CHAPTER 62
NERO ZANTHOS
Nero: Can you come outside for a moment, please?
Nina: The door’s open. We’re upstairs. You can come in.
Nero: I’ll wait outside. Please come alone.
I hear Nina’s footsteps coming down the stairs, echoing outside, and I wait, nerves buzzing. She opens the door, startled.
“What happened?” Her eyes are wide. “Did someone get hurt?” she asks, alarmed, looking around as if the answer might be written in the air.
“What do you mean, Nina?” The confusion in my voice is obvious. “Who got hurt?”
“That’s what I’m asking,” she snaps. “You’re the one who came to get me.”
“But I never said anyone was hurt. I just said I needed to talk to you,” I clarify.
She blinks, her expression flipping from worried to irritated in a second.
“Then why didn’t you just come in?” She slaps her palm against her thigh. I understand our conversation even less now.
“I didn’t warn you I was coming. I didn’t want to be inconvenient.”
“Your existence is inconvenient, Nero. You scared me. Damn it.” She presses a hand to her chest, closes her eyes, and takes a few deep breaths.
“I’m sorry. That wasn’t my intention.”
“What do you want?” The urgency with which she tries to get rid of me makes me step back. Nina doesn’t usually welcome me with open arms—but she also doesn’t usually push me away this hard. At least, not since that first day.
“I bought this.” I pull three tickets from my pocket and hand them to her. Nina takes them, frowning.
“Three tickets to The Lego Batman Movie?” She raised an eyebrow, waiting for an explanation, but I get distracted by what she’s wearing—a kind of robe covering her body, doing a very poor job of it.
Missing her curves hits me full force, and I look away immediately. It takes me a few seconds to answer.
“Yes.” I clear my throat. “It’s this afternoon.” I add, almost apologetically, for not having warned her. “I know you and Kael always watch a movie on your day off. I thought maybe this week could be a little different.”
“And that’s why you needed me to come outside?” she asks, as if confirming I’d done something as stupid as calling an ambulance for no reason.
“I didn’t want Kael to see me.”
“Why not?” She tilts her head back, and I have to make a colossal effort to keep my eyes on her face. Either she truly doesn’t get it yet—or she wants me to humiliate myself. Either way, I give her what she wants.
“I didn’t know if you’d say yes. And I didn’t want him to force you into it.”
“There are three tickets here.” Her expression shifts as she presses her lips together and arches one eyebrow. A clear challenge.
“Yes. There are.” I swallow. “I’d love to go with you, but I don’t want to intrude on your day off. I know I took time away from you and him last week. I don’t intend to do that again—unless you invite me to be part of this.”
After an hour rehearsing a calm, persuasive speech so I wouldn’t sound like I was begging, I get here and forget all of it.
“All right. Thank you.” Nina says, almost smiling with the cruelty of dismissing me without an answer. I didn’t actually ask a question, so I can’t blame her.
“You’re welcome,” I nod, giving up, and turn my back.
I don’t want to ruin her day off or pressure her into accepting my presence on the only day she has to rest. The invitation was what it was. She understood—and apparently chose not to accept.
I’m already past my house and the one next door when Nina calls out.
“Nero—” Her voice drags, as if she already regrets it. If my name were any longer, I’m sure she’d have given up halfway through.
“Yes?” I answer without taking a single step, just turning my head to look at her over my shoulder.
“You can come with us.”
My smile spreads slowly.
I try to rein it in, not wanting to look smug or victorious, afraid she might get annoyed and punish me by taking the invitation back. I’ve recently realized Nina has a vindictive streak and takes revenge in small ways whenever she gets the chance.
“Thank you.”
“Not for that,” she replies.
“Not only for that—though that too.”
***
“Do you know how to tell stories, Daddy?” my son asks, perched on my shoulders like a little monkey, pressing two Lego pieces into my eyes.
“I think I do, son. But you can teach me if I get it wrong.” I squeeze his small thighs, locking his legs around my neck when he throws himself backward laughing. He balances easily and settles again before my heart remembers it needs to keep beating.
“I can’t read yet, Daddy. Can you?”
“I can.” He claps, and I hear the two little Batman Legos he refuses to let go of clack together.
“Then you know how to tell stories. Mom, can he tell my bedtime story today? I want the penguin one.”
“It’s still afternoon, Kael. Bedtime is at night.”
“Mom, it’s nothing. You sleep in the morning and in the afternoon.”
I stare at the floor in despair, trying not to laugh at the awkwardness, and I don’t help Nina—because the only person who wants her to say yes more than my son is me.
“True, you little monkey. But you sleep at night.”
“And how long until night?”
“Three hours.”
“My age,” he replies, and I know he’s holding up three fingers. He always does. Knowing something so simple about my son puts a smile on my face every time.
“A little less. You’re three years old.”
