binoculars back to their owner and put my arm around my daughter’s shoulders.
“Pretty cool, huh?” she says. “Where’s Dad? I know he’s super excited about the birds here but I bet he’d love to see a sloth, too.”
“Yeah, about your dad, Kels.”
“He made it, right? He texted that his flight from New York was delayed but I thought he got rebooked on a later flight in Orlando.”
“He made it,” I reassure her. “He’s here. He’s taking a nap.”
I crane my neck down to look her in the eyes. “He’s kind of pissed about having to share the casita with me. You could have warned us about this, hon.”
Kelsey’s eyes widen. “Oh shit. I should have, Daddy. I’m sorry. It was sort of a last-minute thing. Adrienne asked the coordinator if there was room for Logan and Silas and when she looked at the guest list, I guess she just assumed that you and Dad would be okay sharing.”
Sharing custody of Kelsey while she was a child was one thing. Sharing a two-room casita in a tropical rainforest paradise is another thing entirely, apparently. To Jason, anyway.
That’s not all you’ve shared.
“Who are Logan and Silas again?” This wedding was supposed to be small, according to Adrienne’s insistence. If Kelsey’d had her way, we’d be doing this at a rooftop ballroom with a guest list of everyone she’d ever met.
“Logan and Adrienne are partners at her law firm. Silas is Logan’s boyfriend.” She elbowed me in the side. “His much younger boyfriend, apparently.”
“You should talk,” I tell her.
“Hey, the ten years between me and Adrienne is nothing compared to them. Logan is, like, your age, and Silas is younger than me.”
There’s a flutter of murmurs and gasps from the folks surrounding us.
Half a dozen fingers point skyward and I look up in time to catch the sloth in motion again.
She stretches one long arm across a gap between tree limbs, then a leg, wraps them around a neighboring branch and slides almost bonelessly with her baby onto the other branch.
Then she climbs a few feet higher and disappears behind a clump of leaves.
There’s a chorus of disappointed groans and the sloth-watchers disperse in small groupings. Kelsey rests her head on my shoulder for a minute.
“I think Adrienne is by the pool. Wanna join us?”
I check my watch. Fifteen minutes before I should go back to the casita to bring Jason the coffee I promised and make sure he doesn’t nap too long.
I don’t know why I risked touching his head before I left the casita, but I can still feel his hair under my fingers.
I shake out the hand that’s not wrapped around Kelsey’s shoulder.
The pool is next to the restaurant. I can grab a beer and dangle my feet in the water for a bit, then order some coffee to go.
It’ll cool me down until I have to go back and see Jason.
“Sure, Kels.”