“Right. Wait, Daddy—” He tries to blind me with the Legos again, smacking the hard edge against my forehead when I pull him forward carefully. Kael stops in front of us, demanding our full attention, and performs an exaggerated yawn he absolutely does not feel.
“Look, Mom, I’m suuuper sleepy like this.
” He stretches his arms wide and negotiates.
“I can take a nap this afternoon, and then if I take just a liiiittle while to fall asleep”—he illustrates with tiny fingers—“Daddy can tell two stories. Right, Daddy?” He looks to me for approval as we reach the front door.
I look at Nina. She nods, unable to deny a request made with such dedication.
“Of course, buddy. As many as you want,” I promise.
“Seriously, Daddy?”
“You’re going to regret this, Nero,” Nina says. I’m not sure if it’s a warning or a threat. Either way, I grin.
“I doubt it.”
And I follow him inside when Rosa opens the door and pulls him into a hug.
“Daddy’s going to tell me lots of stories, Grandma, until it’s late. I didn’t say it—Mom did. Didn’t you, Mom?”
“I want to see if you’ll be as excited about bath time as you are about stories, Mr. Kael,” Nina says sternly as she takes off her knee-high boots and hangs up her coat. Kael deflates instantly.
“Is today bath day, Mom?” He looks at me, clearly asking for backup.
“Every day is bath day, Kael.” His shoulders slump at that, eyes dropping to the floor.
The disappointment in his voice barely matches the boy who was squealing with joy half an hour ago over two Legos found in the popcorn.
“Can we skip the bath just today?” he asks.
I feel bad—and amused. My son is a little dirt goblin. I file that away alongside other facts I’m collecting about him, right next to how he always raises his fingers when he says the number three.
“Up you go. Bath, pajamas, bed. Then the stories,” Nina says.
“Is it a body bath or a hair bath?”
“Both, Kael.”
“All right.” He exhales, inhales, summoning courage, and runs upstairs with intense focus. I follow.
Kael opens three drawers in his room in a row. From the first, pajamas. From the second, underwear and socks. From the third, a towel. He stacks everything on one shoulder.
“Mom!” he shouts, calling Nina, who’s already in the bathroom turning on the water. “Can it be this one?” He lifts the towel as if she could see it.
“Yes,” she answers from inside. “Bring the small box.”
He finds, without help, a small blue box on the dresser labeled kids’ nail kit.
Kael runs to the bathroom, and I lean against the doorframe, just watching their quiet, coordinated routine. Nina lifts him onto the washing machine and helps him undress. He hands her the two Legos he was still holding, and she sets them on the windowsill.
Kael carefully steps onto the small stool into the tub. They don’t speak—just share serene smiles of people who’ve done this a thousand times and don’t need words.
The weight of every moment I missed settles into me, piece by piece, as I watch them work as a small team I’m not part of—just an observer.
An audience.
That’s what I am in the life of my son and my woman, and I have only myself to blame.
Nina fills the tub just a little. The water reaches Kael’s shins, but he bathes standing, under the shower.
My son shuts his eyes dramatically when shampoo goes into his hair, even as his mother reminds him it doesn’t sting. He complains as she washes each toe and whines about lifting the second foot. They whisper as if I’m not there, and I feel almost intrusive.
Once he’s dry, dressed, hair brushed, and nails trimmed, Kael closes the toilet lid and sits on it, finally looking at me.
“Now Mommy takes a shower too, then it’s your turn, Daddy.”
“Are you forgetting something, young man?”
“Teeth!” He remembers—and for this part, he seems excited. He runs to his room and comes back with his little step stool. He climbs up to reach the sink and brushes his teeth, a bit clumsy.
“Top teeth too, Kael,” Nina reminds him while putting dirty clothes in the hamper and folding the towel. He speeds up like it’s suddenly a race.
“Your turn now, Mom, or there won’t be time for two stories.”
“Today you can wait in your room with your dad, Kael. I’ll shower by myself.”
“No, Mom, we’ll wait. We won’t leave you alone. Right, Daddy? Showers are boring,” he confides, and I laugh.
“I think we can start getting your bed ready and choosing the story. Your mom’s usually quick.”
“How do you know, Daddy? You’ve never seen!”
“Adults shower fast,” I dodge, with some charm. Nina laughs at me, and for the first time in my existence I feel embarrassed about having seen someone naked.
Or maybe the embarrassment has more to do with my body’s reaction after spending more than two seconds frozen, imagining Nina showering while I waited in the hallway.
I must be losing my mind. Lewd thoughts in the presence of my child—surely a new record of desperation.
Dear God.
“Can I go?” Kael asks, already taking my hand.
“Yes.” Nina kisses his face and inhales his clean scent, pleased with her work. I leave with the boy as if there’s no breathable air left in that bathroom.